Episode transcript The transcript is generated automatically by Podscribe, Sonix, Otter and other electronic transcription services.
Hello everyone. Welcome to the 5 Minutes podcast. Recently, someone asked for advice on how people foresee the main trends. And I'm talking not about the trends in terms of just project management, but the global trends and how do we foresee what is happening in the marketplace in order to understand what would be the impact on our project, in our teams, in our organization? And I told him that I use the concept of PESTLE - P, E, S, T, L, E, and this is an acronym. Some of them they call past, and some of them they call Pasto. But I will stick to the traditional one that is special. And P stands for political E for economic S, for societal T, for technological L, legal, and the last E, environmental. And these acronyms help you to scan the environment. So how do I use this? Usually, I take very big pieces of flip charts, and I invite people to bring, for example, recent news. In the past, it was very easy to do that because I just asked people to bring magazines, magazines, and newspapers, and then people would start removing articles from the newspaper and trying to put on the P, on the E, on the S, on the T, and then at the end, we'll have a wall full of news. But today we don't use paper anymore. We don't use this physical magazine. So what you can do is you can go on the web or highlight or put this in a Post-it note, and then you start with the P, and you try to understand what are the trends in the political environment.
This means election results, what may happen with a new government, and what may change. And one of the key points, and probably the most important advice I want to give to you in this episode, is that please be cautious with your own bias because sometimes you want to put the trend that you want to happen and not the actual trend. For example, let's suppose you want a candidate to win, and then you put the trends that that specific candidate will win. But is this true or not? What is the true reality of that? And this is exactly a way for you to avoid this bias. I don't want you to think about the trends that you like. No, I want you to see what are the actual trends, what is going on, in the political environment, on the e economic recession, not recession growth. You know what would be the trend of cost of shipping, cost of goods, price increase, current valuation or devaluation on the ass societal, what is going on in the society. So poverty, for example, unemployment, violence, conflict, you know, hate. So all of these, and you may ask me, Ricardo, but you know, what is the relationship between, for example, the increase of hate speech and my project? It depends because maybe your project will release a product that aims, for example, to fulfill something. And directly or indirectly, that new product could be perceived by one group as something that they strongly identify and automatically, the other group will strongly contest that.
So we can see this easily in the way people use symbols, and the type of shirt people use. And imagine that you are a manufacturer of shirts, and it's not your business to go on the political discussion. It's like, for example, the COVID mask. Covid masks in many countries have become a symbol of a political view and not something that is a matter of public health. So these are the social and you need because maybe you are a producer of face masks, and these may affect your business dramatically. The other one is technology. So technology, which are the trends in technology will you be disrupted by the technology, or will you be the disruptor? Another one is legal. What is the legal context? What is happening in terms of approval of new laws changes in the current laws because some of the laws may just block your ability. So imagine, for example, that you are building a new airport, and suddenly, there is a law that does not allow, for example, planes to land from a region that will become, for example, a natural reserve. And then suddenly, your project is in a deep risk. So this is ours. Legal aspects related to labor. Labor costs the way you handle people. Global shipping, for example, loss on COVID that block, for example, products from being shipped to different countries. And last but not least, environmental. So all the news and the trends in terms of environment, consumption of materials, waste, environmental responsibility, climate change, and at the end, what is important in this puzzle is that I'm not saying that one thing affects just the P or the E or the S know, for example, the war in Ukraine, the war in Ukraine create a massive trend in the political environment, a massive economic shift, a change in the behavior of our society, mainly in Europe and the use of technology.
Recently, the first lady of Ukraine was at the Web Summit in Portugal, and she was talking about technological terrorism. So just for you to understand. So these are trends, and all of them came suddenly with the awakening of the war in Ukraine. So one event affects the political, economic, societal, technological, legal, and environmental. So all of that is great, and this acronym helps you not to frame just on the economic side or the social side, but you have a far more holistic way to understand what the trends are, what may be risks for my project and how I should handle them. So it's a very simple process with very complex content. Think always about that. Let's make sure that by managing projects and by leading projects, we are not only thinking about our own belly button, but we are thinking about the whole environment that surrounds us and our projects. Think always about that. I hope you enjoy this podcast, and I will see you next week with another 5 Minutes podcast.
