Globalization
We had to wait for Peter Drucker to put the human being central stage, with his famous identification of the "Knowledge Worker". Employees were not just hands; they also had brains.
Unfortunately, Drucker's wise words were soon lost in the erroneous and destructive theories that centered on the organizations' purpose of increasing shareholder value. Productivity, efficiency gains, and short-termism would take pride of place for decades, mostly at the expense of employees and the human and social side of organizations.
The impact of globalization and technological advancements, with thousands of companies collapsing and millions of jobs vanishing in western economies, has caused an enormous loss of confidence in capitalism and western leaders. And according to Silicon Valley futurists, over the next 10 years, societies will experience more change than in the past two and a half centuries. More change, at a greater speed than ever!
Despite this daunting outlook, let me put forward one idea that can inspire us to remain positive and prompt us to action.
There is one model of productive collaboration, a method of work to generate value, that has remained constant over centuries, irrespective of organizational fashions. This universal method of working and organizing work is the project. Project-based work has been the engine that turned ideas into reality and generated the major accomplishments in our civilization.
Behavioral and social sciences confirm that there are few ways of working and collaborating more motivating and inspiring than being part of a project with an ambitious goal, a higher purpose, and a clear fixed deadline.
But the project is not only the most human-centric and value-creating vehicle for human effort; even more important, it is also resilient to robots, artificial intelligence and many of the technological "advances" that seem to aim at eradicating the right to work.
Yet, very few individuals have been trained to define and manage projects successfully.
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Introduction
