Project based economy: The future of everyday work?

Businesses today face the continual challenge of change. Changing markets, changing competition, and changing workforce all drive the need to change. How can you respond to that change? One way to do this may be by using project management skills and project change leadership to help your organisation deliver effective change initiatives.

Project Management - The new normal?

In this new environment, how should leaders and organisations act? A generation ago, the answer to that question was to improve efficiency. Now, however, our processes are being digitised, outsourced, or automated; so efficiency is no longer the focus for leaders.

Globalisation, innovation and new technologies have created increasing complexity in the workplace; working for an established company or a start-up has never been more challenging. A growing number of professionals are actively involved in their own professional development.3

The Project Management Institute defines The Project Economy as a “fundamental paradigm shift” in the business world toward using projects to handle work and solve problems. This includes using projects to foster organisational change.1?

The HBR Project Management Handbook attributes much of the change to ever shorter product life cycles.? For example, Volkswagen has reduced the product cycle for its VW Golf from nine years to five.?

The most important reasons for using project-based working rather than the conventional approach are efficiency and cost saving. In conventional working, a company's assets are divided into departments and sub-departments, and tasks are allocated to individual employees. This necessitates having more employees than needed, each of whom might work on different tasks, with no central coordination. Project-based working is based on teams which typically have a number of members that matches the number of projects being handled by the team. While conventional working runs along according to a single timeline and within a certain budget, project-based working makes it possible to assign several projects to one team and adjust the timeline or budget if needed.2???

In the same way that the gig economy has revolutionised transportation and hospitality, project-based management will transform how organisations function. Rebecka Zucker recommends that executives give their teams more freedom to focus on projects: Find the most important projects, move them out of your structure, give them freedom to focus on delivery, value and experimentation. It’s a challenge for leaders who aren’t used to giving up control, but it's essential for success.??

Motivation and employee happiness

Projects can give employees a sense of meaning and satisfaction. Behavioural and social science research demonstrates that projects motivate employees, who often derive the most pride and sense of accomplishment from working on successful initiatives. Creating a successful project-based organisation requires building an organisational culture that is suited to fostering engagement in an environment where projects are prevalent.??

Is this transformation really necessary?

Organisations must constantly transform themselves to keep pace with innovation and the changing expectations of the public. In the past, projects were temporary and operations were permanent. However with increased digitalisation there is more of an emphasis on innovation, collaboration and agility. As a result, more and more work is being executed as projects.?

Running the operation is a core activity that includes sales, customer service, finance, manufacturing, and IT. Most of a company's revenues are derived from running-the-organisation activities. Running the business is about efficiency and productivity. The focus is short-term and objectives are performance-driven. The structure is hierarchical. Culturally, it is command and control. Changing the organisation is essential to future success. It encompasses all of the organisation's strategies and programs, including innovation, transformation, agility, and long-term value creation.

The ability to simultaneously pursue both run-oriented and change-oriented tasks is essential for effective leadership. Nowadays, business operations rely on change management. This is a direct result of the fact that projects are temporary and operations are permanent. Do you think you avoid project based working???

Improving project performance

McKindsey reported that on average, large IT projects run 45 percent over budget and 7 percent over time, while delivering 56 percent less value than predicted.??

According to The Standish Group's research, only 35% of projects are considered successful. That means that 65% of projects have a decreased ROI, wasted resources and budgets, and unrealized business benefits. It is even harder to quantify the losses in missed social impact and revenues caused by poor projects and leadership—let alone whether or not the initial goals had been met or not.??

Research reveals the following tips:

• Methods of managing a project must become more holistic, making them able to address many types of problems. Successful project management disciplines are often linked to a few simple frameworks that are easy for executives and employees alike to understand.
• Experienced project managers and executives need to communicate more effectively with one another, because neither team is educated in the tools and techniques required to manage projects successfully.
• Projects within organisations need to become more powerful in order to shift the focus of attention away from simply running the business and toward changing the business.

Pre-Project-Planning Map roughly based on Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez

The pandemic effect

In response to the COVID 19 Pandemic, the project management institute saw a positive change as many employees got themselves project management certifications and participated in project management training. The pandemic also caused some concerns about what employees could expect in the future in terms of flexibility at work. Many companies provided employees with information on our company's expectations regarding flexibility at work this week, addressing these concerns.??

That’s all cool but what now

As the gig economy radically changes the way people interact with each other, a project-based approach to organisational management will transform the workplace environment. Leaders at established companies need to embrace flexibility and change as they prepare their organisations to manage projects successfully. Three questions will address their capability to do so: Can they build project-management capabilities internally? Do their professionals have the skills and mindset to succeed in this new environment? And are their project leaders adequately equipped with business skills for prioritising among competing workstreams and aligning with shifting business priorities?

References

1 What is the Project Economy? -https://www.sixsigmadaily.com/what-is-the-project-economy/?

2 How To Succeed In A Project Economy -https://www.forbes.com/sites/rebeccazucker/2022/01/11/how-to-succeed-in-a-project-economy?

3SUCCEEDING IN THE PROJECT ECONOMY -https://www.dukece.com/insights/succeeding-in-the-project-economy/

?How To Succeed In A Project Economy https://www.forbes.com/sites/rebeccazucker/2022/01/11/how-to-succeed-in-a-project-economy/?

? The Project Economy Has Arrived. By: Nieto-Rodriguez, Antonio, Harvard Business Review, 00178012, Nov/Dec2021, Vol. 99, Issue 6

? Nieto-Rodriguez, A., 2021. Amazon.com: Harvard Business Review Project Management Handbook: How to Launch, Lead, and Sponsor Successful Projects (HBR Handbooks): 9781647821265: Nieto-Rodriguez, Antonio: Books [WWW Document]. URL https://www.amazon.com/Harvard-Business-Project-Management-Handbook/dp/1647821266 (accessed 2.18.22).

?Delivering large-scale IT projects on time, on budget, and on value https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/mckinsey-digital/our-insights/delivering-large-scale-it-projects-on-time-on-budget-and-on-value?

??Positive Impact of the COVID-19 Crisis on Project Management https://www.pmi.org/chapters/luxembourg/stay-current/newsletter/positive-impact-of-the-covid-19-crisis--on-project-management