Capacity and capability: the catalysts for change

APM’s Chief Executive Professor Adam Boddison on reigniting the latent project capacity in the workforce.

Too many parts of our society are fundamentally broken. There are first‑world countries with people living in poverty. War, conflict and political instability are constant issues. Social inequality seems to be getting worse. The combination of an energy crisis and a cost‑of‑living crisis is forcing some to choose between heating and eating. Climate change is already affecting us, with many concerned we have left it too late to do anything meaningful about it.

These problems are well known, but how do we get better at solving them? The UN has arguably led the way at a strategic global level with its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a “blueprint for peace and prosperity”. However, articulating the problem and knowing what needs to be done is not the same as actually putting the solutions in place. The hard reality is that fixing society’s issues and delivering the 17 SDGs requires major, coordinated change. And if there is a group of professionals who really understand how to deliver change effectively, it is project professionals.

In 2021, the strategy implementation scholar Antonio Nieto‑Rodriguez forecasted that the world would need 88 million project professionals by 2027. Given that the UK’s contribution to global GDP was 2% in 2022, one could argue this means we will need 1.76 million project professionals in the UK by 2027. The good news is that we might already have exceeded this target, with research undertaken by PwC in 2019 suggesting there were 2.13 million project professionals in the UK. The bad news is that many of these are not aware they are project professionals (in APM terms, they are ‘accidental project professionals’).

This means we are in an interesting position in terms of our project capacity in the UK. The debate around project capacity within the workforce has typically been based on the premise that we do not have enough project professionals. Indeed, recruitment challenges and a lack of project capacity are a regular feature of the conversations I have with those leading corporate organisations, although this is often related to geographical constraints.

Let’s consider an alternative perspective for a moment. Perhaps we do have sufficient capacity and our focus should instead be on ensuring all of these professionals understand they are in project‑related roles. The reason for doing this relates to the other catalyst of delivering change, which is capability. Once people are aware they are project professionals, they are likely to be more deliberate in undertaking project‑related professional development. This, in turn, builds project capability (and arguably capacity too) into the workforce.

It’s fair to ask the question about whether ‘accidental project professionals’ would want to be considered project professionals at all. Some believe (incorrectly in my opinion) that project professionals are all about paperwork and processes rather than delivery of change and benefits realisation. That said, the few ‘accidental project professionals’ I have talked to about this have found this insight about their roles to be a revelation. This may be anecdotal, but to quote Levelling‑up Secretary Michael Gove, “the plural of anecdote is data”, so we should certainly be mindful of this approach.

Returning to the issue of our broken society, I am absolutely convinced that project professionals have a vital role to play in delivering the scale and pace of change we need. However, it is project capacity and capability that are the catalysts for this change. Therefore, we need to reignite the latent project capacity within our workforce and invest significantly in developing project capability. There are many specific aspects to building project capacity and capability into the workforce, but here are a few areas that are strategic priorities from an APM perspective:

International collaboration is essential. Ultimately, the project profession is ‘one profession’ and so it’s important that APM aligns its efforts with its international siblings, notably the PMI (Project Management Institute) and IPMA (International Project Management Association).

The project profession must have relevance and prominence within non‑traditional project sectors.

We need to be adaptive on the balance we strike between technical excellence and strategy delivery. This will mean more chief project officers, more Chartered Project Professionals (ChPPs) and an increased ‘projectification’ of leadership. This is one of the reasons that APM has launched its 1/10/100 initiative, designed to accelerate us towards having 1,000 corporate partners, 10,000 ChPPs and 100,000 members.

It is important that the automation and predictive power of project data analytics dovetail with the human power of emotional intelligence and effective leadership. APM’s Data Advisory Group is helping to ensure we get this right.

Ultimately, we know that when projects succeed, society benefits. The next step is to ensure we have the capacity and capability within our workforce to make this a reality.