Building the right team at the right time

Roland Levinsky Building Interior, Formation Zone, University of Plymouth

"Think big. Start small. Scale fast."

Saul Kaplan

For a Knowledge Transfer 2.0 (KT 2.0) approach to work it is necessary to start small and scale fast: this parallels much of the thinking of the Lean Startup movement. All individual projects will start small. Most will fail. Some will make it big. The problem is that it won't be known which will make it and until then we will want to limit the internal resource committed. It won't be known where any project will lie on the long-tail. If external, low cost resource is available or others have faith in the project, then that changes the dynamic.

It makes sense, therefore, to outsource as much activity as possible, to allow the consultant to secure the resource and take the lead. To retain the 'start small, scale fast' ethos, it's not a sensible approach to project manage each of these proto-ventures in the traditional manner.This follows from what has been said in the section ' Rules of the game for your external partner', regarding the deficits of the traditional stage-gate method, particularly in relation to the time and resource cost associated with project managing such a stage-gate system.

For those projects that do make it, the necessity to scale fast includes many significant resource and skills intensive activities. An individual consultant-entrepreneur, invariably, will not be able to do that.

Changing gear

The reason for creating an open networked approach in the first place is, in part, to avoid suffering from the skills and resource limitations the internal team will necessarily endure. Shifting to reliance on a single external individual will rarely overcome this when it is necessary to shift gear. Some entrepreneur-consultants will have their own extended networks and team to offset this. However there is a risk, from experience, that in suddenly deciding to shift gear and to scale the project you may encounter the following:

The entrepreneur-consultant does not have the resource to cover all aspects, roles and skill sets required for the project to develop
Occasionally, even as excellent deal makers, they may not have the understanding of some of their own deficits or they simply get used to the early semi-detached manner of working
They may enjoy the autonomy and freedom of securing the deal alone; they are after all free agents, and as such are reluctant to move from a project management 'lite' approach to a more traditional and rigorous project management style. They may even come to see it as 'their' deal

So up-scaling support for the project is a transition point that needs to be managed carefully in the KT 2.0 methodology.