Project approach to work is dead

If you try to come up with the most banal phrase of modern business literature, then perhaps this will turn out. “The corporations of the future are similar to the orchestra, as Peter Drucker believed, or to the film crew of the film. A group of cameramen, directors, actors and technicians is going for a specific project, after which - thank you all, everyone fled, ”writes Netscape creator Mark Andreissen in his blog. Tom Peters and Kjell Nordstrom stand in solidarity with him. The idea that companies should turn into short-term project groups became almost the official ideology of the business guru — like the discourse on “developed socialism” in the Soviet ideology of the 1970s. Under these conditions, loyalty phrases, beloved by corporate HR companies, “advanced” journalists meet with a quiet cynical laugh: to demand loyalty to the company from an employee is as meaningless as from an actor - loyalty to the pavilion where the film was made.

The principle of the company Pixar looks like a paradox against the background of these theories: one of the most innovative film industry organizations decided to abandon the contract-project method of cooperation characteristic of Hollywood. In Pixar, directors or programmers do not come to work on a single film, but participate simultaneously in several projects and continue to work in the company after their completion. The result - almost every Pixar film, starting with the first, “The Story of a Toy,” and ending with the recent hit Wall-E, becomes a blockbuster. The creator of Fast Company magazine, William Taylor, defines Pixar as “a tightly knit group of supporters who learn from each other and improve their work with each new film.” A company is considered to be good form if any employee, from director to technician, spends up to four hours a week at Pixar Corporate University, which has one of the best cinema curriculum programs in the United States.

The secret of their success in the company is considered the refusal of the contract system adopted in Hollywood. “Contracts make an employee irresponsible to the company,” said Pixar University Dean Randy Nelson. In his opinion, all the talk about the “project approach” is complete nonsense, a legacy of the time when the corporation was just a place of work. If a company from a place of work turns into a community of people who have something to learn from, there is simply no need to leave.
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Source: The Secret of the Firm magazine