Pierre Hey, Ernesto, how are you CEO of PMI?
What brings you to Cannes?
Well, you know, I grew up in this country and I live in the
US now, but I've been coming back almost every year for the
last 1520 years to this event.
I used to work in a different industry, in the insights
industry.
So for us, of course, at the time was important to meet with
clients.
But thinking about what we do at PMI, which is basically, you
know, we're on a mission to help the world resolve a very simple
but universal problem, which is to increase project success.
You know, make projects successful.
Because we believe that small projects that may affect the
life of a few people, or very big projects that may affect the
lives or the future of humanity of the world of large
communities, if they're run well and responsibly, can have a very
positive effect.
And thinking about the evolution of the advertising industry, of
course, our roots are more in infrastructure construction,
aerospace, you know, those big industries where you're used to
run very large, very complex projects.
But thinking of the evolution of the advertising industry, which
is under pressure on margins, lot of complexity, fragmentation
of creative, fragmentation of media, the execution becomes
very difficult and very critical if you want to run a successful
advertising agency today.
So I thought this industry could take a little bit of learning
from other industries.
Great.
So tell us about the the challenges that you think are
specific to the advertising industry and where project
management can be very helpful to professionals in the space.
Obviously, you have to find the right method, the right
approach.
That depends on multiple factors, the size of the
project, the complexity of the project, the timeline you have,
whether you can plan or not plan so much.
But that is also true in many industries.
It's the same even today.
If you think of aerospace, used to be super planned, but now you
see all these companies coming up disrupting the industry by
working a very incremental, very iterative way.
So even for an industry like advertising that by nature has
to be very close to the consumers, close to society, has
to change very quickly and evolve.
There are some ways to manage these projects effectively.
Man, tell me something.
How do you embed creativity into project management?
You know, creativity and structure and discipline are not
two different things.
And if you think about it, I actually do not believe that you
unleash creativity by removing constraints.
I'm a great believer that when you create constraints, you
force creativity because you have to find the right way, the
right solution.
So creative people do not necessarily think about being
disciplined, but then when they start executing complex stuff,
they realize that being a little organized.
Thinking how you manage your stakeholders, for instance.
Thinking about how you go back to consumers regularly to avoid
following your own thoughts and then missing the point.
Thinking a little bit about risks, not in a negative way,
but thinking of how you can mitigate, maybe anticipate and
be ready in case something bad happens.
All that, all these skills are useful and you can learn these
skills.
Of course, you can learn that practice works.
But at PMI, of course we provide continuous education,
professional certifications, the community that supports you,
events, membership, of course platforms, AI base.
Now that helps you do your job.
So we provide all the services to organisations, to companies
and to professionals.
What are you most excited about for PMI?
For the future of PMI?
You know, for us, we've been very successful, especially
lately.
Our growth has actually increased worldwide, in all
regions of the world.
We're growing double digit right now.
I think it's mostly because everybody's worried about the
future of work, how professions will be transformed.
And we've been lucky enough to lead the transformation of
project management through AI.
We've launched multiple training products platforms, and we
believe that this transformation of project management through AI
is currently driving not only a change in the nature of the work
that people do, but also it's a fantastic opportunity because AI
transformation means that all organizations, all companies
will have big projects to transform just like you manage
many of them at BCG as well.
And whenever there is transformation, there's a
project, you know, and there's a lot of work for project
managers.
So I feel very optimistic and excited by that.
That's why thank you for stopping by.
Thank you.