Latest / The Innovation Show / Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez — Powered by Projects and the Project-Driven Organization

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Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez — Powered by Projects and the Project-Driven Organization · The Innovation Show

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  If you're a leader, I think people are looking for you in a different
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  way than they did in the past.
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  So don't be afraid.
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  Move out of the comfort zone.
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  Spend more time on the transformation space.
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  The legacy that you're going to leave is based on the
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  changes that you're making now.
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  It's not what you did in the past, and that means spending time on
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  transformation, building that culture where everything works as co-creation.
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  The teams are in power, and you're somebody that orchestrates, and, and
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  like you said, take decisions, but let the team also take most of them.
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  And if you're in a transformation team or transformation lead, step up, please.
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  I think you have the right to ask.
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  You have the right to, to, to take the things that you need for
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  your project to be successful.
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  You all know why projects fail.
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  You all know why transformation… Don't let failure happen again and
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  again because you are afraid of speaking up and asking what you need.
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  It will make a huge difference.
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  And last one, Aidan, think people first, even in projects.
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  When you have a team, and we know what's the difference between a group of
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  people and a team of committed people.
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  Spend the time, create that team, and things will go just
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  flying, and people will love you.
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  You can win a copy of today's book with thanks to our sponsor Kyndryl, who runs
• 1:18
  and reimagines the technology systems that drive advantage for the world's
• 1:22
  leading businesses with a unique blend of AI-powered consulting built on
• 1:26
  unmatched managed service capability.
• 1:29
  Kyndryl helps leaders harness the power of technology for smarter
• 1:32
  decisions, faster innovation, and a lasting competitive edge.
• 1:36
  You can find Kyndryl at KYNDRYL, Kyndryl.com
• 1:40
  what if most project failures were not really about project management at all?
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  In fact, some of the biggest reasons projects fail can't be traced to missed
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  deadlines or flawed Gantt charts.
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  They stem from something much more profound, from leadership blind
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  spots and organizational structures that were never designed to support
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  a world powered by projects.
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  that's what drove today's guest in 2019 to introduce a more
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  disruptive shift, the concept he coined called the project economy.
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  he reimagines organizations and their structures through the lens of projects
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  and emphasizes that projects have become the primary engine of value creation.
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  Each of us, regardless of role or title, is a project manager.
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  as everyone has become a project manager, whether they know it or not,
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  every organization is now what he calls a project-driven organization.
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  just don't behave like one, and that's what today's book is about.
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  project economy calls for a new kind of leadership and a new c-
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  organizational model that places projects at the core, one he calls
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  project-driven organizations, PDOs.
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  It represents the next evolution of agile organization, a 20-year-old concept
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  while , valuable at the time, is no longer sufficient for the scale and complexity
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  of transformation required today.
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  The project-driven model brings together structure, leadership, and
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  culture to enable speed, clarity, and sustained value creation.
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  It is a pleasure to welcome the author of Powered By Projects,
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  Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez.
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  Welcome to the show.
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  Thank you, Aidan.
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  A pleasure.
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  Thank you for inviting me
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  It's a pleasure to have you, man, and I got the name right as well.
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  I nailed it.
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  Yes.
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  Well done.
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  Well done
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  good project management man.
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  I, I read a, I read a useful book on it recently, I must tell you about it.
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  Thank you
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  it before we came on air, and I'll give him a shout-out.
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  A brilliant guy I know, a regular listener to the show.
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  He's one of the leadership team of Mars, and he works in innovation.
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  Big shout-out to you, Rainer.
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  And I was telling him about this book.
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  I was, like, going, "Hey, man, I'm reading this book.
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  I gotta send you a copy." And I told him a little about it and he goes, "Oh, yeah,
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  I read a great Harvard Business Review about this idea of the project economy."
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  I was like, "That's Antonio." Your work is getting out there,
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  Thank you.
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  Thank you
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  What I really loved about the book was this, that I read
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  a lot of books, as you know,
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  Yeah
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  I'd never read about transformation or culture, organizational structure,
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  through the lens of project management,
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  Mm-hmm.
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  And that's what re- was so interesting, was to go, ah,
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  if I actually put it this way.
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  But my own experience, I wanted to share this with you.
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  When I retired from professional sport, I went into digital transformation,
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  although I didn't call it that then.
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  Mm-hmm.
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  I pretty soon realized that my job was project management, and I asked
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  the leadership team would they support me to do a Prince2 course.
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  Wow
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  uh, and they, they wouldn't fund it.
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  It was
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  No.
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  Grand or something.
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  And
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  Yeah.
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  Yeah
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  I was like, "I probably cost us thousands of euro
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  Yes
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  being terrible project manager," and they wouldn't fund it.
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  But I just thought maybe w- we'd, we'd share this
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  It's,
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  the lens of what you say reimagining organizations to be projectdriven
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  cultures Maybe we'll open up and give our audience that lens and then we'll
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  go as deep as we can because you very kindly joined us from your hotel lobby
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  But let's get started with that Antonio
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  Thank you, Aidan.
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  So yes, I think the, the core, the essence of my work has been around how
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  can we make a topic which is not easy.
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  When you read the books, when you get a PRINCE2, when you get a PMP, they're
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  looking for very technical skills.
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  Uh it's like everybody will need to ri- uh, build a bridge, right?
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  Or a nuclear plant, and, and that's not why we do projects right now.
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  It's, it's for transform, for introducing new technology, and I found that there
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  was a big disconnect between what projects in reality were with the
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  tools and methodologies and books.
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  And that was my goal, just to simplify, to make everybody a good project manager,
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  to make people a- appreciate projects.
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  Because I believe, and I think i- is what you're doing in your
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  show, Aidan, is projects is like the nicest way to work, right?
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  Because you work with people.
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  You, you have challenges.
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  Like you've done sports, right?
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  I've seen your … So when the team plays, the, there's the satisfaction that you
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  get from that, it's just unbelievable, and you get that when you do good projects.
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  Unfortunately, like it happened to you, you cannot imagine how
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  many people do projects without even knowing the basics, right?
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  It's imagine you ride cars and nobody has taught you how to ride cars.
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  It's chaos, and this is how most companies are doing today.
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  It's just a chaos.
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  It's just everywhere projects, and there's no proper way to, to manage them.
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  So it's a w- great way to start, uh, one of my passion topics.
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  Which is quite obvious man Quite
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  Yeah.
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  But before we go any further let's not assume people know what we mean
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  by projects because you do give a definit definition of projects and
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  why they hold the key to our future
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  Mm-hmm.
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  Yes.
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  So the, there's always the standard definition by, by Prince or PMI.
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  It's like there's something that you're changing, you're solving a big problem,
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  you're adding new technology, and, and there's always a deadline, right?
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  There's a limited budget, there's limited resources, and there's a
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  deadline, and that's kind of the standard definition, which is fair.
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  It's okay.
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  But for me, the more motivational view of projects is your projects are your
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  future as an individual, as a family m- member, as a, your own business,
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  working for a big company, working for the region, for the countries.
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  Every project represents a building block on the future, right?
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  So there's some projects, uh, which are bigger building blocks,
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  some other smaller, but everything builds up to create your future,
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  and I think that's so exciting.
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  I have to tell you honestly, that was not my invention.
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  It came from, Harvard Business Review,, chief editor Adi Ignatius, who wrote
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  about projects and say, "Projects are your future." Uh, but there's nothing
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  more beautiful than working on the future
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  You share so many stories throughout the book
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  Mm-hmm.
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  case studies of companies that have done well companies that have done not so well
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  But let's share the relatively recent 2022 case of the global professional
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  services giant EY Ernst Young who set out to execute a sweeping corporate
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  transformation splitting the consulting arm from the audit division and trying
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  to create two separate firms I'd love you to share this both the rationale behind
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  why they did it and then what happened what what was called Project Everest
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  and turned out to be quite like Everest
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  Yes.
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  Well, this is something that, the case illustrates what
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  happens almost everywhere, right?
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  You can have, and I think we have the ability to build good plans now.
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  We, we have the knowledge.
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  There's lots of lessons learned.
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  We are people who can develop good plans.
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  We can have a really, , detailed structure.
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  We can have … All the details of the project can be well-defined.
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  The problem is that is that's not enough, and that's what I'm covering
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  in this new book is you need culture.
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  You need alignment with senior leaders.
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  And what happened in this case with Ernst & Young is that the plan was perfect.
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  The execution failed because of the culture and the ego approach to this.
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  People were fighting for their turf, so there was no collaboration.
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  And if there's no collaboration at the top, nothing works at the bottom.
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  So it's a really good case.
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  I love it because it's a company that provides consulting service
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  around execution transformation, but they were not able to talk the talk
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  because of that personal culture, uh, which is not about teamwork.
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  Uh, it's about your own, uh, turf, and, and that created the friction
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  and, and the misalignment and, and the project was a mess, like you said.
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  Like climbing the Everest, and it was a disaster
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  There's another contrasting one So if if EY was cultural this one was
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  structural and this was Nike's digital transformation between 20 and 2024 in
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  the four years following the start of the pandemic the company accelerated
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  its shift from directtoconsumer model So they'd invested heavily in ecommerce
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  digital platforms consumer data analytics What was so tragic about this one was
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  they they looked to be doing everything right They'd put a lot of things in
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  place including the culture but this was structural Maybe you'll share this
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  Yeah, so that's the other case I start in the book as well.
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  So another very successful company with, in this case, like you said, they work
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  on the culture, but they forgot that in order to transform your company, you
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  need to organize yourself differently.
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  That means also shifting roles, shifting responsibilities, shifting the power
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  more to the teams, not in the top.
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  So the governance was a big issue.
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  So in the end, is the other side of the picture, right?
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  Culture is the soft elements.
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  What is the values that you show the leaders, follow, but then the
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  structure is also very important.
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  I always say that, Aidan, today, most of the companies, they're
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  still built for 50 years ago, right?
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  Unless you're a startup or, or you, or me, who have a very flat model
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  and we can't react, most of the established business, they're still very
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  hierarchical, and that's a nightmare.
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  When you were doing probably transformation work, you struggle
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  because we don't share resources.
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  We still work in the same company, but I don't help you because I need to help
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  myself first, and, and it's, it's a mess.
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  So the structure has a big impact on how you share resources, how people,
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  instead of working part-time in your projects, they jump and work full-time,
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  and, and that makes a huge difference.
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  So that's the structural aspects that we often didn't look like them, like you
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  said, we looked at them, but not from a project or transformation angle, and
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  that's what I brought, with this new book.
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  It's interesting that one because many people who listen to this
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  show work in transformation and
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  Yeah
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  and I find those type of people by their very nature are giving are
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  sharing are open to collaboration
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  giving
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  away the credit all those things
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  Yeah
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  there's a line by Demings he said that A bad system will always beat a good person
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  Yes.
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  a and that's what what
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  I love it!
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  There because it feels like you've failed but actually it's that the company
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  failed you it can be the company's culture or structure that failed you
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  Yeah
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  And one of the things that has been recently on the show a lot was the idea
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  of rearchitecture of the organization both physically and mentally because of AI
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  Mm-hmm.
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  Maybe we'd share a little bit about that before we go any further
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  Sure.
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  I think this is pro- I don't know which one is more challenging, uh, Aidan, from
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  what I've seen, where I help companies.
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  I think the culture can be shaped.
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  Uh, I think you just need to have the right people.
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  Uh, but structure is always a bit more challenging.
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  It's, it's letting go the past.
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  It's, it's you might have a team of 40 people, and suddenly they're
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  not your team anymore, and you're part of a bigger group, and you work
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  in, uh, as an orchestrator, which doesn't mean the people, uh, see you
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  up, but see you at the same level.
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  So I think for me, that has been always the most difficult change
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  is, is because it's very visible.
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  You know?
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  It's suddenly the org chart disappears and, and we start working as teams.
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  And, uh, the, the CEO of Bayer, Bill Anderson, when he joined 2024, he,
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  it was one of his biggest bets is, is let's dismantle the hierarchies
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  and all these approval steps, and let's work more as a team.
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  And I'm watching that.
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  Uh, I think it's not easy, but at least he's trying and seriously
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  trying to break down those silos, which is, uh, things from the past.
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  I think they were very useful in the past.
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  They're not m- much needed now.
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  And just a small comment on that.
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  Not the whole company needs to be restructured.
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  I think there's some parts of your business that can still be run
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  like they were run for 100 years.
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  But the transformation piece, the, the … That, those things need to
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  move and work in a different setting
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  Antonio maybe a little word on how AI is accelerating
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  Mm-hmm.
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  Mm-hmm.
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  Well, AI just going to… I, I have a nice slide, which is very shocking.
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  So in, in an organization, a good size or m- middle size, they have two parts,
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  and, and we talk about this before.
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  Ambidexterity, you know, is running your business, your assets, exploiting
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  your assets, , and that's run by people.
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  And then you have the change part, , exploration, the project side.
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  And I think AI and robots too, Aidan, robots are going to be
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  running most of your operations.
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  And we're not talking about finance, and we're not talking about logistic.
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  That's already happening.
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  But core part of your business, sales, marketing, , even finance,
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  you'll see robots who have AI built on them who can do a lot of the things.
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  I work with a big luxury company who… French company, global company.
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  They l- they sell, and part of their core operations is, , hairdressers
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  because they sell shampoo for your hair, and you look beautiful.
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  And then maybe you're us- using them because your hair looks perfect.
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  That's that's AI That's AI
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  So basically, the whole debate with the C-suite is, "Okay, but our, our
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  sales channel is not going to be res- disrupted by AI and robots because
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  people go to a hairdresser, and they like to see people cutting your hair."
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  And I show them a video of a robot who's hairdressing now, and, and it's real.
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  It's not AI.
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  So most of the things that we think will never be touched by AI
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  and robots, they will be, and they will be faster than when we think.
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  So the question to your audience is, if you're doing the same job
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  every day and y- with the same people every day, that job will go.
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  That job will go in, in 12 months.
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  So think about what skills you need to build together with AI to find
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  your potential, to find your new space
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  I think it's such an important thing and there's so many people
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  with their head in the sand
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  Wow
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  whole idea of it's not good enough
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  Yeah
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  but we're like Um yet It's not good enough yet
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  Yes.
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  I
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  Yeah
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  we're scaremongering saying that but it's uh probably because we're
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  a little bit closer to it or we see
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  Yes
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  different a brilliant l line you write here and I'd love to share this and this
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  is the type of taste of the writing in the book You write that Organizations
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  today face challenges that agile frameworks were never designed to address
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  Yeah
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  entire industries are being redefined overnight AI and advanced analytics are
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  collapsing decision cycles Customers and employees expect personalized realtime
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  experience In this new context PDOs project design organizations represent
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  the next logical evolution rearchitecting the business itself around dynamic
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  empowered crossfunctional project teams I thought it would be really
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  useful to take our audience on a quick journey of how we got to where we are
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  Mm-hmm.
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  a table from the book if it's okay to
• 18:16
  Sure, sure.
• 18:16
  You can share,
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  And maybe you could talk to that and and we'll have a bit of empathy for the
• 18:21
  people who are only listening to us Again I as I always remind our guests most
• 18:25
  people are listeners rather than viewers
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  on
• 18:27
  YouTube So I'm just gonna share this on the screen Antonio
• 18:31
  Okay, so here, this is, one of the most important tables in the book
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  and, and it shows the evolution of the organizational concept.
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  So we have been very much focused on operation driven
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  for the last century or more.
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  Then we had this agile movement, which I think was great.
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  It just really helped to, to move faster, especially at the team level.
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  But we noticed that this was stagnating, so still the number of
• 19:00
  transformation failing was huge, even if they were using agile.
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  Then that's where I thought of about this concept project driven, where
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  put-- projects are at the front, right?
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  So this is, is really when you have to decide, do I run the operations
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  or do I spend more time on projects?
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  You spend the time on the projects.
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  That you create the value for the future.
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  So the table is quite e-extensive, but maybe just cover a couple of lines here.
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  So the focus was before efficiency, stability and control, and we leave that.
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  I think you leave that, Aidan.
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  I leave that when I was at corporates, where the focus is efficiency,
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  stability and the managers are there to control you, that the things get done.
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  Agile introduced speed and flexibility at team level, so at the
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  bottom, nothing changed at the top.
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  And this is really on, on project driven is where enterprise-wide
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  transformation drive the project.
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  So this is really about constant transformation.
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  You get your best people to do transformation work.
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  You have the best leaders supporting those transformations,
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  so the projects become the core.
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  How do you create value?
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  Operations driven was about cost.
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  So this is all driven by finance people, cost optimization, productivity
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  gains and operational leverage.
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  That was the past.
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  Agile, what was the value there?
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  Faster time to market, iterative customer value delivery and improved
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  responsiveness What happens now when you look at the project driven organization
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  design, this is about strategic execution and innovation at scale, right?
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  And dynamic resource allocation.
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  This is one of the bigger challenge item we can take later is why people are afraid
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  to jump into a transformation full-time.
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  Why most of the people prefer to stay in operations and spend two
• 20:57
  days a week in a project or … This is not happening project driven.
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  You can jump in a project for nine months and then you'll
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  get something else afterwards.
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  There's, there's a bit of uncertainty, but the company guarantees that
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  when the projects are over, you keep focusing on project work.
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  Maybe just the last part I want to cover is the culture.
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  So how was the culture for operations driven?
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  Standardization and risk aversion.
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  And, and you talk about innovation, I think this is a killer
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  that we were talking earlier.
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  Most of the projects today, they have incremental improvement ideas,
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  which is, is, is appalling for me.
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  So that was the past.
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  If you take a risk and you fail, it's your fault and you might get fired.
• 21:43
  Brilliant job man Brilliant job And I just
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  Yes
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  again thank you I know you're traveling with your family and you've kindly
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  taken time out of your schedule
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  Finally.
• 21:51
  I I Yeah And then I come along man You well you're looking
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  good You're looking relaxed as
• 21:56
  you
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  and it's not AI But we've heard of the term change fatigue and for me the that
• 22:04
  term always subtly suggests that people are the problem that th they've had
• 22:09
  enough or they're resisting the change in some way But there was a key point you.
• 22:13
  made in the book that points to a much more widespread issue You say
• 22:18
  Senior leaders frequently initiate too many projects and transformations
• 22:23
  simultaneously they strain the resources and cause critical initiatives
• 22:28
  to compete for limited attention funding and personnel When every
• 22:31
  project is a priority none truly is
• 22:34
  Yeah
• 22:35
  focus and fragmented efforts I thought that was a key thing
• 22:39
  that is rarely sh said out loud
• 22:42
  Yes
• 22:43
  the the other thing you see I don't know if you see this yourself Antonio is the
• 22:47
  leadership team may be great at delegating but they delegate down And people in the
• 22:52
  Yeah.
• 22:53
  are drowning cause
• 22:54
  Yeah.
• 22:54
  We're getting delegated And and there's there may be a lack of psychological
• 22:58
  safety where they can push back and kinda go I got too much on my plate here
• 23:01
  Yeah
• 23:02
  like you're failing And then if there's a competing job market
• 23:06
  you're afraid to say anything
• 23:08
  Exactly.
• 23:09
  I think that's, that's the bigger issue when, when you look at companies and,
• 23:13
  and I, I have a funny way to look at this, uh, which is part of my workshop,
• 23:18
  uh, Aidan, is I, I ask the leadership team is, "On average, how often do you
• 23:23
  launch new initiatives and projects in, in your company?" And the leadership teams,
• 23:28
  they think that that's their job, right?
• 23:30
  Is we're strong, we take risks, we are entrepreneur, so we launch
• 23:34
  one new project every four weeks.
• 23:36
  We have like just … We're a machine of launch.
• 23:39
  But so that's great, and I say, "How often do you finish or kill projects?"
• 23:44
  And they look at each other and they say, "When was the last time we
• 23:47
  finished the la- Paul, you remember?"
• 23:49
  "No, I don't remember." So if you just as a leader launch more projects
• 23:53
  than you finish, you're a bad leader.
• 23:55
  That, that's it.
• 23:56
  Because your role is not about launching projects, it's about
• 23:59
  finishing them, and then prioritizing.
• 24:02
  Tell your company what are the top three things they need to focus.
• 24:06
  You cannot imagine how frustrating it is to talk to the leadership
• 24:11
  team, to ask them, "What's your top three transformations or initiative?"
• 24:14
  And they cannot answer.
• 24:17
  With that, it's already if the people at the top don't prioritize,
• 24:21
  like you say, they dump all the problems to the people, the middle
• 24:24
  managers and, and they struggle.
• 24:26
  They … This is something that I insist very much on the book.
• 24:30
  A good leader today is the one that says no many times and says, "Focus on
• 24:35
  that and that, and I will be there to support you and remove any blockers."
• 24:40
  That's it.
• 24:40
  And so that's the rule I put in place.
• 24:43
  Uh, next time you launch a new project, before that, say which two or three
• 24:48
  we're going to finish, and that just sends a message to the people saying,
• 24:52
  "Finally, they're doing this job, these people at the top. Finally,
• 24:56
  they earn their money," right?
• 24:58
  Because they tell us where to focus and, and that's so
• 25:01
  And that makes job much more interesting.
• 25:04
  So it, it's just a big issue
• 25:06
  Huge issue.
• 25:07
  And then the other one was that if you think about leadership teams they're
• 25:11
  often really clear on the strategic vision
• 25:15
  Mm-hmm.
• 25:15
  Where the company's going the strategy et cetera But they're not
• 25:19
  clear on telling the rest of the organization and you say that that
• 25:23
  Yeah.
• 25:23
  Can manifest as cl unclear or conflicting objectives insufficient
• 25:27
  sponsorship inadequate support from executive leaders or a lack
• 25:31
  Mm-hmm.
• 25:31
  decisionmaking or
• 25:32
  Mm-hmm.
• 25:33
  When project teams encounter obstacles So that that idea of becoming
• 25:38
  almost like the the chief vision officer chief s storytelling officer
• 25:43
  mm-hmm.
• 25:43
  Becomes so important But o one of the things I find from working with leaders
• 25:47
  is they think that they're saying it and think that everybody knows about
• 25:52
  it but as you go down the organization the message becomes less and less
• 25:56
  Yes.
• 25:56
  Yeah
• 25:57
  as a as a PDO this is absolutely essential
• 26:02
  It's essential, Aidan, and you, you s- you just said it.
• 26:05
  So my, my only point that I want to stress is in a PDO, one of the most important
• 26:12
  words that we use is co-creation.
• 26:15
  Co-creation means that the people at the top, they don't take
• 26:18
  the, take all the decisions.
• 26:19
  They not, they don't need to be the smartest.
• 26:21
  They don't need to be always right.
• 26:23
  Um, the, the whole thing is co-created and, and, and the projects come
• 26:28
  from below, and the sponsors at the top are the one that prioritize.
• 26:33
  Say, "This is not the right time. This is not a project, but we launch
• 26:36
  an experiment." Most of the AI projects today, they're experiments.
• 26:40
  Why do we call it projects if we don't know where we're going?
• 26:43
  So that just creates a lot of frustration, a lot of waste, and
• 26:47
  then people get just depressed.
• 26:49
  But the co-creation helps you to understand that it's all about the team.
• 26:53
  It's all about the, the ideas win, not the hierarchy wins.
• 26:58
  And when a leader understands, then everything gets easier because you
• 27:04
  have been part of the creation, so you don't need to communicate
• 27:07
  that much because you already were in the process from the beginning.
• 27:11
  And it's so beautiful because they become big, big ambassadors.
• 27:15
  Everybody defends, and the most important, they're proud of what they're
• 27:19
  doing, and they go home and they tell their wives or husbands, "Listen, I'm
• 27:24
  doing this, and I just feel so good."
• 27:27
  love that I I
• 27:28
  Mm-hmm.
• 27:28
  So important that every single person feels they're contributing
• 27:31
  towards that bigger picture
• 27:33
  Mm.
• 27:33
  just coming and doing tasks every day
• 27:35
  Yeah.
• 27:36
  achieving something And I
• 27:37
  Yeah
• 27:37
  remind our audience I have a copy of this beautiful book up for grabs if
• 27:41
  you're just a member of our Substack you will be in a win with a chance of
• 27:45
  just winning it So a brilliant book and I wanted to just point out something
• 27:50
  I thought this was so so interesting Many of us experienced this the great
• 27:54
  resignation that followed COVID19
• 27:56
  Mm-hmm.
• 27:57
  And what was so interesting was what you said that it was also due to a
• 28:02
  shift towards projectbased work because
• 28:05
  Mm-hmm.
• 28:05
  Now all of a sudden we were removed from each other and you had to be a project
• 28:09
  manager And according to a organizational strategist a guy called Michael Mankins
• 28:15
  the phenomenon was not solely a result of the pandemic but rather a continuation
• 28:19
  of a trend driven by factors such as reshuffling of the work stack But it
• 28:24
  this was all just exasperated by the impact of COVID on on working dynamics
• 28:30
  I thought that was interesting and maybe you'd share a little bit about that
• 28:33
  Well, I think there were… The, we saw with the COVID, we saw the good
• 28:37
  thing because, uh, w- when COVID just exploded, I would say almost all
• 28:45
  organizations that survived became PDOs.
• 28:48
  They, they, they, they ruthlessly prioritized.
• 28:52
  They stopped projects, like 80, 90% of the projects, because they had to focus.
• 28:57
  So the focus was becoming digital, becoming online, let people work
• 29:01
  virtually, and things that would…
• 29:03
  I co- I work with business schools.
• 29:05
  It, they had all online learning for six years.
• 29:09
  They didn't do it.
• 29:10
  They did it in a couple of weeks.
• 29:11
  Let that happen with every… Because you put focus, you get the best people,
• 29:16
  leaders know what to do, they're there.
• 29:18
  So we saw how by becoming PDOs, you really went through a, the ma-
• 29:24
  biggest crisis ever in the world, and you survived with the business.
• 29:28
  But then everything, when everything settled, companies felt like, "Oh,
• 29:34
  we need to do so many things now.
• 29:35
  We need to launch.
• 29:36
  We need… Let's take the projects that we killed.
• 29:38
  Let's bring them.
• 29:39
  Let's put more." And there's nothing worse for someone to be working
• 29:44
  in five, six, seven projects.
• 29:46
  I think we all love to work on one or two maybe.
• 29:49
  But what happened during the great resignation, there were so many projects
• 29:53
  launched, and people just got burned out.
• 29:56
  They, they, there was no focus.
• 29:58
  They didn't know where to put their efforts, and you know, you had a
• 30:02
  deadline every week, and it was pressure.
• 30:05
  And so that's, I think, what I say is the, the, the COVID show was the
• 30:09
  best and the worst of these models
• 30:12
  Antonio one of the great examples you give so you give many in the book So
• 30:16
  Yeah
• 30:17
  about William Gore and so on We talk about Haier But you talk about and you
• 30:22
  mention them there Bill Anderson's current transformation as at Bayer The reason
• 30:26
  I wanted to just share this upfront is because I wanted to then show the
• 30:30
  blueprint that you provide in the book as
• 30:32
  Hmm
• 30:32
  But let's lead with a good example and then I'll show the blueprint on
• 30:36
  screen and again we'll have a bit of empathy for those just listening
• 30:40
  So yes, I think the, the, my, the book is focused on, on the Haier company.
• 30:46
  So eight-- I have eight pillars in the roadmap that you're going
• 30:51
  to share, the, the blueprint, and Haier showed me that you can do them
• 30:56
  all, and you can do them all right.
• 30:59
  And then Bayern is the company that's kind of very emblematic,
• 31:05
  who's trying to go through this.
• 31:06
  So they, they're doing severe changes, through changes on
• 31:11
  their operating model, on their organizational structure to become PDO.
• 31:17
  And you can see that here on the slide.
• 31:19
  So back to the three areas that I cover all the time is the organizational aspects
• 31:25
  with its about the culture, is allowing for failing, thinking exponential,
• 31:31
  working co-creation, organization, flatter, less hierarchy, and governance.
• 31:37
  Governance is about how do we govern?
• 31:39
  Where are the decisions taken?
• 31:41
  Ninety percent of the decisions are taken at the senior level
• 31:45
  or at the project level, right?
• 31:47
  If, if that's the case, you go slow.
• 31:49
  So I'm saying ninety percent of the decisions, the
• 31:52
  transformation team can do that.
• 31:54
  Can you take a decision of five million dollars today without any approvals?
• 31:59
  That is PDO.
• 32:00
  Then you have the leadership.
• 32:02
  I think that's, Aidan, where we need to work a lot, is these people
• 32:06
  have to change the way they work.
• 32:09
  They love to be in their comfort zone, which is running the business.
• 32:13
  That's the exploitation of the assets.
• 32:16
  We need them on the other side.
• 32:18
  The business can run by itself.
• 32:19
  We need to have them spending more time, sponsorship, prioritizing, and so on.
• 32:26
  The other aspect is human resources.
• 32:28
  How can we get a more fluent resources that you move to there full-time, and then
• 32:34
  you move to the other side full-time, but we don't want people working part-time.
• 32:38
  How come a company I work for, fifty thousand employees, they cannot
• 32:42
  give me twenty people full-time for a strategic initiative?
• 32:46
  Why everybody's part-time?
• 32:48
  And the last part is value creation.
• 32:50
  We'll keep creating value through operations for sure, but we'll need to
• 32:54
  create more value through big projects, uh, big bets, innovation that you do
• 32:59
  so well, Aidan, helping companies.
• 33:02
  What are those big bets?
• 33:04
  Those are you crazy projects.
• 33:06
  I call them are you crazy because there's…
• 33:08
  I don't know, Aidan, you're an expert on this, but for me, there's no
• 33:11
  better compliment to an idea that you want to launch and somebody
• 33:16
  says, "Are you crazy?" Those are the projects you need to bet, right?
• 33:20
  So that's the last part.
• 33:22
  That's the eighth pillar about value creation.
• 33:26
  Brilliant easy easy to do
• 33:27
  Yeah.
• 33:29
  But but I think you know one of the things when you read this book is you
• 33:32
  realize that i a nonnegotiable this
• 33:36
  Yeah.
• 33:37
  the
• 33:38
  Yeah, I love it
• 33:38
  and I get I mean I get it it
• 33:41
  if you're if you're a leader of an organization you're close
• 33:43
  to retirement you're like going Oh boy do I really wanna go
• 33:47
  Mm-hmm.
• 33:47
  Mm-hmm.
• 33:48
  But it's a legacy uh like you could leave and
• 33:52
  Yeah.
• 33:52
  Yeah
• 33:52
  rather than just land the plane gently into your retirement why why not go
• 33:56
  Yeah
• 33:57
  bang and create something amazing But let's dive into reimagining organizations
• 34:02
  and reimagining the project di driven culture or re introducing it in
• 34:07
  the first place not reimagining it
• 34:09
  Yeah
• 34:09
  you say here Better project management alone is not enough Often the missing
• 34:14
  piece is not the execution it's the ecosystem And value is lost not in the
• 34:19
  delivery process but in how organizations prioritize sponsor adapt and embed
• 34:23
  projects into their strategic core These are not project management problems they
• 34:28
  are leadership and organizational design projects You alluded to this earlier on
• 34:34
  which is the habit of stopping projects because this is such an important part of
• 34:39
  the book but is so rare in organizations to properly stop underperforming or
• 34:45
  misaligned projects because that looks bad And you know it reminded me of the
• 34:50
  old idea of the Toyota assembly line where anybody can stop the assembly line
• 34:56
  Yeah
• 34:57
  thought about how a hire can do this in the organization
• 35:00
  Exactly
• 35:01
  it so soon They they do it so so soon and so regularly I thought
• 35:05
  that was such an interesting
• 35:06
  Yeah.
• 35:07
  Yeah.
• 35:08
  Yeah, so that's one of the examples where you say the people have the power, right?
• 35:12
  And, and they, they… if they see something not
• 35:14
  working, they can ha- stop it.
• 35:16
  The, the… I think you mentioned that at the beginning, is that people are a
• 35:20
  bit afraid with the hierarchy, right?
• 35:22
  And when, when I teach, I say forget about being afraid.
• 35:25
  Now, companies need people that if you need somebody from the
• 35:29
  leaders to be a sponsor or to prioritize, you stop the initiative.
• 35:33
  I, I stop the transformation, boss, unless you dedicate two hours per week.
• 35:38
  You have now the power, the right, and maybe the obligation to, if
• 35:42
  you're doing a transformation and you don't have the elements from the top
• 35:46
  that you need, stop it immediately.
• 35:48
  You're not doing your job.
• 35:50
  You're just wasting resources and taking big risk for the company.
• 35:53
  So I think we need to evolve to those levels.
• 35:56
  When you have your listeners from transformation space, from project space,
• 36:00
  innovation, you need to step up a bit more because I don't think the people at
• 36:06
  the top will change as much as we want
• 36:09
  There's a subtle upskill here you say required and this is
• 36:13
  a transition from delivering projects to being project driven
• 36:17
  Yes
• 36:18
  I'd love you to share this because again ju just these little nudges
• 36:21
  in the right direction are how how change can initially start
• 36:25
  Well, project driven, I, I think I always say start small.
• 36:28
  So take your top one or top two initiative and really empower the teams.
• 36:34
  Dedicate fully the resources to that team.
• 36:37
  Be project driven, like what we were talking about the copy.
• 36:41
  Just get the best people, focus on that project, allow them to take
• 36:45
  decisions, co-create part of the benefits, part of the idea, get
• 36:49
  involved and share the benefits and share the success, and that creates…
• 36:54
  Every time I've done that, uh, uh, Aidan, it has shown very positive, not
• 36:55
  just results on that initiative, but the whole company's looking at them
• 36:55
  and say, "I want to be part of that.
• 36:57
  I hate my old way of working.
• 36:57
  I want to
• 37:09
  be part," and that's what I call move from project management
• 37:12
  to project driven organization.
• 37:14
  Just for one or two projects, six months, the picture will be completely
• 37:18
  different, almost guaranteed
• 37:20
  when I worked in digital transformation I used to always say to our team
• 37:24
  We're like Netflix working inside
• 37:26
  Yeah.
• 37:27
  Yes.
• 37:28
  I love it.
• 37:29
  Wow
• 37:29
  y y what what what I was trying to do was create culture Now what I did wrong now in
• 37:35
  retrospect was I kind of created us to be almost like they were the dinosaur and and
• 37:41
  that in a way that's the wrong way cause I create them as kind of the enemy and
• 37:45
  Yeah.
• 37:45
  should be the VC sponsoring
• 37:47
  us
• 37:48
  Yeah.
• 37:48
  you you also don't want to be kind of tipping your hat to the
• 37:52
  Yeah
• 37:52
  organization and feel like you're in a lesser position But the reason I share
• 37:57
  that is you talk about this and and it's such an important thing that even
• 38:00
  if you're in a toxic organization many people do work in toxic organizations
• 38:05
  every project can have its own culture and
• 38:08
  Ah
• 38:08
  deliberately start that culture from scratch
• 38:12
  I love that, Aidan.
• 38:13
  If, if you did that, bravo on you, because this is something we always miss, is that
• 38:17
  you have a lot of power in a project or transformation where you can say, "Okay,
• 38:22
  we work like that in your day-to-day, that's fine, but these are the rules that
• 38:26
  I want to set for this transformation.
• 38:28
  We're all the same.
• 38:29
  We're a team.
• 38:30
  I need you.
• 38:31
  I want that you are yourself, Aidan.
• 38:33
  I know you're bright.
• 38:34
  Come up with ideas.
• 38:35
  If you feel that you're not secure, just come and, and tell us.
• 38:39
  If we're going to succeed, it's because we're going to be working as a team.
• 38:43
  It's not going to be, "See, we know what happens if we don't do it, so
• 38:47
  let's work on the team first," and this is the culture I want to share.
• 38:52
  You lived that when you were doing sports, right?
• 38:54
  It's so important.
• 38:56
  Depends on the team you play, you, you had different culture.
• 38:59
  It was the coach who was setting those values.
• 39:02
  You can do that, and, and I think this will be… If people who listen and
• 39:07
  focus on this, the next week, they're going to see a major change on, on
• 39:11
  how the people see them and how the organization see them, and it will
• 39:15
  impact the result of the project.
• 39:17
  So good comment.
• 39:19
  I thought it was really important So w we won't have time to get all the points
• 39:24
  across in the book obviously But idea of killing projects or kill criteria
• 39:31
  also starts at the start So this uh even starts before you even start the
• 39:35
  project to create this cultural habit with inside an organization and you share
• 39:39
  a refined approach for this and I'd love you to d dive into this So set clear
• 39:44
  evaluation criteria Two limit project time frames to thr two to three three
• 39:49
  to six months and then three accelerate closure once the decision is clear I'd
• 39:54
  love you to bring us on a whirlwind tour If there was one little lesson you
• 39:59
  were gonna give us in the middle of your family holiday what would it be around
• 40:03
  closing closing or killing projects
• 40:06
  Well, for me, the-- I think the biggest issue that we have t- in,
• 40:09
  in project management for years was we were always seeking perfection.
• 40:14
  That means everything has to be completed a hundred percent, and then
• 40:18
  otherwise, the project will not finish.
• 40:20
  What happens is that you finish ninety percent, uh, in your two,
• 40:23
  three years, and then, but then the, the, the tail drags forever.
• 40:29
  So I think a good project transformation leader today is seen the one that cuts
• 40:33
  and say, "Ninety percent is really good.
• 40:35
  We're done.
• 40:36
  We've done.
• 40:36
  We move on." We still finish whatever it is, but not in a project scenario.
• 40:41
  We just-- Everybody's free up.
• 40:42
  We move them to another project, but finishing early, it's such an important
• 40:48
  part of good modern project management.
• 40:51
  The other point that you cover is the killing.
• 40:53
  The killing is… I think there's so many projects that should be killed right now.
• 40:58
  A-Aidan, if you look at what happened in the last six months, or, Thelma,
• 41:02
  most of the technology projects should be considered to be killed, right?
• 41:06
  Because you started with one technology, and today, do you have the guts?
• 41:10
  Do you have the, the way-- A thing, a very important-- I wrote a, a special
• 41:14
  piece on HBR on this one, uh, because most leaders are afraid of killing projects.
• 41:19
  And so it's, it's you need to have the setup, like we were talking about
• 41:23
  Toyota, where I'm just a project member.
• 41:26
  I say, "Listen, this project doesn't make sense anymore.
• 41:28
  Let's pause this or let's kill it, and let's shift to something else." So
• 41:32
  creating that cushion of reassurance so that everybody can speak up
• 41:38
  and say, "This doesn't make sense anymore," is so beneficial because
• 41:42
  then people will come up and say-- There will be more arguments about what
• 41:45
  needs to go, what needs to continue.
• 41:48
  So those two habits make a huge, huge difference
• 41:54
  You inspired me I write a weekly article and this is
• 41:57
  Yeah.
• 41:57
  gonna write about
• 41:58
  Really?
• 41:58
  Idea of killing projects I I actually my metaphor was this there's a a cat
• 42:03
  in a a a convalescent home in I think it's Rhode Island the cat when it it can
• 42:10
  sense when somebody's about to die So
• 42:13
  Well
• 42:14
  effective this cat that when it goes outside the door of one person's room
• 42:18
  they ring the family and say Come along Cause and and then what what
• 42:21
  actually they discovered was cats can smell what are called necromones which
• 42:25
  Wow
• 42:26
  these pheromones that signal the death of a cell or the death of a of a
• 42:31
  Really?
• 42:32
  being And I was like Oh this is
• 42:34
  Wow.
• 42:35
  For Somebody in an organization is like this cat can go around smelling
• 42:39
  projects are are dying that's
• 42:42
  Ciao
• 42:42
  okay So we'll we'll we'll kill the we'll kill that project part one of killing
• 42:46
  projects and we'll move on to the next one which is exponential mindset culture
• 42:51
  う ん。
• 42:51
  this And and really what this taught me was the value of thinking big but
• 42:58
  there's three core principles behind this Over to you to share this idea
• 43:02
  Well, basically, yeah, it's something that I didn't realize.
• 43:06
  I was growing.
• 43:07
  I've been doing corporate projects, transformation for 25 years, and I didn't
• 43:12
  realize until I stepped back and said, "This is all crap." No, why, why most of
• 43:18
  the projects are just 10% improvements, and where are our 10X improvement?
• 43:24
  They, they were all killed.
• 43:25
  They were … Nobody had the idea anymore because we want play safe.
• 43:30
  We will play safe, and most of companies play safe.
• 43:33
  And this is so frustrating because projects allow you the opportunity
• 43:38
  to create new things, to think big, but we've just killed that
• 43:42
  because of this culture of risk aversion, and for me, so frustrating.
• 43:47
  And that's the point about these are you crazy projects.
• 43:50
  Where are your three top are you crazy projects?
• 43:53
  Those are the ones you need to invest.
• 43:55
  I was working the other day with a big insurance company, and they kind
• 43:59
  of got this PDO concept and they say, "Yeah, we think that we need to have
• 44:03
  more crazy ideas, and, and we have set up a 50 million euro budget for people
• 44:10
  in the company to bring crazy ideas."
• 44:12
  But you know what happened, Antonio?
• 44:14
  We just spent two millions.
• 44:15
  The people just asked for two million out of the 50 because they were afraid
• 44:20
  Brilliant A typical insurance company How do
• 44:23
  Yeah.
• 44:24
  this
• 44:24
  Yeah, yeah.
• 44:26
  Imagine.
• 44:27
  So, and the other example I have also very recent with a big bank,
• 44:31
  a really international bank.
• 44:33
  They say, "You know, we have this group of crazy people who come with
• 44:37
  crazy ideas, but they go through the budgeting cycle, and we kill
• 44:41
  them all because they're crazy.
• 44:43
  You cannot prove any…
• 44:44
  And you know, we had this idea of a bank called, uh, Revolut.
• 44:48
  That idea, we had that much before we kill it." Uh, you see?
• 44:53
  So there's a problem in the culture.
• 44:55
  There's a problem on the incentives.
• 44:56
  There's a problem when you remove that and you allow to people think
• 45:00
  exponential, which is your topic, Aidan.
• 45:03
  Imagine it, it just so you're creating the future through these projects.
• 45:07
  I think for me, the projects that determine your future are
• 45:10
  your, are your crazy projects.
• 45:12
  These are not the incremental ones
• 45:16
  I'm gonna share again a table in the book that just shows our audience and
• 45:20
  maybe you'll just pick some of your top
• 45:21
  Yeah
• 45:22
  the ideas of shifting from incremental to exponential And there's three core
• 45:28
  principles you say You have to have timely decisionmaking to do this You have to
• 45:32
  have a culture of continuous learning and thus accepting that stuff will fail
• 45:36
  but it's what you learn from the failures
• 45:38
  Yeah
• 45:39
  then I thought this was a really important one dualspeed ambition
• 45:42
  which is locking in early value while continuously pursuing larger exponential
• 45:47
  opportunities that can shift the project's trajectory They were the three core
• 45:51
  principles but this is the table from the book And again I'd love you just
• 45:55
  to pick some of your top ones from this
• 45:58
  What I wanted to put here is examples.
• 46:00
  So the first one, launching a new mobile app.
• 46:03
  Add two new features to existing functionality.
• 46:05
  This is what 99% of the projects, adding new features, but how can
• 46:10
  we move into a build a platform supporting 100% third-party?
• 46:14
  That's exponential thinking.
• 46:17
  For me, it's what you were saying, is having that focus on value.
• 46:20
  How can we show value early?
• 46:23
  Even if it's exponential, what will tell us that we're in the right path?
• 46:27
  Also, thinking exponential l- allows you to pivot.
• 46:31
  It doesn't mean that you have it set.
• 46:33
  These are all experiments, so you can move along.
• 46:36
  That's why you need that dual kind of approach.
• 46:39
  One is on value, the other one is on flexibility, so you can keep, uh,
• 46:43
  adjusting your, your vision and your project into whatever it will take
• 46:48
  you at the end of the, the journey.
• 46:50
  So for me, this is crucial and, and the problem for me that I share here is, uh,
• 46:58
  we are-- I, I'm sure if your readers and your followers and listeners, they read
• 47:04
  The Incremental Mindset, I'm sure they will, they will be able to recognize
• 47:08
  most of their projects there, right?
• 47:11
  So this is for me where the bigger change needs to happen from a project
• 47:17
  and transformation perspective.
• 47:19
  And just to finish, Aidan, I'm in-- I'm saying now that if a transformation
• 47:24
  leader or a project leader receive an incremental idea, he or she has
• 47:31
  the right to push back and say, "Come on, we are going to do that?
• 47:34
  10%? No, let's think big." Yeah.
• 47:37
  What would mean if we would start again from zero?
• 47:40
  What would mean if we remove all the assumptions?
• 47:44
  What would do?
• 47:45
  So that's another role because AI is going to do many of the things that
• 47:49
  we do in transformation and projects.
• 47:51
  It's already doing that.
• 47:52
  So where are we going to be adding value?
• 47:54
  Exactly on this slide here that you're showing, moving
• 47:58
  from the middle to the right.
• 47:59
  That's, for me, a big step into the future.
• 48:03
  I love it man I was actually when I was reading this I was thinking an
• 48:07
  example I use is just like caterpillars to butterflies So there's a bunch
• 48:11
  of caterpillars standing around and kind of going What what are your
• 48:13
  goals for the year And they're like I'm just gonna get a bit bigger
• 48:17
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 48:18
  Caterpillar's like No man I'm gonna fly I'm gonna fly And they're all
• 48:22
  like going Oh crazy Jim over here
• 48:24
  Yeah
• 48:24
  I you know I was thinking about that Th this helped me actually realized when
• 48:29
  I was thinking about how the mindset of different people within an organization
• 48:34
  the the neurodiversity actually leads to different mindsets actually leads to
• 48:39
  different ambitions And again a lot of people who work in innovation are have
• 48:44
  bigger views of the world or maybe they educate themselves slightly differently
• 48:48
  Yes
• 48:49
  And it when they do share I wanna be you know amidst the caterpillars they go I
• 48:54
  wanna fly or they wanna share instead of incrementally growing the database by 10
• 48:59
  I wanna create a community of 10 million followers people people kind of go Oh man
• 49:04
  will you just get real here Get realistic
• 49:06
  Yes.
• 49:07
  What's the immediate goal And you go Well maybe we'll increase
• 49:11
  by you know 10 in the next year
• 49:14
  Yeah
• 49:15
  I wanna get here and there's that kind of shift and this is what the idea of
• 49:19
  a an exponential mindset culture is The there's another example I thought
• 49:23
  would be useful to share which is under the leadership of CEO Jesper Brodin
• 49:30
  embarked on this exponential mindset culture Maybe you give us a little view
• 49:34
  of that So here's a good example of one
• 49:36
  Well, IKEA, , it's one of these company that has last and continue reinvents,
• 49:40
  and the example you're talking about is the empowerment of the plants and
• 49:45
  the, the, the shops to take decisions on their own about these new ideas.
• 49:50
  This was around sustainability, and instead of having the corporate team
• 49:54
  deciding what should we do to become and reach our sustainability targets, they
• 49:59
  just told the, the shops, "Let the people decide and think exponentially on how can
• 50:05
  we become more sustainable, how can we sell better, more sustainable products?"
• 50:10
  And it was amazing.
• 50:11
  They created so many new things from the bottom up, and, and some of these ideas
• 50:18
  scaled up and became global changes.
• 50:21
  But it really was that empowerment to people to think, exponentially and in
• 50:27
  smaller teams closer to the client.
• 50:30
  So this is usually, , what is not being done because the innovation
• 50:34
  comes always from the top.
• 50:35
  So the IKEA for me was exactly that's what we need.
• 50:40
  I I love what you write about IKEA here You say as a an exponential
• 50:44
  mindset builds on the belief that capabilities whether human technological
• 50:49
  or organizational can grow dramatically through bold experimentation learning
• 50:53
  and scaled ambition The exponential mindset is about designing and executing
• 50:57
  projects that radically accelerate value creation and redefine what the
• 51:02
  organization believes is achievable So that's exponential mindset culture but
• 51:07
  maybe we'll finish with this one So how do we build an open and transparent
• 51:12
  execution culture Because here you look at how to enable an open and transparent
• 51:17
  culture to create the conditions for fast informed decisions and hightrust
• 51:22
  collaboration across the organization also desiloing the organization And
• 51:27
  this is where you talk about the importance of embracing experimentation
• 51:30
  and project failure as a culture
• 51:34
  Well, this is, uh part of the cultural change, right?
• 51:38
  Transf- transparency means that if you fail, you say you fail.
• 51:42
  If, if you need help, you ask for help.
• 51:44
  If things are going great, you say, "Great job." So, but we have this culture
• 51:49
  where it's, it's you share the good news, you don't share the bad news.
• 51:52
  There's a great example from Alan Mulally when he took over Ford, and,
• 51:57
  and all the KPIs were in green, and the company was losing billions.
• 52:01
  And it took him, like, three or four meetings before anybody just changed
• 52:06
  and, and was honest about the results.
• 52:08
  And they, they all needed help, but they didn't dare to ask for.
• 52:12
  So transparency is about just like you are with your friends, with your family.
• 52:18
  You just say, "I have a problem.
• 52:20
  I need some help." And you cannot imagine how difficult it is for people to say, "I
• 52:24
  need help, and, and let's work as a team."
• 52:27
  Again, I love sports.
• 52:28
  I also come with very sports background, and if you need help, you ask your
• 52:32
  team, and they will do it, right?
• 52:34
  And I, I, I can.
• 52:35
  But in businesses, somehow everything becomes very opaque, and, and, and, and
• 52:40
  it just hits the performance, obviously, and, and creates a culture of always
• 52:46
  good news, which is just not true.
• 52:49
  So transparency is kind of… I don't know.
• 52:51
  It- it's the glue that puts everything together.
• 52:54
  If you're not transparent, PDO will not work.
• 52:58
  I worked in a very toxic ki public organization for
• 53:01
  Yeah
• 53:02
  time and I used to do this as a kind of a joke didn't l I didn't last
• 53:07
  there very long Antonio I used to They had meeting rooms throughout the
• 53:11
  organization and I used to write on th as we were leaving leaving on like
• 53:17
  flip charts or or or whiteboards I'd
• 53:21
  Oh, yeah
• 53:22
  Thunderbolt right
• 53:24
  Yeah.
• 53:24
  It up there And then I wanted to see did it come back around And like later
• 53:29
  on I'd hear from people saying Hey do do you know anything about Project
• 53:33
  Thunderbolt And I was like No nothing Cause I wanted to see how paranoid
• 53:39
  People
• 53:39
  was And and you say in the book here in many companies
• 53:42
  information about transformation projects is siloed fragmented
• 53:47
  Mm-hmm.
• 53:47
  Often contradictory And I thought about this where you talk about in these PDOs
• 53:53
  if you were a really wellcultured project projectoriented organization you use your
• 54:01
  town halls and you use those moments for both mentioning failure so somebody might
• 54:08
  have failed but in the in the pursuit of excellence Or share the projects that
• 54:13
  are going across the organization Because
• 54:15
  Thank
• 54:16
  like the Malani example somebody might have
• 54:18
  you, Sangeet
• 54:18
  that before and go Hey I I can actually help there We've had the same issue
• 54:22
  before I'd love you to share a bit about that because that opens it
• 54:25
  up Because most people just use th these m ask me anything sessions as
• 54:31
  Yeah
• 54:31
  a monologue but they can be something totally different
• 54:35
  Yeah, for me it's what you just said, is when you have a town hall
• 54:38
  or when you have a steering committee or communication, start with the
• 54:42
  things that don't go very well.
• 54:43
  Start with the things where you need help.
• 54:45
  Have you ever heard any CEO or senior executive saying, "I need help. I, I
• 54:50
  need you guys to work together on this"?
• 54:51
  No, they don't say because asking for help is like you're weak or you're a loser.
• 54:56
  And on the contrary is what you were just saying, is that starting with
• 55:01
  this communication just creates more trust on, on you as a leader, on
• 55:06
  you on the focus and the priorities.
• 55:08
  So, insisting on these are the top three things that we need to deliver
• 55:12
  in the next six months, and I want you to put an effort on that, and I'm
• 55:16
  here also to support you if you…
• 55:18
  That makes such a, a speech less, uh, less corporate and more human,
• 55:24
  and that's what you need in a PDO.
• 55:26
  PDO.
• 55:26
  Projects are made by people, and if the people trust you, and you need to stop
• 55:32
  a project because there's a good… They will be okay, as long as you're
• 55:35
  transparent and, and, and you share the reasons why we need to stop it, what we
• 55:40
  learned, and where we're moving next.
• 55:42
  And, it's so obvious that sometimes when we chat about this and now
• 55:46
  with you, Aidan, I say, "But come on, do I… I'm saying something
• 55:49
  new? Or it's just, it's just in- incredible that we need to be talking
• 55:53
  about this?" But it's so important.
• 55:57
  Thank you for bringing that.
• 55:59
  Okay man I I heard what you said You said When a project's 90% it's good enough
• 56:04
  Yeah.
• 56:04
  finishing early is finishing
• 56:06
  Oh, wow.
• 56:08
  So
• 56:08
  You got it
• 56:09
  I have a key little point I wanted to share just a little excerpt from
• 56:12
  the book But as I'm doing that I'd love you to prepare think about
• 56:16
  your final message for audience
• 56:18
  Okay
• 56:18
  remind the audience as well I have a copy of the book up for grabs Just be
• 56:23
  in the Substack the Innovation Show Substack It's under the Thursday Thought
• 56:28
  on Substack and I'll share in the notes And also Antonio I'm gonna ask where
• 56:32
  people can find you but I love what you wrote here and I usually pick out an
• 56:35
  excerpt from the book that I love And you wrote Leadership transparency in project
• 56:39
  governance does not mean handing over every decision to consensus I think that's
• 56:44
  so important It means being explicit about how decisions are made what data
• 56:50
  is used and how progress will be measured It means sharing what's working and
• 56:54
  what is not working early and often and most importantly it means modeling the
• 57:00
  behaviors such as admitting uncertainty correcting course and celebrating learning
• 57:05
  that make transparency sustainable.
• 57:08
  Absolutely love that To you man first where is where can people find you
• 57:14
  Always easy, LinkedIn, Antonio Nieto Rodriguez.
• 57:16
  My website is the same, antonionietorodriguez.com.
• 57:20
  I think that's the two ways.
• 57:21
  And I love every time somebody reach out, I always respond, with
• 57:26
  comments or feedback, whatever.
• 57:27
  I love that.
• 57:28
  And, I just… It's hard to say more things, Aidan.
• 57:31
  I think you just summarized it very well.
• 57:33
  If you're a leader, I think people are looking for you in a different
• 57:37
  way than they did in the past.
• 57:38
  So don't be afraid.
• 57:39
  Move out of the comfort zone.
• 57:41
  Spend more time on the transformation space.
• 57:44
  The legacy that you're going to leave is based on the
• 57:47
  changes that you're making now.
• 57:49
  It's not what you did in the past, and that means spending time on
• 57:53
  transformation, building that culture where everything works as co-creation.
• 57:58
  The teams are in power, and you're somebody that orchestrates, and, and
• 58:03
  like you said, take decisions, but let the team also take most of them.
• 58:07
  And if you're in a transformation team or transformation lead, step up, please.
• 58:11
  I think you have the right to ask.
• 58:13
  You have the right to, to, to take the things that you need for
• 58:17
  your project to be successful.
• 58:18
  You all know why projects fail.
• 58:20
  You all know why transformation… Don't let failure happen again and
• 58:24
  again because you are afraid of speaking up and asking what you need.
• 58:28
  It will make a huge difference.
• 58:30
  And last one, Aidan, think people first, even in projects.
• 58:35
  When you have a team, and we know what's the difference between a group of
• 58:38
  people and a team of committed people.
• 58:41
  Spend the time, create that team, and things will go just
• 58:45
  flying, and people will love you.
• 58:47
  So that's all.
• 58:49
  And I, I really thank you, Aidan.
• 58:52
  You're so well prepared.
• 58:53
  I think I've never been in an interview with somebody so well prepared
• 58:59
  Good project management man
• 59:03
  I love it
• 59:04
  is as is finishing early and I wanna thank you again for taking
• 59:07
  the time out of your family holiday, well-deserved family holiday, to
• 59:10
  Thank you
• 59:11
  So very, very grateful.
• 59:13
  Author of Powered By Projects, Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez, thank you for joining us.
• 59:18
  Gracias.
• 59:19
  Thanks as always to our sponsor, Kyndryl, who runs and reimagines the technology
• 59:23
  systems that drive advantage for the world's leading businesses with a unique
• 59:26
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• 59:31
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• 59:35
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