Leading a New Strategic Project

You’ve gotten your small company’s feet wet with a few small customer projects and you’ve been successful. Now you’re faced with your biggest challenge – a ‘name’ customer has heard about you and is coming your way with their business. Failure is not always a bad thing because we can learn a lot from our mistakes. See my article on “We Learn from What We Screw Up.” But we don’t really want to start by experiencing failure with our first high-visibility customer because that kind of bad press can kill the small business and even bring down a larger organization.

It’s ok to bring in an expert to handle the first large initiative. I’ve personally been called in to help startups in this very scenario and I see them now successfully managing high-visibility implementations a few years later with the same processes we setup to save them the first time around.

What your organization can learn from the consultant’s expertise and the processes that can get set in motion can potentially carry you for years. Or you may find you need this person as a permanent part of your organization.

Either way you win.