Webstrong Ltd

Every day people like you waste hours of the day doing stuff that’s unnecessary and unplanned. You’re wasting your time doing things that don’t matter.

You probably work 9-5 and find ways to fill the day just so you can go home at the end of it and tell everyone you were really busy.

But what did you get done? What did you do that day that actually brought you closer to what you want? Could you have done it in less time? Could you have been more focused on the important stuff and gone home early instead?

We’ve had the same problem here at Webstrong, working on stuff that doesn’t pay, doing jobs that don’t help us reach our goals, while all the while making us busier then we’ve ever been before.

It had to stop. We had to find an easier way.

Having recognised this, we’re now finding ways to cut through the bullshit, get more done, and make ourselves a lot less busy, doing the more important work first. The stuff that’s enjoyable to work on and the stuff that pays. But we’ve had to go through a very tough time before we got there. A few months ago, we nearly went bust. Not from a lack of work, but from a lack of cash. In this post, my first in a long while, I’ll try to explain how it happened, and what we did to fix it.

The Moving Target

People ask me all the time “how’s work Iarfhlaith, you busy at the moment?” and the truth is that we are always flooded with work and we are always busy. But up until recently, we’ve been busy in an uncontrollable way. Too many projects, too many people looking for progress reports, not enough resources to get it all done. We simply couldn’t handle the work that was coming in the door. For every project we finished, two new ones would land on our desk, and the pile just got bigger and bigger.

Now this isn’t some excuse to boast about how well we’re doing, in fact it’s quite the opposite. Being too busy is a very serious problem and working on a lot of projects simultaneously can kill a business.

The Cashflow Problem

This business should be simple. It should be a piece of cake. You get a project, you work on a project, you deliver it completed, and then you get paid. Sounds simple, and it is, but only if you work on one project at a time. In reality, what can happen if you’re not careful is that you take on a project, then halfway through you take on another project and start it immediately, making the first project late. You are now juggling two projects at the same time and taking calls from two customers looking for updates, wondering why the work isn’t getting done on time.

Now take that scenario, and add on another 20 projects into the mix. All going  on at the same time, all with estimated timelines based on an imaginary clear schedule. This is where we were a few months ago. Obviously, problems arose. Deadlines got pushed out, projects got forgotten about and very little got delivered.  And very soon, because projects weren’t getting delivered, we began to run out of cash.

Up to our eyes in work, with no money coming in the door.

Active Project Management

Obviously, we had to change fast or we were doomed. I took advice from some close friends in business and I began to restructure how we manage ourselves and our clients.

We identified a few key areas that needed attention, and we made our first big change:

• We started to really manage our client’s expectations. They needed to know when we would start, when key milestones would be delivered and how long the project would take.

And, we couldn’t realistically give that information accurately unless we knew how busy we already were. So we made our second big change:

• We started scheduling our time, in advance, in a very strict way.

These two changes seem so simple, but actively managed, they turned a struggling business into a profitable business almost instantly.

I come from a technical background, and in all honestly, until recently the extent of my client management skills extended to saying ‘yes’ to almost all of their requests. Now however, before saying yes, I’ll check when we’re available to start the work before I make any promises.

You would think that by telling the client that you can’t start their project for another three weeks would be an issue for them, but I’ve found so far that it isn’t and they’re just happy to know when it’ll be started, and when it’ll be finished. Provided you deliver on those promises of course, you’re doing yourself and your client a huge favour by knowing how busy you are before you take on more work.

An Added Benefit

There’s an added benefit to this simple approach to project management. It reduces the risk of growing your team.

For instance, if your existing team is booked out two months in advance, then taking on another coder or designer is far less riskier then if you didn’t know what you’d be working on in a weeks time or a months time.

So, with a few simple changes, I’ve managed to turn this business around. And with the bit of free time I have now, you should expect to see a little more of me on the blog.

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If you’ve had a similar experience and have any wisdom to share on the subject, please leave a comment on this post, because I’m certain there are a lot of folk in this industry still making those mistakes.