#136—Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez: Preparing for the Project Economy Future

 Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez is author of Powered by Projects, Leading Organizations in the Transformation Age, the Harvard Business Review Project Management Handbook, the featured HBR article The Project Economy Has Arrived, as well as five other books. Antonio coined the concept "the Project Economy," on which his book is based. His research and global impact have been recognized and included in the top 50 most influential management thought leaders by Thinkers50. He is the fellow and Former Chairman of the Project Management Institute, currently VP of the APM Association, he is the creator of the Brightline Initiative, founder of Projects&Co, and co-founder of the Strategy Implementation Institute. 

Antonio is a prominent advocate of the idea that our business model paradigms are quickly changing—the future of work is the Project Economy, the idea that instead of companies based on hierarchy and operations, they will be dominated by project-driven teams and environments. 

This premise has a profound impact on every area of a business—and strategy, management and every department of each enterprise will need to adapt accordingly.

In this episode we discuss: 

• How digitalization and the acceleration of AI has compounded this quick change from a focus on operations and repetitive work to quick execution, project-driven teams 
• How by 2030, 70% of work will be project-based work, fundamentally changing how businesses are structured and managed. 
• How the era of hierarchal org structure hinders growth in this new era, as successful project execution depends on co-creation and stakeholder buy-in 
• How the role of the PMO will change from being operations-driven to more strategic, and how you can best support these roles in the transition 

_______________________________________________________________________________
Episode Timeline:

00:00—Highlight from today's episode
01:31—Introducing Antonio + the topic of today’s episode
04:14—If you really know me, you know that...
05:03—What is your definition of strategy?
06:12—The difference between strategy and execution
07:40—Understanding the project economy
10:43—The shift from operations to projects in organizations
12:18—The cross-functional nature of projects
14:44—The future of the PMO office
17:20—Creating intensity in organizations
20:36—Common mistakes leaders make in executing strategy
24:06—Motivation for writing "Powered by projects" 
26:36—Key insights from Antonio’s leadership sessions 
28:30—How can people follow you and continue learning from you? ______________________________________________________________________________________
Additional Resources:

Personal website: antonionietorodriguez.com
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/antonionietorodriguez
Link to book: Powered by Projects

Thank you to our guest. Thank you to our executive producer, Karina Reyes, our editor, Zach Ness, and the rest of the team. If you like what you heard, please follow, download, and subscribe. I'm your host, Kaihan Krippendorff. Thank you for listening.

Follow us at outthinkernetworks.com/podcast

Transcript

Kaihan Krippendorff: Antonio, it is great to have you on the podcast. I know that you are busy, and we were really intrigued to have you here. Thank you for being here. Where are you joining us from today?
 
 Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez: Thank you, Kaihan. It's a pleasure to be on Outthinkers. I follow your podcast, and when we get connected I said obviously yes, this is a place to be in. I'm calling from Madrid from Spain.
 
 Kaihan Krippendorff: Lovely. Lovely. Thank you for dialing in from Spain. We're gonna get into what project management is, what the future organization is, what strategy versus execution is. But I wanna start off with the same questions that I ask all of my guests.
 
 The first one is just for guest to know you a little bit more personally. Could have nothing to do with your work. Could you complete this sentence for me? If you really know me, you know that.
 
 Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez: You know that I care about people most. I like to help people make them better and be more successful. Maybe that that that's what I would say.
 
 Kaihan Krippendorff: Amazing. Where does that come from? Do you think?
 
 Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez: Don't know. I was lucky on my life. I think I want to give back. It's just I feel I feel lucky with my if not like I'm billionaire or anything, but I enjoy what I do. I enjoy what I got.
 
 And I feel lucky there's so many other people that have more tougher lives. And so I feel like I need to be back, and that's probably where it comes from.
 
 Kaihan Krippendorff: Got it. Love it. The second question, we asked this question of all our guests, and a lot of our guests think a lot about strategy as you do, then we always get a different answer. And what is your definition of strategy?
 
 Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez: My definition of strategy, it's painful. I always I'm a big believer from the strategy sessions that I run with on customers is that if you have a workshop where everybody's happy at the end, you didn't do strategy. You want just a nice get together. And if you come up from the meeting with the senior leaders and feels painful, it feels uncomfortable. That's when you deal with strategy because you took decisions, you took painful decisions.
 
 You're making tough choices where you say, we go together into that direction. That means that we drop many other things. And for me, that's the best definition of strategies may making pain for choices. So it's just a test that run after a virtual strategy. Was it painful enough or not?
 
 Kaihan Krippendorff: I love that. That's the first time that someone's given us kind of a sensory definition of strategy, and I think that is a great access, a great test. Thank you for that. So then let's shift from strategy to executions. And just I'd like to do little definitional things because I think that your view on caching your view on what a project is certainly is well thought through and not every all of our listeners have thought about it as much as you.
 
 How is strategy different from execution and how is a project different from what's not a project?
 
 Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez: No. I think the execution piece, of course, choices is strategy for me, making that a full choices is the strategy, the definition, doesn't need to be made by the whole organization is the leaders who are paid for that. But I think the execution is everyone in the company that needs to follow. So that is what you do on a daily basis. It can be on the short term, which is more of the operational people.
 
 The marketing, the sales, and then there's the people who are working on transformation, who are building the future of the organization. So for me, execution is how the organization works, how everybody in in bigger or smaller scale contributes to achieve that aim for decision, that vision, that purpose, and for me, that's execution is how you orchestrate every people around that plan and get it done, right, in different levels, in different areas of the business, but when we go to work, we go to execute. Right? We gotta listen to where you are.
 
 Kaihan Krippendorff: That's great. And so now I'd like to introduce this project lens, and I'm drawing a little bit from one of my favorite books of yours, the project economy. And so, you know, a common view of execution is sort of there's a hierarchy, and there are cascading goals, and there are roles that people play, and they play those roles year after year, and they sort of get a new set of metrics that they need to deliver on. There's sort of a cascading down. But a project is different than a role or an ongoing operation.
 
 Could you just tell us a little bit about what you know, just tell unpack the project economy for us?
 
 Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez: Sure. The way I come to the project economy, it's it may be just a bigger picture movement that is happening. I would call it disruption. So every organization has two sides or two mini business models within their companies. One is to run the business, to run it efficiently, automate as much as possible and continuous improvement, that's what I call run the business.
 
 And but then then there's the other side which is change the business, which is how do we evolve so that we have business in the future, how do we transform ourselves to still be competitive. So there's the run and the change, and they have to quite exist. Right? So you cannot run without change. You cannot change without run.
 
 So they're just together just the way you allocate resources in a business Traditionally, you've put more people in their run, so more people are working on operations versus a few people working in projects. And over the time, over the last thirty, forty years, there has been a shift from operations people working in operations to projects because operations have been automated and more automated. And today, there's less need for resourcing to run operations than five, ten years ago. So what happens is the type of work that people are doing is moving from repetitive operational work to project base work. And if you put into the equation that robots and AI is becoming smarter every day and very soon you could put not just robots run your logistic warehouse, but to run your HR department or marketing, that piece that was run by peep on in operations becoming smaller and smaller, like, maybe 20% of the whole business, 10% But the whole space, the work type of work becomes project driven, product driven, change driven.
 
 So that's what I call the project economist that the future of work is not whether you work from home, from Miami, from Madrid, but that's a bit superficial discussion. The real depth of the discussion is that operations will be not will we run without people? And so what's left for people is to work in projects, and that's what I call the project economy.
 
 Kaihan Krippendorff: Just to help us kinda understand the magnitude, give you give this I know they're just I think they're just estimates, but what percentage of the work done in a typical corporation right now is operations and in the future, what might it come down to?
 
 Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez: Sure. So I think, like, twenty years ago, my numbers were saying around 80%, seventy % was operations. And 2030% was projects. Today, I think we're in the middle. Fifty fifty, I would say.
 
 If you ask a company how many projects they're doing, any anybody listening to this podcast, I'm sure. Their organizations. They have more projects than what they can execute. I'm sure most of the people working in your organizations are doing some type of projects, participating in a project, in a transformation on top. So everybody's touched by this.
 
 So that's around 50%, I would say. We're going towards the seventy thirty in the next by the end of the decade, by 2030, my guess is 70% projects, 30% operations. So there's a completely switch, right, from the business model, very operational driven. Here are keys, you know, here are keys the way people are evaluated, the culture of the company, the way leaders behave, were very different stages where everything is more fluid. There's no hierarchy.
 
 So it's a disruption that we're going to see. We're starting to see.
 
 Kaihan Krippendorff: Interesting. Because the project is typically cross functional. So what you're saying is we do more of our work in project models than we are that's why it's high less hierarchical because it cuts across. Is that
 
 Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez: Absolutely. Think this is one of the biggest finding, that I I've realized when I study projects is that operations are hierarchical and you need to have functions. You need to have departments because everybody specialized. And, yeah, it makes sense. You're you're become more efficient when you're but our project is the up and you were top down so the decisions are taken from the top and then they're implemented through the drill ranks and perfect.
 
 That was great twenty years ago and he was working, but projects transformation is something that is more universal. So I help some big corporates, and they struggle with transformation initiative with projects when the corporate center, the headquarter set, we're going to launch this digital transformation, and here are the benefits for everybody in the world working for this company. And people don't get it because the challenges that part of the company is facing in Italy or in Spain are different than the ones in The US and the ones in in South America. So there needs to be a switch on how we define projects, how we set goals for projects, how we make them more up the bottom up. This is all about creating engagement from the beginning.
 
 Co creation is not top down, and that's where many companies struggle with project is when you do things top down, you don't have engagement. You missed the point. There's no really buying from stakeholders, so leaders are not used to that. And it's I think it's exciting, but so many companies are struggling with this.
 
 Kaihan Krippendorff: Yeah. I can see the reaction being one of kind of fear of letting go of the reigns of trusting that the music will naturally come together if you orchestrate it rather than direct it.
 
 Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez: Absolutely. I don't know if anybody has kids listening to us, but this is this is more. It's not imposing to your kids what you wanted, but it's much more dialogue. Right? It's a lot understanding their perspective and trying to build something together And you know how challenging that is, but it's the way forward.
 
 Kaihan Krippendorff: Yes. What about the let's put the PMO office in this picture? What does the PMO office become then?
 
 Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez: Since for me, the PMO as we know it is for sure that for a couple of reasons. I think the PMO's day, 50 like, 70% is purely administrative type of work. It's creating reports. It's chasing people for data. Is setting up some templates and processes.
 
 And I think with the AI coming into project management and, you know, that automation piece has to be gone. So what do they do with the rest of their time for me? They need to step up and become that strategy implementation office or transformation office. I wrote an article in HDR about the chief project officer. So I think the demos that we know today are really but if you look attempt.
 
 And I've been in in a few they're very baroCratics. They're administrative offices. So they will disappear. What they need to do is step up and move embrace AI for projects transformation, but also have forcing leaders to make those tough decisions to really do strategy for their business, and then the execution of the key initiatives. So and the other thing that I find really important to have in this transformation for the PMOs is that so far, I think the project manager, the PMOs had, like, an easy life.
 
 Right? So we will try to deliver on time. We will try to deliver on budget. But if the thing makes any money is not my problem. Right?
 
 So the benefits are taking care by somebody else in the organization, the sponsor, the business owner. But that's not my problem. Right? And I think if we want to succeed that PMO, then you know, we'll need to deliver value. You're there to deliver value.
 
 So my prediction is that if a business makes $100,000,000 on revenue per year, 60 millions have to come from projects, and that's accountability of the PMO, their chief project officer, or they need to bring value. That's how we will measure the success of a PMO. How much did you make in terms of revenues, in terms of cost savings, not just how many reports that you put on place, how many Internet pandemic did you find between Yeah.
 
 Kaihan Krippendorff: No. That's great. So, yeah, the PMO becomes a profit center and gets judged by that.
 
 Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez: Great to say the great perfect spot on. That's the word profit center, value generation center. Absolutely.
 
 Kaihan Krippendorff: I I'm really interested in getting to the your new book powered by projects, but there's couple steps on the way. First is a question we haven't talked about, but what you just said made me think of something that has come up with many conversations I've had in the last two weeks is intensity. What is intensity, and how do you build I would think that I I believe that, you know, there's some organizations where the intensity to achieve outcomes is very high. Do you think about intensity, and what is it, and how do you create intensity?
 
 Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez: Yeah. No intensity is crucial. And you can say this is around a bit of healthy stress. You can say about focus or urgency. So I think that's one of the most fascinating topics because I always say a bit of a joke when I'm doing a keynote or I'm teaching.
 
 I say, you know, the moment I feel like I've made it with the team is when they come in the morning, somebody from the team say Antonio. I had the nightmare with your project essay. Yes. Right? So because that part tells me that you are thinking, you care.
 
 You're in your brain, in your subconscious, you're trying to find a way to make that happened. Right? You've absorbed it. It's part of your daily lives. So intensity, it's something that often is missing in project.
 
 You can have, like, a very tight deadline, but that doesn't mean that you will create intensity. Intensity is something that people need to feel within themselves. And that leads so I think it's part of being focused. I love to give advice to senior leaders. My goal in my book is always to simplify complex things.
 
 So one thing that I guess you will know, But I always tell senior leaders and CEOs, as I said, you said. You want one of your transformation or projects to go faster, and you say, yeah. Of course. Tell you what you need to do. You as a CEO put more time on it.
 
 That's it. If you put more time and say, you have maybe how many time you put on this transformation, maybe one hour every two weeks, put one hour per day. And you'll create that intensity. If the CEO of your company puts one hour per day on a transformation, that transformation is going to last, like, 30% of the time that you were thinking because you get the focused intensity in the parcel. This is how I try to engage senior leaders on being spending.
 
 Remember while we were talking the operations piece and the change piece, senior leaders spend 90% on the operations piece because that's what they know. That's what you have hierarchy. That's where you can put your command there, but we need the CEOs and the and the leadership teams more on the chain. So you want to accelerate, you want to create intensity. Would you expect this team to work on a big weekly basis on your most important transformation.
 
 Instead of twelve months, it's going to take you six months. So often my advice, even if I charge high fees is very simple. It's common sense.
 
 Kaihan Krippendorff: I love that. And so puts the onus on the leader, and it's something that they can clear going back to, is there a clear outcome? You've given them a clear outcome. How many hours do you're spending on it?
 
 I think you may have just answered this, but what's the big mistake that leaders today make when they when it comes to executing strategy?
 
 Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez: Of many. I think they I think they're part of this bigger issue of life there's so bigger failures in is because, for example, one again, one of the bigger finance issues that I see all the time is and, again, I like to make a bit of finance because it's just more enjoyable and see their shocking faces now. So if I'm running a workshop, and I asked him you said, how often do you launch projects or BQA initiatives transformation initiative in this company? And he said, well, listen. We're super innovative entrepreneur.
 
 We launched an initiative, have wreath, or weeks, and, yes, we're fully behind and, yes. And then I asked them how often do you finish in our closed projects? Woof. That's a tough question. So I think the last time we finished a project was maybe six months ago.
 
 So when you launch more projects and you finish, you're not doing your job as a leader. Right? You're creating more mess because the projects that you are ongoing, they're just going to struggle, and they want that you launch, it's just going to be a mess. So I think leaders don't realize that it's not about launching more projects, but that's easy. Everybody can do that.
 
 It's about launching the right ones, but also focusing on completion. One of the bigger topics that we're done focusing now is closing projects. That's that that's where we need to show that we are good at breaking that value that we invested on. So think leaders, for example, they are very bad at that. So launching yes, but anybody can launch.
 
 She's about choosing the right one and closing faster. Per day, so that we create capacity in in space for the new initiative. So that's where they're really bad. This sponsorship is one of the things that it's always they struggle because and I don't think they do it on purpose, but they feel much more comfortable in operations. That's where they grew up, and that's where they do a bit of coaching in my side, but kind of in my consulting, I get more and more requests on leaders who have been running operations.
 
 They now move into transformation, and they don't know. How to do it. Right? It's very different model. So then the coaching is something very important in helping them to step up into that unknown, and they can still be big leaders, but in different ways.
 
 So that's another area where they struggle can't solve for me. Leaders is the for example, one of the things I focus a lot is teaching modern project management. For not the project managers, but the whole organization, that's the request I say. I will not teach the organization. If I cannot spend half a day with your senior leads because they play such an important role in successful execution that I would maybe make a lot of money, but you would not progress if I just teach your employees or middle the people that need to be taught is the senior leader.
 
 So give me that time. Otherwise, we don't work together. So they have to learn. They they've never learned. Some of they know, I'm sure, but not the majority.
 
 Kaihan Krippendorff: Yes. I love this point about growing up in operations. And that's often why the transformation is slow at the top because the people who got to the top were evolved in kind of the older or the structure or mindset that we're looking to evolve away from. So I now I would love to talk about powered by projects, leading organizations in the transformation age. Just to why did you decide to write this book which will at the time of this recording is not yet published?
 
 But for most people who listen to this will have be able to order it. What is what's the topic and what motivated you to write this book?
 
 Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez: Yeah. So I think that, you know, writing books is never easy. At least for me, it's a painful process.
 
 Kaihan Krippendorff: So it's strategic.
 
 Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez: Yeah. Hey, strategic. Okay. I do it because of the pain that the process that you go with, always trying to find new things and format them into a book that makes sense for everyone that reads it. So But HGR was keen, and they don't publish usually on project management.
 
 It was never a topic, which they care. The agile somehow was, like, sexy, and they wrote a lot about agile and innovation entrepreneurship. Yeah. Of course. But project management never.
 
 So after five years of teaching the idea that everybody is doing projects, and it's not tactically something more strategic. So we published the managed we had PR project management handbook, and that was a huge success there that nobody expected to be selling so many copies. So they realize, actually, well, there's a lot of project managers here that can be your audience, and we can add some value. And so Kinda, we agreed to they wanted another book, and I said, okay. Let's do it.
 
 And the premise, it's basically on the first book was Cuy Hany's the handbook was everybody's project manager. Most of them don't know it. So here's the handbook. So how can you become better? And I I talk about the project canvas, which makes everything very simple.
 
 The premise of this book is every organization is project driven. But non or leaders don't know it. Right? And So here's a book to help you to move from that operation and driven organization to a project driven organization.
 
 Kaihan Krippendorff: So this is sort of the half day that you spend with leaders when you work with a client.
 
 Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez: This is Exactly. Exactly. I take most of my ideas come from these discussions that I had in these workshops with some of my clients where I see how much they struggle with these concepts. How can you move from that pyramid to your article, culturally? Do something very much project driven, which is that project economy we were talking before.
 
 Kaihan Krippendorff: What's something that you say in those sessions? What's you know, often there's one line or one concept or one tool that you that really gets picked up and captures people's leaders' interests. But what's that for you?
 
 Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez: Well, I think one of the topic or one the liner I like to say is, do you know what's the best definition of a project and tell them? First of all, I tried to ask them how many projects they have, and it's I think very few companies, they actually know how many projects they have in their organization. We're talking about thousands for a big company. So they feel like a bit uncomfortable when you ask. Seven people around the table, and each of them gives you a different number that they don't look very smart.
 
 But then I tell them, listen, do you know what's the best definition of a project is the future? So a project is the future. Projects build the future of your organization, and you're telling me you don't know how many you have. Right? So they so how are you building your future if you don't have a tool?
 
 How many projects you have? How are you executing there? How much time you're spending so that? That triggers a lot of another I love this exercise. I asked them to put in a positive top three projects in the organization, and imagine you have an as the executive of 10 people.
 
 And then everybody comes with very different views. Right? If I ask the top leaders of these companies. What are the top three? I expect just three.
 
 Not 50. Right? That shows me that you guys are not doing the job. So these are it's very simple exercises to put them on this spot to certainly send. You're not doing what you should be doing, which is building the future.
 
 The running of this business is running. Right? It does spend the time where you can create the future and support those people
 
 Kaihan Krippendorff: who love it. I love it. Oh, wow. It opens up so many questions and there's so much more to talk about, but we're reaching the top of our time with you. But luckily, for our listeners, you have a lot of resources and entry points for them to be able to learn from you.
 
 And access you. You've launched your consulting firm, projects and company. We have your new book coming out powered by projects. What are you working on? And how can people connect with you, follow you, and continue to learn from you?
 
 Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez: Thank you for that opportunity. And, yeah, the book, I think, that will come. I think it is going to be available for sales one, and then we'll do webinars with the HDR and things. I think what I'm most focused now, is I want to build this new consulting. I could be a freelance, and I know there's hundreds of freelance thousands, but I thought I want to take a take on the big consulting firms.
 
 I think the big PWCs, the lawyers, the McKinsey, the this big firms who have been so successful and take advantage of I think there is a way to disrupt the consulting business. So I think it's very ambitious, but working in the projects in COVID is a network. A bit like you're doing 500. To get the best people and go to an organization list, and we're going to help you to transform prices fast. Right?
 
 And it's going to cost you prices less cost. So we're not here to make huge amount of money to help you and build your transformation muscle. You need to have it on your own. You don't need to rely on me. So that's kind of my bigger kind of target now is how can we disrupt the big consulting market so that we can generate more value for organizations.
 
 That's projects we call, and that's what we now busy on how to get into organizations too with this concept. Yeah.
 
 Kaihan Krippendorff: I love it. I love it. Excellent. And so if people wanna follow you, what's the best way to do that?
 
 Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez: Linkedin is always is the number one. You see? And then I have my to websites, antonioietorodriguez.com, and then projectsandco.com.
 
 Kaihan Krippendorff: Okay. Antonio, thank you so much for taking the time to share a little bit of the work that you do. Thanks for doing all this work for us and the impact that it is happening on organizations and industries and society is really profound, and we are grateful for you to sit down with us for a little bit. Thank you.
 
 Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez: Thank you for what you're doing and with Outthinkers and all the other stuff. As well. I know you're doing a lot, so thank you for that.