Hello Future.. We are ready!

 

It is a rainy July morning in Mumbai, like the heavy rains that lashes the city outside, I am experiencing a heavy downpour of thought-provoking ideas inside. I am in a panel discussion on the Future of Project Management.  As the discussion moves forward, the following points stood out to be restructuring not only who does the work, but also how work gets done and what value is delivered.

1. Pace of technological change: Over the last decade technology, Automation, AI, big data is radically transforming the way we live and work. 
2. New business models: The “App” based economy have changed and will keep revolutionizing how business is done.
3. Future team demographics: The talent mobility, the death of distance will be led to the rise of multigenerational work force, robots and gigers.

Later as I retired that night, I was both excited and nervous about what the future #futureofWork would be like for us – project managers.

Peter Drucker once said ‘‘If you want to predict the future, create it “. Can we predict the future of PM work? How do we proactively prepare ourselves to transition to the future?  

• Predict and initiate: It would no longer be enough to “respond to change”, but introspect, retrospect to predict or even initiate the change. Big data, analytics, VR, AI and ML could be the levers to predict the next.
• Invoke the intrapreneur: Intrapreneurship is crucial for businesses to remain competitive well into the future. Encouraging intrapreneurship can help to identify new business opportunities and ventures, new products or services, or new strategic directions. Deep understanding of the business, passion, empathy, critical thinking and collaboration could help to Project managers compete and evolve
• Embrace Diversity: This includes, demographics (multi- generations), bots, ethnicity and geographies. Project managers could explore crowdsourcing, open innovations to encourage diversity.
• Engage the “Gigers”: As our team members will move more towards being “gigers”, team engagement will need to go beyond monetary rewards and recognition to focus on intrinsic motivation like challenging and meaningful work opportunities.
• Build Relationships:  To manage virtual, diverse teams, deal with human – bot conflicts, stakeholder (internal and external) engagement. Last but not the least the relationships with ecosystem partners as we move towards a more connected world. Adaptability, social intelligence and emotional intelligence skills can be keys to build these relationships.

Here we are “Hello #futureOfPMWork we are ready !”

What are your thoughts to manage the #futureOfPMWork?  

For more on what, the future has in store for project professionals –in 2033, do read my article on PM network magazine

http://www.pmnetwork-digital.com/pmnetwork/march_2018/MobilePagedReplica.action?pm=1&folio=22#pg24

Image courtsey: Photo by Christopher Burns on Unsplash