Comments on: Key Distinction: Practice vs. Project Leadership

By: rolywalter

rolywalter — Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:00:00 +0000

Thanks for another great article. I’ve always had a niggling desire to keep myself (as a person) & my name as part of my business brand, since I know that the trust I have earnt is almost entirely due to people trusting me as a human, rather than my (rather awkward) sales pitch or my product set etc. Even thought I may change the name of my business, this ‘practice’ model will help me keep the personal, professional touch, rather than just being one of the consultants at x with skillset y. The only problem is, this seems to go against the idea of working ‘on’ your business rather than ‘for’ it, which means you couldn’t look to sell it easily in the future. Michael Gerber may not approve of this one!

Anyone else have any thoughts?

By: RockyShark

RockyShark — Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:00:00 +0000

Andrew says: “…they tend to rely on strict clinical protocols and guidelines”

I think that’s an important statement when you talk about working on your business rather than in it. If you have good procedures and processes, you can replicate that, get staff to do it, and concentrate on growing your business.

That’s my theory, anyway. Still trying to put it into practise!!!

By: aneitlich

aneitlich — Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:00:00 +0000

To Roly’s comment:

IBM, Accenture, Deloitte, McKinsey, CapGemini and many other firms have become huge, and all have the “practice” model. So having a professional practice and working on instead of in your business go together fine.

By: dimensionmedia

dimensionmedia — Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:00:00 +0000

Putting your name to a business can backfire on you - even if you truly are honest and hardworking. You could rightly refuse to do something for a client (such as doing ALOT of work that your contract didn’t cover) and the client can talk bad behind your back. If your name = company name, this could screw you even more. At least with a corporate name (like mine, Dimension Media) you can give the illusion that if people overhear anything and about you, you can allude that problem people at your company are let go (it’s not always right to talk bad about the ex-client that is badmouthing you, for several reasons.) With a corporate name, you can give the illusion that your company is bigger than you - which is important to some clients. That’s my $0.02 anyway. :-)

By: lastcraft

lastcraft — Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:00:00 +0000

Hi.

It was kind of implied in your article that there were four factors to balance: scope, quality, time, resources. In practice I find that although time is uually given as an absolute by a client, it is often the one that turns out most flexible. When they say they want X in three weeks it usually means that they want one feature of X in particular. By prioritising your work queue you can more favourably balance scope with time (although you should leave high risk unknown portions until last). The Scrum methodology is built around this.

yours, Marcus

By: lastcraft

lastcraft — Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:00:00 +0000

Correction! That should have been...

(although you should NOT leave high risk unknown portions until last)

yours, Marcus