The future of project management and leading organizations to become agile

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This morning I gave the opening keynote at the Project Management Institute NZ Annual Conference on The Future of Project Management.

My keynote covered the fundamental trends shaping business, government, and projects, the changing nature of work and organizations, the new capabilities required by project leaders, and the nature of leadership for the future.

You can see the slides to my presentation here. Below is a summary of one of the core ideas I shared.
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Launch of Governance for Transformation Framework

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In a rapidly changing world, it is a truism that every organization must be transforming itself for the future.

Yet that is deeply challenging, not least because every organization, especially any with external investors, is framed by governance, oversight structures to ensure value to stakeholders.

Governance is essential, yet governance must not block transformation or it will destroy the organization. Governance must be an enabler of transformation.
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Seven Ways Boards Can Support and Drive Innovation

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I wrote an article for the most recent issue of Company Director magazine on seven ways boards can support and drive innovation.

The slightly edited final version is on the Company Director website. The full original text is below.

How Boards Can Support and Drive Innovation

One sixth of Australian businesses with a turnover of over $10 million in 2014 did not exist four years later. In some cases that was due to classic reasons such as cashflow management challenges, over-extension or project mis-management. However an increasing proportion of corporate failures is due to insufficient response to changes in the operating environment, including rapid technological progress, shifts in social attitudes and consumer behaviour and disruption from new business models.
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The potential beyond the threshold of space tourism: hypersonic travel, solar system colonization and more

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I was just interviewed on ABC TV about the news that Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic is going public through a merger with Social Capital Hedosophia, to be the first publicly listed space tourism company. A video of the interview is below.

In the billionaire space race, featuring most prominently Elon Musk’s SpaceX, Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin, and Richard Branson with Virgin Galactic, these visionaries are seeking to tap the potential of the space business.
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New visual framework: Creating the Future of PR in a rapidly changing world

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In 2006 I wrote a popular article Six Facets of the Future of PR, which concluded:

We are entering a world in which the flow of information and perceptions will drive much of the value creation in a highly networked global economy. The PR industry should be looking forward to a time of massive prosperity, in which it extends itself to play in entirely new fields of media and communication. Yet many of the existing participants will need to adopt a new stance and actively develop new skills to do this effectively. Those that re-conceive their role and potential impact, could well be masters of the universe.

As I anticipated, as the marketing and PR landscape has evolved over the last dozen years, some firms that were traditionally in the PR space have been very successful in transitioning to a new positioning, while others have been left far behind in a rapidly changing world.
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Be your own futurist: imagine a new landscape and reinvent yourself

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The latest issue of Business View magazine, themed The Future of Business, includes a concluding article that distills key points from an interview with me.

Click on the article image left to expand or read below.

We all need to be futurists

Change is all around and it’s getting faster. The chairman of think-tank Future Exploration Network says the most successful businesses of the future will be those that embrace change and are genuinely excited about innovation.

Futurist, keynote speaker and business strategist Ross Dawson has consulted for global organisations including Ernst & Young and Procter & Gamble. He outlines how today’s business leaders can set themselves up to thrive on what could be a disruptive road ahead.
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The power of the supplier diversity movement and its compelling future

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By now we have extensive evidence that supporting diversity in society and business is not just the right thing to do, it significantly improves outcomes.

In organizations a primary focus of diversity and inclusion initiatives is of course on employees, senior management, and board members. However for many sound reasons it is also critical to focus on diversity of suppliers.

As such I was deeply honored to give the closing keynote at the annual Supply Nation Connect Conference last week in Sydney.
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How virtual assistants will build knowledge-based relationships based on trust

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I was recently interviewed for an article in CMO.com on major trends for marketers in the mobile space.

In the interview I discussed the role and scope of digital assistants, though just a few of my more prosaic comments that relate to marketing were quoted.
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Exploring the Future Ep8: Platform strategy as enabling ecosystems

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My latest vlog was made at the EU Cloud Stakeholder Summit in Vienna, where I gave a keynote on Platform Strategy.

In the vlog I discuss the idea of platforms as trust-enabled ecosystems, which I believe is an important frame for how we think strategically about the power of platforms. See here for more on platform strategy and the framework I released at the summit.

Transcript below.

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Why a future of efficient capital markets matters and how we’ll get there

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I recently gave a keynote in Dubai at The World in the Future conference, organised by the Ministry of Finance as part of the Dubai government’s Innovation Month. The event timeframe was 30 years in the future, showing an appetite for foresight very unusual from governments.

The event kickoff brought together three featured speakers – physicist and futurist Michio Kaku, trend watcher Daniel Levine, and myself – who each delivered a keynote and then joined a panel discussion.
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