What Keeps You Up At Night?

As a business owner of a project solutions delivery company, I have given many talks to other Project Executives, Project Managers and Business Owners. Often the topic ultimately comes back to What Keeps You Up At Night? As the father of four kids, all within four years of each other, I guess What Keeps You Up At Night depends on the time of life you are referring to. When we had four kids under the age of four, Kids crying in the middle of the night kept me up at night. As the demands of our growing project solutions business grew at the same pace as my wife and I's family, what kept me up at night kept changing. It became difficult to balance the needs of my family with the challenges of working with more and more project companies that didn't have a good way to manage their business other than Microsoft Excel. It amazes me how many large project driven companies I work with that would go out of business (not literally), but would really struggle if they couldn't use Microsoft Excel. It is not that I don't like or utilize Microsoft Excel, however, if you are using Microsoft Excel for project billing, scheduling, resource planning, reporting you are in trouble when it comes to avoiding the fears that keep you up at night.

Before my family and business grew, gut feel and energy were great tools to run my family and business. My kids were sick? OK just stay up all night with them, no big deal I don't need sleep. Project is behind schedule? No problem, just pull an all nighter and we can be back on track by the weekend. When you are small you immediately know how things are going. Kids get hurt? Spend a little one on one time with them and they will immediately light up and make you feel so amazing that you know they love you with everything inside of them. Client is upset? No problem, spend time with them, understand the issues and try to do the right thing to make it right. You know whether you are able to fix the issue right then with instant feedback. You can use that information to make changes in the business that will avoid future problems like this with other project customers.

Kids become teenagers and I have no idea who these kids are. What happened to the sweet little kids that used to wear footy pajamas and think you were the greatest person in the world? Now you feel like you are living on another planet and aren't even sure how to talk to your kids. You still love them, would do anything to make everything right for them and help them avoid any pain. Your business doesn't seem like the same business you ran earlier. You don't have the energy to pull all nighters like you used to. Worse yet, you're not sure even if you stayed up all night what you should work on. So as you sit there pondering at night, what is wrong, there are typically thoughts that keep you up at night. This is where many discussions with Project Executives, Project Managers and Business Owners ultimately come back to. What Keeps You Up At Night?

I have the answer. The answer for business owners of project organizations is that the things that keep you up at night are the information and reports you need to run your business but you don't have. This information can be backlog, pipeline, receivables, payables, cash flow, project issues, project risks, or countless other pieces of information. With web parts from Microsoft SharePoint, Microsoft Dynamics SL and Microsoft Project Server, I have the information I need to know where I need to spend my limited time, money and energy. Having these tools doesn't take all the challenge out of running a project organization, but it does allow me to know when to make changes to our delivery of project solutions.

At least by utilizing project dashboards and information to manage my business, I don't have to stay up at night worrying about New Vision.

I just wish they had teenager solutions that helped tired parents sleep at night.