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NEWS ANALYSIS
What entrepreneurs need Priya Lakhani, Power of Projects keynote speaker, on the project skills that drove her AI business’s success
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arrister turned entrepreneur Priya Lakhani is founder and CEO of Century Tech, an artificial intelligence (AI) education technology company. She told Project how project managers have become key to the business’s fast growth. Out of a team of 80, the scaleup now employs four project managers.
Complementary skills An entrepreneur reaches for the stars, but it is the project manager who develops and implements a business development team’s innovative ideas, she explained. While her team might have an ideas-filled initial conversation with a potential partner, it will be the second conversation, when one of their project managers comes along to capture all the important parts of the conversation about what might be delivered and create a critical path, that is pivotal. “They add structure to what is otherwise a mad conversation,” Lakhani explained. “It suits us as a scale-up that the team will get involved at the beginning of a conversation with a partner so that expectations are met on both sides. You are then much more likely to have a happier relationship, because you’ve got that structure around a particular project. If they are in-house project managers, they will have executed a project that is quite similar, and they bring a great deal of knowledge and a level of realism. That’s really important, because it de-risks your project – it adds a layer of certainty. “For entrepreneurs, it is a fantastic complementary skill set: you’ve got your business development team who like to innovate and then you’ve got somebody
“Every company is a technology company, so it is up to everybody to understand the technology” who can say, ‘Well, let me show you what it actually looks like in practice’. You can then resource up in advance so that you don’t just sign a contract and then think: how do I now execute this on time?”
other areas where it might be applied to make the customer even happier. If you don’t understand it, you can’t possibly do that. It’s about understanding the technology, because it will be applied at some point within a project you will do.”
Must-have attributes
What might the future hold?
Lakhani expects project managers to have an open mind and an ability to work with fast-thinking ideas people. This must be complemented by “an absolutely meticulous methodology”. With the accelerated use of new technology and AI, Lakhani said project professionals need to adapt. “Every person must understand this technology. Every company is a technology company, so it is up to everybody to understand the technology. If you don’t, you can’t fully think about the challenges posed by the technology, and where there is further opportunity. “As a project manager, you might be executing something that someone else has come up with, but it is a really good idea to be able to understand the technology so that you can think of
While Lakhani admitted it is difficult to make predictions about future trends due to the pandemic, she says that: “Every project manager would have learnt a lot in the last year, because their typical practices and processes would have changed. The last year has taught us that we need to adapt to any situation that is thrown at us, and there are some project managers who have used it as an opportunity to enjoy the ability to adapt.” Does she have any advice for project managers seeking a career in an entrepreneurial business? “The pandemic has proven that technology is crucial, so just don’t take your finger off – make sure you understand it, because it is crucial to everyone’s role,” she said. O Visit apm.org.uk to view on-demand content from the Power of Projects conference
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