The Future of Work is Projects Transcript

Ross Martin:

I can't agree more. Our next topic is the future of work is projects. So that's kind of interesting. So if you think about the history of work, so when mass production first started, maybe in the early 1900s, operations running your business was probably 90% of work. And then projects, which is changing and improving your business, was about 10%. And gradually, as new technologies and things came through over the 1900s, that changed. And by the time we got to about now, around 2020, it's about 50-50 between operations and project-based work at work of what people are actually spending their time doing. So just so I'm clear, so

Idris Manley:

If you were to calculate all of the hours that your employees are contributing, half of their time on average would be applied to operational work, activities, and driving operationally related outcomes and project related.

Ross Martin:

Exactly. Run the business or change the business, but about half, half and half on average. Some people are pure projects, some people are pure operations, but on average. What's interesting though, and the reason we're saying the future of work is projects, is that's about to drive even further down in the amount of time people are spending on operations. And that's because of new innovations like AI. Um, which will take, uh, automate a lot of the, sort of the busy work of running a business. So by the time, uh, over the next, uh, probably over the next 10 years, it should get down to more like. 20, 25% and then continue to drive down to where operations is at most 20% of a person's time of all your people's time.

Idris Manley:

Yeah, that makes sense, especially with with, you know, automation, AI automation, you know, continuously looking for ways to automate repeatable processes, it's only a matter of time before AI is smart enough to be able to take one more and more of the traditional operational functions. But because projects are not recurring, repeatable prophecies because you're implementing change, it's much more challenging for AI to completely sort of replace those particular processes because they're unique and there's unique permutations based on exactly what you're trying to accomplish in a given project.

Ross Martin:

Yeah, it makes sense. I mean, the whole point is, is, is operations by its definition in a lot of ways is repeatable. Yeah. And that's, that's what you automate.

Idris Manley:

And then, so companies will actually become change management or innovation or, you know, in terms of where they're, where they're spending their human resource capital, right. Be on change while, you know, robots and AI are responsible for ongoing repeatable operations.

Ross Martin:

Yeah, that is interesting. Yeah. Change management. You know, I remember a number of decades ago when I first started, it was kind of a new thing. Like, Oh, when you change things in an organization, you need to think about not just communications, but, but helping bring people along that change curve so that, that, that they can adopt and use the new process or the new tool or whatever it is you're doing. You know, it's kind of wild to think that that will turn into being the dominant thing that is happening at companies.

Idris Manley:

But I think what's scary about all of that is the fact that if you look at project delivery, there are very few you know, project delivery leaders, they're in the C-suite, right? Yeah. Or even VPs for that matter. And so project delivery as a function has typically for a lot of companies been sort of managed as a tactical sort of function, right? Where maybe at most the person is a director or senior director at most, but they never really sort of break into the executive sort of sphere. And so as a result, this significant part of one's business that's becoming an increasingly larger part of the business, you're not having a real sort of delivery focused leader that's really focused and concentrated and accountable to delivery, I think is a big, is a big red flag and it's going to become a problem for organizations going forward.

Ross Martin:

That's a really interesting point. Think about a COO, right? A COO is a Chief Operational Officer. So that's a very exalted position, often the number two behind the CEO. Absolutely. And yet, it's only now beginning, I think, that people are starting to think of things like a CDO, a Chief Delivery Officer. Value delivery. Exactly. It's going to be an interesting thing where most of the time I find that at companies, the heads of business units, the heads of different functions and things are running those functions. And, and yeah, so they're going to end up needing to be huge change agents as well, where they spend most of all of their time thinking about the change. And I think, I think a lot of them do now at a certain point, but it really needs to become part and parcel to everything they do.

Idris Manley:

Yeah, I think a lot of executives, or at least the CEOs, assume that just because they're good in their particular function, that they can execute and plan and execute in an optimal way. And while I'm sure that is to a certain extent true, I think we're realizing just based on the complexity of delivery, the amount of projects that have failed to deliver successfully, clearly something isn't working when it comes to how projects are being delivered. And I think part of the challenge or the issue is that executives are being overloaded and expected to be able to not only deliver in their particular functional area, but also to be masters at planning and execution. And so I think there's a realization that having someone focus on the value delivery and the planning execution around that, and while allowing senior leaders to continue to manage their function, manage the outcomes, but to partner with a leader that is really experienced and knowledgeable on the actual execution to achieve the outcomes. I think it's a good partnership. It's a good collaboration that we're going to be seeing a lot more of in the future.

Ross Martin:

And one of the challenges as well is the way the companies are organized in the first place, right? So they're usually at the moment, uh, organized by their operational functions. So you might have the, the organization over in Europe that's based on selling work or creating products over in Europe, that sort of thing, or the product and engineering business unit. So in some ways they're organized considering how you run the business. how you operate. We all have seen that there are some companies that have process streams, value streams, people who think across the organizational boundaries. And in theory, that's what a really top-notch enterprise PMO is thinking as well, across organizational seams. But, um, but I really think everybody's going to have to level up on this and, and start to think, you know, about the way the different parts of the business work together, however it's organized in order to make projects, you know, successful.

Idris Manley:

Yeah, I think it's an interesting question. When you look at how AI is going to allow your individual contributors and your typical employees to work on less tasks, which means that it's going to free them up to be more strategic or to contribute in new ways that they hadn't before. Uh, and so it's going to really, I think it's going to shift how we think about different functions and what the responsibilities are. I know that within, within project management in PMO specifically, uh, you know, managing a project manager, just managing tasks and activities that will, you know, sooner or later become a thing of the past. And so that person will more than likely become more of a leader in delivery and sort of asking the right questions, asking the tough questions, making sure strategically the teams are, you know, are achieving and tracking to the business outcomes as opposed to tracking to the who's doing what and when a deliverable is due. And so I think across all of the functions, you're going to see this sort of this leveling up that will, that will occur because the tasks are just now being performed by AI.

Ross Martin:

One of the interesting things that I could see a number of senior leaders taking advantage of, though, is once you have automation and AI freeing up a number of these people to work on value-added work, they could also choose instead to take the cost savings. Yeah. I think that in many ways, there are times where that's just what you have to do, but I think that will be short-sighted because I could see a situation where a company takes advantage of automation to remove a number of people, save a lot of cost, but they're not going to be setting themselves up for success in the future against their competitors. They're just going to be getting some early benefits from lowering their cost structure. And then they're going to later end up having to hire a bunch of people later on who could have been trained up from their existing folks.

Idris Manley:

Yeah, no, if you think about it, if your competitor is in this very similar position as, as, as you are. And you know, your competitor decides to retain those employees that have, you know, where they're now not managing tasks. That means they're probably shifting those employees to performing more strategic activities that are actually, you know, they're out thinking you, they're outperforming, they're executing you because they have additional resources that can think about how to do just that. And so I think, yeah, I think you're right. I think teams or companies are going to have to figure out how to take advantage of the capacity that's made available to AI as opposed to just reducing headcount. Otherwise they're going to buy their competitors, have a, have a strategic advantage over them.

Ross Martin:

Yeah, I, I, I fully agree. I think it's going to be a very interesting ride over the next five to 10 years. Um, projects are going to be the dominant work, uh, very soon.

Idris Manley:

I think it's also just one other point. I think it's interesting. If operations, if everyone for the most part is able to take advantage of operations automation, it means that there's less, there will be less differentiation across companies in those particular operational, you know, capabilities, right? Because we had humans sort of performing all that operational work. There are unique things in terms of talent and experience, etc. that could allow for more differentiation in how one company performed a certain operational function versus another. But if everyone is using AI, if everyone is using similar technologies and AI is just you know, regularly optimizing, that means that everyone is sort of performing operationally at a very similar, at a similar sort of level of performance. And so the differentiation then becomes on the project side. That is where, because you still have humans involved and there's still a lot of various variables and factors that contributes to whether a project is being delivered effectively or successfully. And so I think you're going to find that projects become even more impactful to the bottom line and to competitive differentiation across companies than ever before.