BNY Mellon

The digitalization of business models has been the focus of much discussion recently. Organizations are changing the way they have to conduct business as the shift to a platform economy brings technology and consumers even closer. We all know how this disruption is occurring in the consumer arena and benefit from it, but what is less apparent is the change in the institutional space. Traditional methods and purpose are no longer viable in this digital economy and a new set of skills are required to support and lead transformation.

Take BNY Mellon, the closest example I can draw upon. Driving innovation within financial services for the past 233 years—ever since we were founded by Alexander Hamilton—now more than ever the vast opportunities and challenges created by digital innovation and acceleration are too great to ignore. This applies not only to the solutions and services we provide to clients and their stakeholders, but also to our operations in delivering best-in-class services.

For project management professionals, digital disruption is upturning the approach you need to take and highlighting considerations such as - what objectives (implicit and tacit) are end users expecting to accomplish? What extra insight can I provide over competitors? What skills do I need to manage risk and uncertainty in a digital world? How do I provide a meaningful and unique experience? How do I know and measure that I am solving the right problem?

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In response, you need to consider your environment, processes, platform, and people. Think about how the characteristics of disruption in other industries also apply to how you can be more effective and efficient. To start with, reconsider what it means to be truly agile. Agility is the key to adapting to digital disruption within any industry, but the question we need to ask is whether speed and flexibility are the defining traits of agility? In project management, you need to respond quickly to changes in corporate priorities and align with consumer expectations that shift constantly. Speed and flexibility will go a long way to responding quickly, but accuracy is imperative. To do this, engagement is perhaps a more important trait. At our innovation center in Singapore, we apply real agile methods and design thinking to understand and solve the client’s problem at every stage of the process and build in feedback loops at every stage to ensure we are able to generate insights that help address the questions above. To be truly agile is to engage the client at every stage of the process to offer solutions and build upon these throughout the journey.

Next, think carefully about the processes you currently undertake and measure effectiveness as well as efficiency. Think from the viewpoint of the client, not the process, and establish the outcome you are looking for. If you can empathize and define the challenge from the user’s standpoint, you then have an opportunity to self-disrupt and give your client something innovative that addresses their unique set of needs. Within this cycle you also need to measure and validate all outcomes, the concept of validated learning and giving your teams the room to fail fast and learn can result in a more beneficial and useful outcomes.

Lastly, rethink how your team works and how moving to a service-based culture and delivery can help create a decentralized model of working. Decompose your processes into separate services and empower the team to own their own services. Giving individuals the autonomy to respond quickly to client feedback, the power to decide how much the service costs, and how well it works can create an agile corporate culture. Leaders should provide an overview, governance, and enterprise architecture to follow, but essentially the management of the project should be fluid with a core base.

Project management in the age of digital disruption requires a rethink of traditional processes and standards. Being agile enough to accept and adapt to change at any time will differentiate your team in the digital era.