Marijuana Business Magazine

have to take care of vital needs in our facilities first – humidity control, water treatment, security – and that some “wants,” like ergonomics, might have to wait until we had more money and time to devote to them. Managing time was a tougher and more dynamic challenge. You can lay out a project plan by weeks or by days, but it really gets managed in hours. You need to see how long tasks are taking as they’re being done in real time and adjust accordingly. With such a tight time frame – and six months seems to be the norm, as we’re seeing in Ohio, where we aim to expand next – one must look at ways to be nimble and efficient in managing time, like having some work done in parallel, not just in sequence, such as the development of multiple sites simultaneously. Figuring out how to do that well, without people bumping into each other, took a really deep dive into project management. Lesson 4: Centralize Communication In building out and beginning to run our facilities in Illinois and later New York, issues would pop up from time to time, like a piece of equipment not performing. In the beginning, we approached those problems in a very reactive mode. Everything felt urgent and personal. One example: We were having a recurring problem with the lights in our greenhouse. The control panel for the automated system they were connected to was blowing circuits and regularly failing. We were ready to jump to the conclusion that the lights were bad or the automated control system was faulty, but the truth was that the whole setup had never been “commis- sioned” or stress-tested in the way it should have been and we simply had too many lights wired in to too few cir- cuits. Every time it happened, we were ready to blame one component or another, but we were missing the real issue – one created by a breakneck installation done with poor communi- cation among subcontractors. Instead of having whoever was “in the moment” trying to handle a prob- lem, we realized we needed to have a slightly more formal chain of commu- nication, so that the right messages got to the right people in the right way. Indeed, establishing organiza- tional “lanes” of responsibility and enforcing those lanes; creating report- ing chains – these are the hallmarks of successful organizations. On the facilities side, that meant having our ACRE project manager reach out to the responsible subcontractor to come back in and rework our con- trol electronics in a more systematic manner. For other issues, we’ve had to identify a single point person who has the right knowledge and is in the right place to fully assess a situation and find a solution. This can be as simple as having an operational technician who is cross-trained on industrial equipment and prepared to spot issues and prob- lems as they occur. Lesson 5: Recognize Your Limitations All these lessons probably boil down to one. We love being entrepreneurs, and we love the creative spirit associ- ated with building a new industry. But even as passionate and smart as we are, we’ve had to recognize our limitations. It’s humbling, sometimes, to look back at all the mistakes we’ve made, but, in this venture, we’ve also had opportunities to learn and grow far beyond the four walls of our old law offices. ◆ Jeremy Unruh is general counsel of PharmaCann LLC, a medical cannabis business with existing operations in Illi- nois and New York as well as operations under active development in Maryland, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts. 162 • Marijuana Business Magazine • November / December 2017 Managing time was a tougher and more dynamic challenge. You can lay out a project plan by weeks or by days, but it really gets managed in hours. You need to see how long tasks are taking as they’re being done in real time and adjust accordingly.