Retrospective of 2009

In this podcast Ricardo makes a retrospective of project management in the world in 2009. He presented the 5 highlights of the year in project, including Portfolio Management, Crisis Management and the government participation and bailout to projects.

Download (8 MB)

Episode transcript

The transcript is generated automatically by Podscribe, Sonix, Otter and other electronic transcription services.

Hello everybody welcome to the five minutes. Bam, CAS today, a very special Podcast where I talk about the Retrospective of 2009. So I'm trying to return back to January, 2009 in try to understand what happened in the word and also in Brazil this year, that changed project management. So does year was a very, very different, I don't like to use the word strange, but some kind of unexpected ear because in January, everybody so afraid, bleakly afraid about the Crisis and the buy in the beginning of the years.

So everybody canceling projects, delaying products and buy to meet off this year. And at the end we are going now we are going now that we can see maybe alight in the end of this very dark toenail. So it's an opportunity for us to see what is going on in the market. I try not to others, five topics. Hear that for me, where a remarkable in the zone we're about project management. The first one is project cancellations.

And the later this year at, at the beginning of the year, a lot of companies, the lane projects, canceling projects and thinking, Oh, we need to cancel cut costs, cut costs and the layoffs. And so people losing their jobs and not only in project management, but in all fields. So the very pessimist approach, and this was a landmark by the beginning of the year, because 2007 and 2008, what's crazy, completely crazy about knew projects.

We need to do what you need to do more, more, more. We need to start one to 10 or 11, a hundred projects. And now everybody, Nope, we need to cancel. And it's so interesting because most of the patients, you know, that that were cancelled our projects, a loose term projects, right? Nine years, seven years, five years. And so interesting how the people make decisions. Only looking in the very short term in a very short term, because in nine years in a project like an oil refinery, like an oil platform, like an airport, they need to look 10 years ahead.

And in 10 years, this will not be the last crisis that will face. For sure. We'll have another one in two years on not a one in five years. And so as a project, manager's, we need to be prepared to educate people in a longterm perspective and also to adapt ourselves into adapt to, or project to different circumstances. This second topic that I wanted to share with you is how strong was the government support?

Why saying this? Because 2000 in seven and 2008, nobody was asking for government support. Nobody say, go ahead and please go out, go out. I don't stay here. I went to be free. I wanted to address and to do my projects on my way. And now the government, they are bagging for government support. We started this look on this, into the financial aspect and financial sector bank, et cetera.

But now in major construction companies, they are asking or government support us. So we can see and a very strong government participation. And this is not only in us or Europe, it's all over the word. We can see this, we can see the government supporting and playing a key role in the Zaire to sustain the economic activity. The third aspect is the improvement in portfolio management.

This is much more related to my own business. I work very hard this year to address portfolio management, because even the company's facing challenges, they need to know how and what projects to cut and this Mintz improvement in portfolio management to sell portfolio management strategy and approach in 2007 and eight was very, very hard.

Why? Because everything was viable, everything, everything, because the market was so crazy at that time that there is no risk assessment note, just do, just do that. And now what we can see a much more careful approach. I know much more careful selection of product. I saw great improvement in the requests for portfolio management. The forth one is the res of crisis management, not res of crisis, but Crisis, Management people with our ability to handle and manage Crisis.

And I you like to share with you a coat about that? It's a problem solving project manager, and this was the King does year. The problem solve in a project manager, its not a project manager by the book, but someone that can handle the problem and solve the problem using creativity, innovation, human resource ability, leadership skills too, the problem or not work on the perfect environment, but working in a Crisis environment.

And last but not least sustainability is, was the topic that I heard most of the times in all my presentations and all my, the Congress that I attended and sustainability. And we saw a lot of speech on that. But by the end of this year was really a shame what's happening in Denmark. And this is only one in my personal opinion about this topic. I'm talking only on myself, a thought that what happened in Denmark was a shame.

The world lost a great opportunity to introduce the topic of sustainability in all business activities. And now may be looked into the future. It's to be a challenge. If 106 government leaders can not reach a consensus. It's very hard to see who else can do that. And this will address a very important topic for us as project managers and project practitioners.

It's how we will innovate in the future to address again the stock because this stuff is so critical for everybody. So everybody thinking about sustainability, about how we can introduce sustainability in our projects and what happened last week was really shame will miss a great opportunity. And maybe it will take one, two, three, four, five years to recover an address. This is again, so this where the five top, because in my mind that I wanted to share with you think about 2009 and thinking about 2010, I am expecting a good to great 2010.

I'm very optimist. I think that this up and down our part of our professional life and I expect it a very good announce of very challenging 2010, but this will be the topic of next week. I wish all of you Merry Christmas and next week I will have the opportunity with all of You very happy. In wonderful new year for all of you see you next week with another five minutes BM Podcast bye.

Menu

Resources & Insights

Products & Services

More Resources & Insights

Ricardo Vargas

Podcasts

Retrospective of 2009

Search in Podcasts

Latest podcast episodes

Book recommendations