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Hello everyone. Here is and this is the 5 Minutes Podcast. And this is the last episode of 2025. And I want to close the year by looking in what very few people are talking about and not obvious trends, but silent shifts that will strongly impact our projects in the next year. And I will share five insights that deserve our immediate reflection and attention. The first insight is the collapse of the project as an isolated unit. In 2026, projects will stop being islands. They become temporary nodes inside a continuous value flow of the company. Less clear beginnings and endings and more integration, recombination and reuse. Project managers will need to think less about isolated deliveries and more about systemic contribution. The second insight is radical team fragmentation. I'm not talking here about remote work. I'm talking about fluid work. People, suppliers, freelancers, AI agents and partners will be constantly joining and leaving your projects. Teams may never meet in person. Coordinating these ecosystems will be more important, pay attention on that than controlling tasks because it will be so complex. This dynamic of people, suppliers, AI coming and leaving. So people will work on the phase of the project and will dismiss and they will never meet other people inside. So the ability of the project manager to coordinate this ecosystem is becoming imperative. The third insight I want to give to provide to all of you is a silent transfer of authority. Decisions are moving. Some decisions are moving upwards to boards. Some decisions are moving to AI algorithms. Some decisions are moving downwards to the edges of the teams. So the project managers stop being the central decision maker and it becomes the designer of the space where decisions happen. So it's like, you know, the master of ceremony of a big concert that is happening. The fourth insight I want to share with you is the rise of invisible risks. I'm not talking here about technical risks. I'm not talking here about financial risks. I'm talking about cognitive risks. Wrong mental models, unchallenged assumptions overconfidence in automatically generated answers, especially by AI. So in 2026, failing fast may mean failing at scale. And the fifth and most uncomfortable insight is the silent obsolescence of the operational project manager. And not because there is less work. Projects are soaring and happening everywhere, but because there is too much automation. Those who will remain relevant are those who are better at asking questions. Those who connect strategy, ethics, and impact those who take responsibility in an ambiguous environment. If 2025 was the year of pressure, as I said last week, 2026 would be the year of repositioning. Repositioning how we think about projects, repositioning how we exercise leadership. Repositioning our own professional role. So close in 2025 by looking at 2026 is an invitation to courage. Courage to unlearn and to assume new responsibilities. I cannot finish this podcast without wishing you a fantastic 2026 with more relevant projects and a real and true, and meaningful impact. I hope you enjoyed this episode, and I wish you a fantastic 2026 for you and your loved ones. See you next year or next week with another 5 Minutes Podcast. See you!
