Why Small Business are Different to What the Textbooks Say

In many ways large and small businesses are the same. We operate in mostly the same legal and staffing environments. We’re in the same economic environment. But small businesses have less resources and this means reality is harsher for small business. Delays, cost overruns and mistakes bite harder.

Running any business means learning all the tricks and tips over time. But being highly organised and knowing your industry isn’t sufficient anymore. We need to know enough about accounting, human resources, ICT, and project management to know what we can do ourselves and what we need to outsource to stay productive and profitable.

We all know that we need a business plan, and most of us have one. A business plan gets us thinking about what lifestyle we want, what our businesses need to look like to get there and what we need to focus on this year and the next to make sure that happens. To bring our business plan alive, we need accounting, human resources, ICT and Project Management skills. As well as the unique industry skills we bring to the table.

This month I’m focusing only on Project Management. To do that I’m assuming your business already has access to support in other areas. We’ll get to them another day.

What is Project Management in Small Business?

One way to answer this is to say what a project isn’t. It isn’t a schedule. And it isn’t a list of things to do. These are signs of an organised person. And that’s great. But our businesses all go through times where being highly organised isn’t enough. There are too many balls in the air and only twenty-four hours in a day. This is where project management comes in.

Project management is about knowing where your business plan is going, knowing who is involved in making the change you’re focused on, how to communicate with them, and designing a plan so the effect of problems will be small. It all about the people. Much of project management involves looking at what’s happening now, comparing it to where you want to be and making a prediction about the best way forward.

Projects always have a defined start and finish. They happen outside of the day-to-day operations of a business. So, if you run a shoe shop, your operations is everything to do with selling shoes from deciding what to buy, making sure the right shoes are in stock for your target market, and selling to your customers. A project might be setting up better staff onboarding processes, or putting up new shelving. Projects take away from the time and effort you have to run a business, and are often disruptive. We do them because they make running our businesses so much easier and more profitable. That’s why we package projects up and run them as effectively as we can.

Notice there has been no mention of Gantt charts, methodologies, or stand ups. There is a range of tools and techniques that can help or hinder projects, and we need to be careful which ones we use in which situations. Most tools and techniques are designed by large business and government for large business and government to solve problems involving the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars. To manage projects in a small business we need to go back to basics conceptually, while taking advantage of everything technology has to offer.

How Do I Take My Business Plan from Paper to Reality?

That’s what Mango Projects is here to help your business with. Here’s the potted version to get you thinking:

1. It starts with having a business plan that answers questions about what lifestyle you want, what your businesses need to look like to get there and what you need to focus on this year and the next to make sure that happens.

2. The next step is making a conscious decision about what is operations and what is project.

3. Then, decide which projects you need to run this year. This involves listing them in order of importance and deciding how much project work you can take on without hindering operations too much. Do you need to borrow money or partner with another business? Will you need extra people with different skills, or at busy times?

How Do I Plan a Project?

What is it you need to gain from running the project? High quality product? Accurate invoicing? What do you need to do to get that gain? Use better machinery? Have your machinery talk to your finance system? What standard do you need to aim for? Enough to please a new target market? Enough to know you are making money on every order?

Answering these questions gets us well on our way to making a plan.

Next, who needs to be involved to get the planned gains? Are those people available? What skills need to be updated? What’s the best way to communicate with the people involved? Consider your whole business eco system.

Answer each of these questions, and you have a project approach and a set of project tasks. In which order do these need to happen? Can several tasks happen at once? What are important dates? Now you have a schedule. If you have a project manager they will know if you need a tool to map the scheudle out and communicate with the team.

Write down who needs to do each task, the due date, and to what standard. Use this to delegate, if only to yourself. Make sure people understand what is needed of them, and everyone feels comfortable asking questions. If not, change the way you are communicating as this is the most important part of project management.

How Do I Run a Project?

Running a project is the easy bit, even with the day-to-day problems that you’ll have to solve along the way. Keep an eye on your business plan to remind yourself why you need the gains that will come from this project.

Talk to everyone involved frequently to ensure everything is on track. Don’t rely on them coming to you with a problem. Human nature being what it is, people may be embarrassed to admit they have a question, or spend ages trying to solve a problem that someone else could have quickly shown them how to manage. Little things like this are what add up to delays that mean your business won’t get the needed gains. Make sure communications channels are open and people have what they need to do their jobs.

Take stock of progress weekly and monthly to give yourself breathing room and make sure you are making decisions that are right for your business. If you have a project manager they will write you a report that you can use to make timely decisions.

Is it Really That Simple?

Rarely. You know business isn’t simple. But you’ve done what you can to make sure it goes right.

Governance

I can’t write about project management without writing about governance. For small businesses, project governance is the same as company governance. This makes it messy and conflicted. Who can make which decisions? Why are you happy with your staff deciding to rearrange their laptop dashboard, but not with them deciding different than agreed quality is OK? Why are you happy when staff spend up to the budget on tea and biscuits, but not beyond? This conflict will be familiar to small business owners.

To get the gains your business needs from a project, plans are clear about what level of governance makes which decisions and in which circumstances. This is why things like quality, timing and budget need to be clearly communicated to everyone involved. When people know what is expected of them and when, you have good governance. When staff know when they need to tell management about something, you have good governance.

Ending a Project

All projects must come to an end. Pay all the bills, make sure anything that has to be completed later stays visible, and pat yourself on the back. Thank everyone. Throw a little party. Well done.

Want to Know More?

Mango Projects runs a Practical Project Management workshop for business owners and project managers. The next one is in Palmerston North on July 21st 2026. Sign up through the Manawatu Business Chamber website, or contact Megan directly with questions.