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Movies are a fantastic metaphor to describe the relationship between projects and team members. Every great movie has a compelling story, one people really want to follow. Every great movie has a cast of actors that contribute to the story with their own specific properties.
But what about the organizations in which the projects take place?
I got the answer to that question at an unexpected place. John Kao is the author of “Innovation Nation” and he opened the PMI EMEA Congress last week in Milan with a highly inspiring keynote.
Photography by Alan Light.
As Project Managers we will find ourselves “managing a culture of temporariness.” He explained that Google for instance is nothing more than a large bag of projects. In Tom Peters style: organizations are nothing more than an empty vehicle to facilitate the execution of a large set of temporary endeavors.
Kao used a metaphor to illustrate this that got me right of my seat. First of course, metaphor! But secondly, the one he used.
He illustrated this culture of temporariness with movie studios: Hollywood as a business model. The studios go from movie to movie. They create a culture and structure in which the creative talent is hired on a movie to movie base. And they put out movie after movie.
This struck me because I explained previously how a movie metaphor works for projects and the individual team members. It hasn’t occurred to me to extend this image to the level of the organizations: the studios!
In my opinion that would be a valuable addition. Thanks to John Kao.