Presentation to the Sydney Project Managers Group on 20th February 2013. This presentation looks at the trends that give indications of the what the organisation of the future will look like and identifies implications for the role of project managers.

1. Project Managers in the
Organisation of the
© 2012 Copyright Bryan Fenech
Future
Bryan Fenech

2. Who am I?
• Founder – Building
the Organisation of
the Tomorrow
(BOOT) Forum
© 2012 Copyright Bryan Fenech
• Speaker, researcher
and consultant –
Business
Transformation
Programs, PPM

3. Key themes
• What does the organisation of the future look like?
• What is the role of Project Managers in the organisation of the
future?
• What are the implications for us now?
© 2012 Copyright Bryan Fenech

4. Organisation of the future
• Research across a Determines
• Environment and Context
number of
• Enterprise Logic
dimensions to get a Frames
comprehensive
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• Strategic Imperatives
picture Requires
• A comparative study Facilitated by
• Key Capabilities
to give context –
• Governance, Leadership and
traditional versus Enabled by Social Practices
future organisation
• Structure

5. Environment and context
Traditional Organisation Organisation of the Future
A socio-economic era built on the A socio-economic era built on the
technological breakthroughs of the technological breakthroughs of the ICT
industrial revolution revolution (and now robotics and
© 2012 Copyright Bryan Fenech
biotech)
Increasing globalisation – opening up Unprecedented globalization –
of vast new markets for products and competition, dynamic and volatile
services markets, short product lifecycles
A world of unlimited resources to be A world of limited resources to be
exploited – the New World, Africa, conserved and sustained
India, China and the East
Positivism as the dominant worldview Constructivism as a challenge to the
dominant positivist world view

6. Enterprise logic
Traditional Organisation Organisation of the Future
Raison d’etre – a vehicle for achieving Raison d’etre – a vehicle for
personal financial wealth and power achieving social as well as financial
value and meeting a broad range of
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objectives
Beneficiaries – a narrow set of Beneficiaries – a broad range of
shareholders, the capitalist project stakeholders, the social enterprise
project

7. Strategic imperatives
Traditional Organisation Organisation of the Future
Standardisation and repeatability – Differentiation and innovation – mass
mass production customisation
Size and stability Nimbleness, flexibility and
© 2012 Copyright Bryan Fenech
responsiveness
A relentless managerial focus on cost A relentless leadership focus on
containment, reducing unit costs investment in new products and
services
Economies of scale Economies of scope
“Sweating” value from tangible assets Creating value in intangible assets –
– property, plant and machinery knowledge and the social capital that
underpins it
Beating the competition Building strategic alliances and
partnerships

8. Key capabilities
Traditional Organisation Organisation of the Future
Strategy formulation Strategy implementation
Operational management Project management
Development and application of The commoditisation of specialist
© 2012 Copyright Bryan Fenech
specialist technical knowledge technical knowledge and the need to
dynamically reconfigure and apply
collaborative knowledge resources –
“dynamic capabilities” and “absorptive
capacity”
Management – causal rationality, from Leadership and entrepreneurialism –
a pre-determined goal and given set of effectual reasoning, from a given set of
means identify the fastest, cheapest, means allow goals to emerge
most efficient etc contingently over time

9. Governance, leadership and
social practices
Traditional Organisation Organisation of the Future
Application of principles of command Application of principles of market
and control economics to internal economics to internal organisation –
organisation – central control of devolving of power and decision
© 2012 Copyright Bryan Fenech
resources and planning making and free flow of resources
Management practices embedded with Leadership practices embedded with
the strategic intent of command and the strategic intent of empowerment
control and facilitation
Rules based on rational legalistic A negotiated order based on principles
principles – sine ira ac studio of community, and renewal practices
required to manage sustainability and
success
Centralised leadership Distributed leadership

10. Structure
Traditional Organisation Organisation of the Future
Bureaucracy, hierarchy Networked, cellular
Segregation of labour by discipline into Integration of labour into autonomous
functional silos multi-disciplinary teams
© 2012 Copyright Bryan Fenech

11. Some other ideas
• 3 things to consider
• The OOTF as an emergent and political phenomenon
• The signification of hierarchy with structure as a justification for
retaining layers of management – the “semi-structured
organisation”
© 2013 Copyright Bryan Fenech
• Ambidexterity and matrix organisation as reactionary expressions

12. Questions
© 2012 Copyright Bryan Fenech

13. References
• Dovey, K. & Fenech, B. 2007, The role of enterprise logic in the failure of
organisations to learn and transform, Management Learning, vol. 38 no. 5, pp
573-590
• Hamel, G. 2011, “First, Let’s Fire All the Managers”, Harvard Business Review,
December
• Ramsey, M & Barkhuizen, N 2011, Organisational design elements and
competencies for optimising the expertise of knowledge workers in a shared
© 2013 Copyright Bryan Fenech
services centre, SA Journal of Human Resource Management, 9(1), Art. #307, 15
pages
• Tissen, R. & Deprez, F. L. 2008, Toward a spatial theory of organisations: creating
new organizational forms to improve business performance, NRG Working Paper
no. 08-04
• Acemoglu, D. & Robinson, J. A. 2012, Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power,
Prosperity and Poverty, Profile Books, London.
• Bakan, A. 2005, The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power,
Free Press, New York.
• Herman, E. S. & Chomsky, N. 2008, Manufacturing Consent: The Political
Economy of the Mass Media, The Bodley Head, London.
• Stiglitz, J. E. 2010, Freefall: America, Free Markets and the Sinking of the World
Economy, Norton and Company, New York