The Future of Work Is Projects—So You’ve Got to Get Them Right

HBR IdeaCast

Harvard Business Review

Leadership, Entrepreneurship, Communication, Marketing, Business, Business/management, Management, Business/marketing, Business/entrepreneurship, Innovation, Hbr, Strategy, Economics, Finance, Teams, Harvard

4.4 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 9 November 2021

⏱️ 24 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Companies of every size in every industry and part of the world are basing more of their work around projects. And yet research shows that nearly two-thirds of those efforts fail. Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez, who has studied projects and project management for decades, explains how we can do better. He offers advice on the right way to frame projects, how to structure organizations around them, and pitfalls to avoid. Nieto-Rodriguez is the author of the Harvard Business Review Project Management Handbook and author of the article "The Project Economy Has Arrived."

Transcript

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0:00.0	So you got the job. Now what? Join me, Eleni Mata, on HBR's new original podcast, New
0:08.1	Here, the Young Professionals Guide to Work, and how to make it work for you. Listen for
0:13.8	free wherever you get your podcasts. Just search New Here. See you there!
0:30.0	Welcome to the HBR idea cast from Harvard Business Review. I'm Alison Beard. If the 20th
0:49.7	century was all about operational efficiency in businesses, the 21st century is all about
0:54.2	organizational change. And how do new initiatives, products, and services, strategies, or business
0:59.5	models advance through project work? It's what our guest today calls the project economy, and
1:04.9	it's estimated to generate $20 trillion in economic activity and employ 88 million people in project
1:11.3	management related roles by 2027. That's across every industry and size of company in every part
1:17.5	of the world. And yet, research indicates that only 35% of projects are successful. At this
1:23.9	increasingly critical business function, most of us are doing a pretty terrible job. So how do we
1:29.1	get better at it going forward? Antonio Nieto Rodriguez is the former chairman of the project
1:34.6	management institute, founder of Projects and Co, and the author of the HBR project management
1:40.0	handbook. He's here to talk about emerging best practices for companies and the people in
1:44.7	them. Antonio, welcome. Thank you, Alison. It's a pleasure to be here.
1:52.4	Project management seems like a clear idea, but how do you define it and think about it in
1:59.0	a way that might be different than what people assume? Well, I think one of the challenges with
2:05.2	project management that I face personally in my career is that as soon as you talk project management,
2:11.7	senior executives and people who are not experts in project management, they think, oh, this is
2:17.1	something very technical, very tactical, is nothing for me. So I've been facing that kind of
2:23.7	discontent or this interesting project management for 25 years. So for me, I want to move out from
2:30.6	that project management term and move it up into projects and we all do projects. And for me,
	...

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