The next phase of work requires an intentional focus on the workplace and the employee’s workplace experience. The focus must shift to creating an UX in the workplace to create the optimum employee experience across technology, workspace, policy and management. Organisations may say they care about their staff, but caring isn’t the same as understanding the needs and designing a workplace that creates an unique experience.
The future of sustainability and wellness is achieving a restorative and regenerative economy as we are in the age of the Anthropocene- when human activities started to have a significant global impact on Earth's ecosystems. For the past century, we have been digging things out of the ground, turn them into products / materials that last from minutes to a few years at most, and then stick them back into the ground as landfill. We are NOT making the world sustainable through our linear approach to sustainability.
The AEC industry to stay relevant must come up an industrial system that is, by design and intention is restorative, using material/resources (either in a bio-cycle or in a techno-cycle) and applying materials /resources designed for multiple use cycles, at high quality. The AEC Industry must take a radical, restorative, regenerative approach to way we conduct business. We must move away from the way we do business which is deeply rooted in a linear approach to growth - make, use, dispose. We should design and build buildings that reuse components and structures that can be extracted without damage and at low cost?
This will require us an industry asking ourselves the question: Does this mean we must start from scratch and redesign everything we do today. Yes, this will require making changes that require new workflows, new training, and evangelism and commitment to from builders and owners the long-term benefits of transforming how buildings and communities are designed, constructed, maintained and operated across the globe.
In our pursuit to succeed more and more of us are faking it and convincing themselves that it is okay to fake it till you make it. Too many are not true to one's own personality, spirit, or character or true to their experience in work-life. We have many lives and many roles we play in our life and to succeed we have adapted ourselves to various roles and have evolved and transformed ourselves through the experience we go through in our work-life.
The question that begs to be asked is do we have leaders in government that are authentic enough to guide us though this unprecedented policy challenges and do we have leaders in our business and workplace who are authentic to guide to the unprecedented changes that are coming to our work and workplaces?
Our method of engaging clients is chained to the past. We need to move forward into the future by creating collaborative value networks as customers and client have changed. They have changed geographically and across the globe. Our clients have changed in a global environment where rapid advancement of technology and new business models have been introduced and business disruption is the new normal and society and technology growing at a faster pace than organisation and corporation can adapt.
Our clients through social media are already informed of the services and products they require and are now looking for value and customer experience in the services and products they require. Their paths to purchase have changed. In the old approach the customer was at the bottom of the chain. In the new approach of creating collaborative value networks, our focus is the customer and the customer / client is the centre point. The focus on the client /customer will encourage collaboration and dialogue leading to redefining of services and products.
Changing to a collaborative value networks means removing the traditional constraint in our business and the way we engage and work with our clients. Not changing is not an option anymore. If organisations do not change the consequence is stark. Organisation who understand value creation and craft client experience and change, will in the long term end up with organisations that are more adaptable and agile business creating trust and transparency with their clients.
Change is the constant - a refrain we have heard repeatedly till you read it and shrug your shoulders and move on with life. However, change is something we all must deal with; confront or learn to live with.
With work and the workplace, as we know, slowly but steady mutating into something we are not familiar with and we cannot possibly identify with, change is inevitable.
In our digital world where rapid advancement of technology and new business models are being introduced and business disruption is the new normal and society and technology growing at a faster pace than organisation and corporation. Where the survival of the fittest is the key as life span of companies are limited if they are not evolving will generate change in our workplace and the business.
The future of our work and workplace is going to be intersecting with automation technologies and artificial intelligence - deep learning technological advances which are incredibly meaningful and will revolutionize the commercial interactions and expand possibilities of new type of jobs that were unimaginable before the technology.
There is no escaping change, especially as the way we work is also undergoing massive change, where mobility and digital sophistication becomes a key requirement in the workplace and redefining how organization works commercially and culturally to deliver genuine customer experience
How we handle or tackle these changes will determine how we successfully adapt to change. True, we all have our own ways to handle change. Some of us handle it well and some of us do not handle it well.
The way we work is also undergoing massive change, where mobility and digital sophistication becomes a key requirement in the workplace and redefining how organization works commercially and culturally to deliver genuine customer experience. The workplace is digitally being disrupted – “The fourth industrial revolution is creating prospects of a future that few fully comprehend, but the implications for the world of work are already taking shape”. More and more of our work is done collaboratively, securely and productively. There is no doubt that the relationship between technology and humanity is changing very fast and it is shaping the way we work. The future of work is slowly creeping into our collective psychic in the workplace
The integration of digital into organisations; corporations; government; associations will continue relentlessly as leaders remove the barriers that are keeping them from maximizing the potential impact of new digital technologies driving growth in a connected world though an “enhanced customer experience".
The success of implementing a customer /client/ user experience is linking the customer experience to value - value created by an customer experience.
User / customer / client experience is not just limited to the digital or retail environment, it extends to every aspect of every business that exist today and its survival depends on deliver an user / customer / client experience.
Canada’s reliance on the resource is not easy to escape; our economic policies and our economic engine has for decades been fuelled (no pun intended) by the resource industry but we have to read the writing on the wall and understand and recognise that there is an elephant in the room, the obvious is not being addressed; we need to understand that the economic competitiveness and sustained economic growth & development in the future rests on talent, technology, and tolerance.
It is obvious we in the western world we need to do more and especially as we design and manufacture products we need to look at the circularity of the product to keep every part of the product away from the landfill.
We have to admit that we in the North American Continent have a first world problem of our shallow objects of desire are creating a heap of throw away waste. Our western society is drowning in objects that are purchased and thrown away shallow objects of desire. We have an incredible opportunity to seize the moment, let’s reinvent our business models and create sustainable abundance.
To be truly experience driven, we must continue to explore ways to wire our projects differently. Every experience is an opportunity to win or lose a client. These journeys need to be actively managed, measured, and nurtured.
How well project managers are able to do that will dictate how successful they are in making customer journeys a competitive advantage.
Context recognition and understanding and acting on it, is critical to effective project delivery. The key then is to develop a habit of context awareness. In being aware, you can anticipate changes to your project environment. In this way, you're always thinking just one step ahead in any given situation or environment, and can be able to adapt accordingly. Cultivating this skill is especially helpful when your project context may shift or change in subtle or major ways, or in an instant in a project.
Our ever increasing digital, global environment is shaping the world in which we work, but more than that, it is shaping the evolution of organisation through its influence on the workplace forcing business leaders have to rethink the future vision of teh workplACE.
Is your organisation evolving towards the untethered workplace? I would like to hear from you.
The crafting of client / customer experience or rather human customer-centric is not going to be restricted to just products and services it will be crafted in the “untethered workplace” too before long. The customer journey crafted for their clients will flow into the workplaces of these organisations that are changing to embrace complex change to succeed in the dizzy change of the digital economy, lest they be outpaced by those that understand how to embrace change.
Project management professionals must be leaders, who can bring experience to the project while he or she inspire, motivate, negotiate and communicate – a good listener to be successful. Experienced project leaders therefore, must be communicators and ingratiaters who can make quick and clear-minded decisions in the middle of changing context of the project and respond extremely quickly to competition, customers and market dynamics.
What has been your experience in project management? I would love to hear from you.
We talk more about success and are quick to celebrate success while avoid talking about failure. By avoiding nor considering the reason for the failure or learn from the failures of our concept, initiatives, ideas and strategy is a missed opportunity. We need our teams to experiment, facilitate failure within reason and cultivate the spirit of entrepreneurship and I turn learn from these experience and excel.
Our ever increasing digital, global environment is shaping the world in which we work, but more than that, it is shaping the evolution of business through its influence on the workplace and the organization itself.
In this increasing digital, global environment business leaders are finding new ways to compete in an era of unprecedented digital change. Business leaders have to rethink the business as the type of change is reshaping the relationship between customers and companies, breaking down the walls between industry sectors.
In this chaotic yet productive business environment where organizations are just learning to adapt,
"the biggest challenge is to envision, create and deploy “the untethered workplace” where thousands of people know what to do, cooperate to get it done, and experience it as personally fulfilling".
Is your organization moving towards the untethered workplace? I love to hear from you.
An enhanced customer experience, the result of a designed customer journey will be the differentiator from other providing similar project service. Designing a customer experience in projects require us to transform the way we “engage our clients” and transforming the way we “engage our teams”.
Are our projects making our clients successful? Are we making them competitive; are we enabling them to get their products & services in time to market while they focus in their core business and strengths? These are some questions we need to ask ourselves and our team.
Firms that do not change to meet the expectation of the customers and clients of the digital age in a slow growth economy will find themselves disrupted. It will only be a matter of time. As Brian Solis states: “There will be an Uber for every industry”
Our premise of a sustainable environment are based on the three Rs- reduce, reuse and recycle. Does this building I toured last week meet that criteria? Yes, it does where res-use is concerned as it it has been sustainability built into it - reducing waste in many forms and sustainable process was used in building it.
However, it barely meets the other two "Rs" - reuse and recycle. Very little of the sustainable materiel will be reused nor recyclable. The good sustainable material that went into constructing the building would in effect will go to waste when the building has run through its life cycle some decades from now as it is not designed to be recycled or reuse.
My question to you: will the designers; engineers and builders of the built environment can be silent observers any more? we need to central and elemental is the workings of making the world sustainable?
The future of building will be based on how we answer their question:
How will you reuse components into structures that can be extracted without damage and at low cost?
This unique and deeply embedded culture and practise of transferring risk downstream is of serious concern for Project Managers such as myself who are contracted to deliver projects on time; on budget and on scope. A few who I conferred with in my network in the AEC Industry clear understand the benefits of changing this process which results in transparency and accountability in the industry. I will be implementing these changes on my next project in the New Year and will report back on the benefits of the changed- Changed Thinking leading to a Changed Outcome.
