What won’t change…

Based on the extensive media coverage, YouTube videos, TED Talks, and books published, many might agree that 2023 has been hailed as the year of artificial intelligence, at least in terms of mindshare if not market dominance.

Throughout the past year, online project management communities have frequently discussed the potential impact of A.I. tools on the role of project managers. While concerns persist about potential negative effects, such as new project risks and potential job displacement, there’s also optimism. A.I. tools, when used appropriately, are seen as potential assistants in delivering projects more efficiently and effectively, akin to other professions.

However, let’s maintain perspective. Like previous project management tools—such as schedulers and knowledge management platforms—some aspects of our work won’t be affected by A.I. until projects can be entirely completed by machines without human involvement.

Certain challenges will persist:

1. Commitments will still be made prematurely: A.I. might provide better reasoning for unattainable completion dates or funding amounts, but it’s unlikely to deter senior stakeholders from imposing unrealistic constraints.
2. What you don’t know will still hurt more than what you do know: In the near term, we won’t have sufficiently advanced A.I. capabilities to identify all the possible risks which could impact our projects. And as complexity continues to increase, the likelihood remains that unknown-unknowns will affect our projects to a greater extent than the known-unknowns.
3. Stakeholders will continue to surprise us: Provided sufficient context, A.I. tools might be able to improve our forecast of how stakeholders will respond to a given decision or project approach. However, if we’ve learned anything from The Matrix, even if humans are part of an A.I. system, they’ll still find ways to behave unexpectedly.
4. More concurrent work than can be effectively delivered: A.I. tools might give us a better understanding of the capacity within our teams and our throughput potential, but with the exception of those who use product-centric delivery models or who embrace the flow guidance of Dr. Goldratt or Don Reinertsen, most will still welcome more work into their system than should be permitted, so multitasking, work overload and the inability to accurately forecast people’s availability will persist.
5. The single biggest problem in communication: A.I. tools will eventually help us to bridge communication gaps with real-time context sensitive translation and guidance to make better choices about messaging tone, medium and other factors. Nevertheless, some gaps, as demonstrated in ‘Star Trek: The Next Generation’s’ episode ‘Darmok,’ may remain insurmountable.

So as the dawn of 2024 approaches, lets greet it with the confidence that while some things are likely change in project delivery, most won’t.

“The art of progress is to preserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order.” – Alfred North Whitehead

(If you liked this article, why not read my book Easy in Theory, Difficult in Practice which contains 100 other lessons on project leadership? It’s available on Amazon.com and on Amazon.ca as well as a number of other online book stores).

Five questions to answer before seeking a project management mentor

Whether it is in one of LinkedIn’s project management discussion groups or in PMI’s Projectmanagement.com community, one of the more frequent requests made by members is for mentoring. Sometimes the mentee has done a good job of articulating their needs which will increase their odds of finding a suitable mentor but this is the exception, not the rule.

Project management mentors are usually senior practitioners who tend to be quite busy, hence providing limited information almost guarantees that the request won’t be fulfilled in a timely fashion.

So before you post a request for a mentor, take the time to answer these five questions:

What are my objectives for the mentoring relationship?

This is a good case of where the S.M.A.R.T. test for objectives should be used – are they specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timebound?

This question will help you answer the next one.

Is the mentoring relationship I’m seeking short or long term?

This will help prospective mentors decide whether they are willing to commit for a longer period of time and will serve as a good sanity check on the achievability of your objectives.

The answers to these two questions might help you answer the next question.

Will I be better served with a mentor whom I can meet in person?

Depending on your objectives, you might find that geographic or temporal distance will significantly reduce the mentor’s ability to help you succeed such as intimate knowledge of the local business environment. Thankfully many PMI chapters have well established mentoring programs which might help you to connect with a local practitioner.

How much effort will my mentor need to commit to help me achieve my objectives?

You might think that you have found the perfect practitioner from a personality and experience perspective but if they are too busy to effectively support you, you may need to connect with someone that has more time but less experience or you might need to adjust your expectations of the mentor’s time commitment.

Finally, while many mentors provide their services on a voluntary basis, others might treat it as billable work.

Am I willing to pay for mentoring support, and if so, what is my budget?

If you don’t know what you want to get out of a mentoring relationship, no mentor can help you achieve your goals.

(If you liked this article, why not read my book Easy in Theory, Difficult in Practice which contains 100 other lessons on project leadership? It’s available on Amazon.com and on Amazon.ca as well as a number of other online book stores).

Does precarity impede agility?

I’ve almost finished reading “Gigs, Hustles & Temps” by Jason Foster which is about precarious work and the negative impacts it creates on individuals, their families and society in general. While we might think of precarious work as something limited to Uber drivers, home cleaners and other gig workers, such work covers multiple industries spanning both public and private sector employment.

The author does a great job of highlighting the personal impacts of precarity such as reduced wages, reduced leverage with employers and delay or deferment of capital purchases, but the chapter on the economic impacts of precarious work resonated with me as it covers the productivity impacts when a large proportion of a company’s work force is experiencing precarity.

The author identifies three reasons for this:

• Leadership teams don’t have the same motivation to train and develop precarious employees
• Workers experiencing precarity are less likely to be invested in the organization and its long term success
• There is a ripple effect on permanent, non-precarious staff as they see how precarious workers are treated by their company and are more likely to be concerned about how well they will be treated in the future

The author also writes about the link between precarity and reduced physical and psychological safety as employers are less inclined to invest in exceeding health & safety standards and workers are more like to experience high levels of ongoing stress.

But the kicker for me is this quote from the International Labour Organization of the United Nations (ILO): “The use of temporary workers can over time erode the motivation that workers have to contribute to the organization, and can lower the level of ability available in the organization to innovate or in other ways contribute to firm performance.“

This made me think about the companies I’ve worked with over the years that had tried to increase their delivery agility and the relative differences in success between those which had few precarious workers and those which had much more.

While I wouldn’t consider it the sole cause, it is safe to say that those companies which had a higher percentage of workers in precarious positions were more likely to struggle with the transition, especially the organizational commitment to ongoing continuous improvement.

Precarity reduces safety, and without safety, nothing else matters.

(If you liked this article, why not read my book Easy in Theory, Difficult in Practice which contains 100 other lessons on project leadership? It’s available on Amazon.com and on Amazon.ca as well as a number of other online book stores).