Articles

Are You Willing and Ready to Embrace AI?

When it comes to artificial intelligence (AI), project leaders should ask themselves two key questions. First: Are my organization and I willing to adopt AI-inspired tools as part of the ordinary course of doing business, particularly in project management? This question will give you a sense of your organization’s appetite for adopting machine learning (ML)–inspired technology. The second—and, in fact, the more critical question—is: Are my organization and I ready to take this important leap forward? This question will give you a sense of how quickly you can identify and apply AI to projects.

Leading Projects in an AI-Powered World

Technology has begun to transform how organizations deliver projects, and rapid change lies ahead. What role will leaders play when AI is deployed in project management?

While AI is not yet a standard tool in the world of projects and project management, there is no doubt that it will disrupt this discipline, and probably faster than we expect. The prospect of that transformation seems almost incredible: in most organizations the tools used to manage projects remain relatively basic compared to the sophisticated digital technology being deployed in other parts of business. Most projects are still managed with Microsoft Office tools, such as Excel and PowerPoint. Can you imagine running your business and operations with spreadsheets? Well, that reflects how little technology has evolved in project management.

How AI Will Transform Project Management

Only 35% of projects today are completed successfully. One reason for this disappointing rate is the low level of maturity of technologies available for project management. This is about to change. Researchers, startups, and innovating organizations, are beginning to apply AI, machine learning, and other advanced technologies to project management, and by 2030 the field will undergo major shifts. Technology will soon improve project selection and prioritization, monitor progress, speed up reporting, and facilitate testing. Project managers, aided by virtual project assistants, will find their roles more focused on coaching and stakeholder management than on administration and manual tasks. The author show how organizations that want to reap the benefits of project management technologies should begin today by gathering and cleaning project data, preparing their people, and dedicating the resources necessary to drive this transformation.

Marketing is killing ESG. Here’s how we can save it.

Businesses are scrambling to signal compliance with ESG (environmental, social, and governance principles). However, as ESG entrenched itself in the mainstream, it lost much of its original meaning and impact and became more of a marketing tool. Ricardo Vargas writes that the problem may lie in the decoupling of the ‘social’ and ‘governance’ components from ‘environmental’ concerns. He uses the example of a project to rebuild homes in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake to show how all three ESG components can work together. 

Beyond Resilience: Leaders Must Urgently Embrace Antifragility

In 1968, the government of the Manitoba— a medium-sized province located at the geographic center of Canada—completed what was, at that time, one of the great engineering marvels of the developed world: the Red River Floodway.

The floodway is a 47-kilometer-long earthen channel used to divert surging water from the notoriously flood-prone Red River around the City of Winnipeg (Manitoba’s capital). The idea for the channel was first proposed by a government commission following the devastating flood of 1950 that completely submerged Winnipeg, requiring more than 100,000 people to be evacuated and causing damage that would amount to, in 2022 dollars, more than CA$11 billion. Even though the benefits were many, most political leaders shied away from the project. Most, but not all.

How Human Capital Makes or Breaks Digital Innovation

The success of digital transformation in organisations depends on a combination of technology and people. However, many leaders ignore the role of human capital in their plans. Ricardo Viana Vargas writes that when digital transformation efforts fail, it is often due to the mismanagement of people.

Barriers and Challenges of Smart Buildings Projects in the Context of Construction 4.0

The development and use of technologies, tools, and methods based on integrated and comprehensive approaches have been fundamental for integrating smart buildings with the urban environment and for a smarter and more sustainable built environment. In an Industry 4.0 context, barriers associated with innovation and technology that hamper smart building projects still coexist with structural barriers. In this work, we identify the main barriers to developing smart building projects based on extensive and detailed bibliographic research and on the view of professionals with experience in the subject. The results showed that 23 barriers identified in the literature were considered important by the survey respondents, of which five were considered the most important.

Transformation Is Personal

Transformation is personal. Always. Think about it. Organizational change is brought about one individual at a time. A change of behavior or a change of outlook by one individual in an organization is the cellular basis of achieving transformation. Individual transformation of employees is (at least) as important as any organizational transformation. Without it, the chances of any transformation succeeding are low. Without it, the chances of an organization continuing to evolve and respond to new changes are almost non-existent.

Blockchain Is Changing How Companies Can Engage with Customers

Disruptive technologies like blockchain and artificial intelligence are powerful catalysts for change — they can change not just how a company works, but what it’s possible for it to do. Consider the case of Interac Corp., Canada’s largest digital payments company, which partnered with an energy company to change consumer habits through a blockchain-powered incentive program that saved the energy company money and created more efficiency throughout the system. This case offers a few lessons for leaders: 1) tech like blockchain can transform sectors, 2) collaboration is an efficient way to experiment, 3) enterprise-wide engagement builds momentum for innovation, and 4) social purpose is a powerful driver of change.