Business Management Practices: Out with the Old, In with the New

So here we are, on the threshold of the first year of a new decade.

Wow, that was fast.

Yes folks, that new car smell may have already faded from the 21st century, but the tires and upholstery are still in pretty good shape. Let’s change the oil and move on.

As I loudly sang ‘Auld Lang Syne’ the other night, I found myself nagged by the fact that I still had no idea what that meant. If you believe everything you read on Wikipedia, the phrase is interchangeable with ‘once upon a time,’ or alternatively, ‘a long time ago in a galaxy far, far, away…’ Nevertheless, let us take stock in what the last decade provided us in business management terms, and prognosticate what we have to look forward to.

Retrospect

We began 2000 with an immediate sigh of relief that the technological world did not screech to an abrupt halt and ended 2009 thankful that the world economy didn’t either (so far). Perhaps history books will characterize the recession as Y2.1K.

In between, we commoditized and became wholly dependent upon computer technology. We quickly shed our dial-up accounts for broadband. Then we globalized business and as a result, we transferred a massive amount of wealth from one side of the globe to the other.

As the world got flat so did our TV and monitor screens. The personal computing capability that we began the decade with is now in our pockets. We are now virtual, on-demand and real time. We de-regulated, re-regulated, de-regulated some more and are now re-regulating (Remember SOX?). We also transitioned from data warehousing to performance management. We traded in 1.44 megabyte floppy disks for 256 gigabyte thumb drives, and quit folding maps in favor of GPS. We went from socializing to social media.

In many respects, the last decade saw the rise and fall of project management; the practice was in its heyday though most of the decade, but it too is now increasingly being treated as a commoditized skill set in favor of asking bigger questions, such as “Why are we doing this?” I could have just as easily themed this post as “out with the tactical, in with the strategic,” eh?

Circumspect

For all of the technological advances and changes of the last ten years, many of the top business management issues remain remarkably consistent. These include compliance, governance, organizational alignment, prioritization, communications, information and knowledge management, performance management and resource and demand management. In other words, even though the airframe of business is now fly-by-wire, it seems our piloting skills are not quite keeping up.

Prospect

So, what lies before us in this, the coming decade? From a business management and PMO perspective, I predict…

1. Cross-functional business integration will become a key consideration for managing the continued onslaught of change as a seamless series of routine events.
2. This will drive continued end-user transparency between different applications and platforms, ultimately merging them into a single super-system.
3. The PMO as we understand it will be known by another term. It will be institutionalized as an integral part of the corporate organization structure. It will own business integration and manage the associated system(s) and information.
4. Eventually, this function will merge with IS, finance and HR to provide overarching corporate systems information, automation and coordination.

Disclaimer: This assumes the Mayan calendar has been wildly misinterpreted by Hollywood.

If we do not at least partially accomplish these items, then the top business issues in 2020 will include: compliance, governance, organizational alignment, prioritization, communications, information and knowledge management, performance management and resource and demand management. Again.

And surely you’ll buy your pint cup!
And surely I’ll buy mine!
And we’ll take a cup o’ kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.

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