Christopher Global

Project success is largely determined by leadership and culture. Startups have a difficult time understanding this concept. It is quite easy for your company's culture to become ambiguous or toxic when money is needed. While money isn't a bad thing, the pursuit of money and revenue can lead to demanding cultures with high, possibly unreasonable expectations. The project leader's job is to work through the culture. Instead of focusing on what we can't change, let's deal with how to get it done.

The key to fostering better decision-making and improving project outcomes is cultivating a strong, cohesive culture aligned with leadership. Work culture may not support this, but you can create it in your projects. The first step to creating cohesion is aligning team goals and motivations. To do that, you will need to invest heavily in building relationships with the team members. It takes time and effort to earn respect, especially in a startup environment. The second step involves obtaining data that will help you make better decisions.

Team communication is essential for staying on top of things. Data is only as good as your last update, so if it's not real time, it better be close to it. Set up a process for circulating data within the team and within the project. You can demonstrate competent leadership in your projects by incorporating these two elements.