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Progress not perfection and assess your risk tolerance

Written by: Catherine Daw

Article Overview: Progress not perfection. In today's market it's all about speed and agility. You have limited windows of opportunity to step into a space. It can get crowded very quickly. Our mantra here is progress not perfection - you don't need to have everything tied up in a pretty bow before you go out to market. Your own level of perfection is usually higher than what the marketplace often needs. If you need a strategic plan, do it but don't angst over it. Get on and actually get to work. The key here is to know when you've got enough to start acting on. You also need to decide if you're going to be an early adopter or a follower which will determine your level of risk and return.

Progress not perfection and assess your risk tolerance

How SPM Group Was Founded

My husband and I founded the company in 1992 and we came from different angles, experiences and ideas. My focus and career had been in IT and business while his background was in the construction / engineering space. We believed that for companies to grow and transform they needed to focus on effective strategic initiatives and not just through the operational day to day business process. Organizations to be truly successful needed to recognize strategic project management as part of their corporate DNA. There was an opportunity to help organizations make that transition and there were no strong competitors in the market at the time.

We were early adopters and it wasn’t until 1997 / 1998 people started to pay attention to project management in a bigger way. So we started ahead of that curve.

My husband came from a different perspective in that he already had been through the rigors of project management in the construction industry. I was coming from an IT world where projects were one offs and new technology meant that it was more challenging to successfully apply the project management rigor. With these two different perspectives we were able to put together an effective solution. That solution involves enabling the effective enterprise from strategy development to successful execution of their initiatives.

We had a number of first clients. Through the engineering community we landed an initial contract assisting a client my husband had worked with in the past. From my end I had been working in the not for profit industry and through a network of people got connected with TD Bank and we started growing on the financial services side and began acquiring clients in that sector.

From there we started to gain a reputation and build out our services and staff. As a lot of our work comes through networking and referrals both of us remain quite connected in a number of ways. I continue to be active in the not for profit community as well as speaking and writing. It isn’t just about who you know but who knows you.

Advice For Startups

Progress not perfection. In today's market it's all about speed and agility. You have limited windows of opportunity to step into a space. It can get crowded very quickly. Our mantra here is progress not perfection - you don't need to have everything tied up in a pretty bow before you go out to market. Your own level of perfection is usually higher than what the marketplace often needs. If you need a strategic plan, do it but don't angst over it. Get on and actually get to work. The key here is to know when you've got enough to start acting on. You also need to decide if you're going to be an early adopter or a follower which will determine your level of risk and return.

Assess your risk tolerance. How much are you willing to take on? Most entrepreneurs take on bigger risks than others so I think the thing is to assess how much you are going to put on the line. It's all about what keeps you awake at night. If you know your risk tolerance you can determine if you want to step out or hold back.

Control your overhead. Control your overhead so you can reinvest back into your people. For us, having the right people is essential as they are assets of the company. We don't have a huge office downtown. We started from our home and ran virtually. You have to know how much money to spend on what.

Develop your staff. We develop the skills of our staff. We identify the strategic competencies they need to be best of breed so we invest in their professional development in a fairly significant way. They can help build back in the services that we offer to our clients. We have a game plan which is our performance management system. They write what they are to achieve and our bonus structure is based on individual performance as well as. corporate performance. They sign up at the beginning of the year and they decide, with guidelines, as to how and what they are expected to perform. Performance objectives could include revenue generation, competency area they build their expertise in, speaking engagements they go on, how many articles get published, etc. We try to get them to step out of their comfort zone.

Ensure partnership synergies. For partners there has to be good synergies for it to work. We partner with other companies that have a similar philosophy and complementary services to what we do. We may even work with our competitors that have different strengths and bid on projects together - coopetition.

Determine how you will finance the company. In our case we have mostly self financed from the beginning. We didn’t go out and get capital to start the company. Over time we've gotten a line of credit with the bank. We've had a number of bank loans to develop new products which needed financing. We did 2 large investments in the past year both to upgrade our training materials based on winning a major contract and the other investment was to implement Microsoft Project Server as an internal system so we could practice what we preach. We use this system to manage our projects internally and externally. For some of our clients who don't have the infrastructure we provide this component as a value add. This has allowed us to provide a virtual project office for clients.
Hire smartly. Our original philosophy was to run the company as a virtual organization - hire subcontractors and have minimal employees. We got to the point where we found contractors did not lead to continuity and the clients remembered the person and not the company so we started to hire staff. Making the decision to hire the first staff was a big step. Since then we have continued with a mixed model of employees and subcontractors. It allows us to manage the peaks and valleys and sustain a strong bench of people We do a rolling 12 month forecast so we're always looking 12 months ahead with committed versus forecasted revenue and then manage our employee model more effectively

Mistakes To Avoid

Hire slow, fire fast. Take your time to find the right people. I'm a big proponent of the Good to Great (by Jim Collins) philosophy. If you have the right people on the bus you can go anywhere you want and if you don't it can wreak havoc. We often get tied to the people as individuals. If it’s not working it's better to end it as quickly as possible because it's better for both parties. You make what you think is the right hire and it seems to work out for a short little while and then there is something that doesn't feel quite right and you continue to try to make it work. Six months later you're in the same position and it doesn't work out. Bottom line trust your instincts when hiring.

Go beyond your comfort zone. Sometimes you have to step out of your comfort zone. There have been times where I felt personally that my risk tolerance has not allowed me to step outside my comfort zone and it has prevented us from growing. For me personally one of the big things is to be willing to step out a little bit more. You need to live with yourself if it doesn't work. Mitigation and contingency plans are always important. Once we started putting that in place my personal risk tolerance was able to increase.

Don’t have regrets. I have more regrets about not doing something than about doing something. One of our biggest challenges was a few years ago. We had a large dependency on one big client and a lot of little ones. We fell from one big client to the next big client so we were always living on that edge. Looking back I would have made sure earlier on to have a more stable base of clients and we've done that now. In 2003 we faced an issue where we didn't have a big client, we had to lay off staff, restructure the company. It was touch. It was also a time in the marketplace where consulting wasn't hot. We survived and were still able to sustain our revenue against expenses. We had to broaden our base of clients and today our model is much more stable.

If I Were To Start A New Business...

I would say personally as a baby boomer there is a lot of opportunity for services that are targeted at the baby boomer market. How do you support those busy people? Personal services. Someone to cook some meals, do my shopping, and clean up. I don't have time and I think there are a lot of busy people like myself in need that kind of service. The whole environmental component is also very interesting. Waste is a big problem and opportunity. There is a lot of innovation around looking for sustainable development. We just built a house up north (Collingwood) and we used geothermal as our heating system. It costs more but the return on investment is pretty quick. The company that we used is swamped. They are begging to hire people because they can't keep up with the demand.


On being an entrepreneur and a woman...
You need as an entrepreneur to have carved out some time for yourself and your life – to allow for a balanced perspective. In the early days we worked lots of hours and in some ways I regret that because it's not sometimes just about the quality with your children quantity can be important too. You still need to have a balance in your life and do other things. Having time to rejuvenate and reflect will bring a balance to what you apply when you're working on your company.

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