Major Projects Association - Putting "People" at the Forefront of Projects

I was fortunate to attend a senior leader event hosted by the Major Projects Assiciation of the UK today. The topic was "Acquiring People Capability - Cost Effectively" and there were approximately 100 leaders in attendance. I thought the conversation was excellent, it circled around collaboration, science, technology, engineering, Maths skills, recruiting and retention, education systems, innovation, funding, and governmental partnership. 

To me, the key quote (which was said several times) was "these are not new problems, we've been discussing them for at least 8 years, are they really problems, is there any appetite to fix them?"

My humble opinion is that the core problem is not a lack of bravery, its a lack of genuinely new ways of solving problems, and yes, there's minimal appetite / willingness to change.

When business as know it started hundreds of years ago, the top constraints were land, labour and capital. We can automate and virtualise all of those now. Now the top constraints are time and attention. In knowledge management we've been talking about that for probably at least 8 years too. I think that might be a different context to consider, some might call it a more complex adaptive system. 

In KM though, we do offer many new ways of communicating, collaborating and flat out "working" differently. Call them talent markets, knowledge markets, communities of practice, expertise location "systems" (not just "tools"), knowledge continuity, personal knowledge management, sense making, decision making, on and on. They're different, they're effective, but they're rarely tried or accepted, especially on a large scale. 

I hope it doesn't come across as frustration, as I'm often told that it does. In fact, it feels more like eternal hope that organisations will begin to embrace new organisational, communication and collaboration models. I'm not sure it will be called knowledge management or even innovation, collaboration or org design/development, but I do think it will come around in some way. In fact, in small pieces, it already is. 

Another hot conversation was the repeated top priority of recruiting and retention. "We need to buy, build and borrow talent to get the job done". Again, I respectfully disagree, maybe there's a different context to consider. I think there may be a way to embrace the new reality that employees and jobs (I would say roles or tasks) are knowledge workers/tasks, and they'll stick around for approximately 2-3 years. There are models for embracing the pace of that change, whilst also maintaining organisational memory and capability. Talent markets are one example, communities of practice and knowledge continuity are even more options. It's about optimisimg the flow of knowledge, connecting people, and [continuously] matching passions with customer needs. Emergent leadership and followership become critical concepts.

I tweeted at klowey22 during the event in case you might be interested in those thoughts. 

During lunch I had a one on one chat with a senior leader from PwC, who happened to originally be from Uganda. Wow what a conversation, we chatted about capitalism, social structures, democracy, and international civilisation. Long story short, there's such great value in conversation and diversity. Exciting times to be checking assumptions, re-thinking and re-doing many aspects of "work".