We all have heard about the disruptions that are impacting our society and the business world: robotics, machine learning, artificial intelligence, shared economy, blockchain, big data, augmented reality, and so on.
But, there is one disruption affecting our world that media and academia seem to have completely missed.
The Project Economy
For decades organizations have been run and structured in a very similar way: hierarchical; in which power, budgets and resources are divided over departments, the so-called “silos”.
Management and management theory was focused on how to run and optimize the business best in an ever during quest for efficiency. Projects were an addition, but hardly ever a priority.
Today, due to the speed of change witnessed in the past decade, this model has become more and more obsolete.
For many organizations the day-to-day running of a business will soon be carried out through automation and robots – and is already done so in many instances. Projects have become an essential part of any organization.
My prediction is that in the upcoming years, senior leaders and executives will spend much (maybe even most) of their time selecting, prioritizing and overseeing the execution of projects.
Ultimately, projects deliver value to stakeholders by solving their challenges, delivering products and aligning projects to an organization’s value streams. If done right, these initiatives also deliver financial and/or societal value.
This phenomenon is known as “The Project Economy”.
Jobs to Be Done
Taking the above into account there are a number of jobs that a CxO (like Chief Executive Officer, Chief Operations Officer, Chief Financial Officer, Chief Technology Officer, Chief Information Officer, etc.) will need to be able to do well when leading organizations in this project economy.
Below you will find the (in my humble opinion) ten most critical jobs to be done for CxOs.
1) Being an effective Project Sponsor.
2) Being an effective Steering Committee member.
3) Selecting the right Project / Program Manager for your initiatives.
5) Executing a strategy with projects.
6) Selecting the right projects.
10) Recovering a project.
In a nutshell: In the upcoming years, senior leaders and executives will spend much (maybe even most) of their time selecting, prioritizing and overseeing the execution of projects.
