Elmar Roberg takes a close-up view of change management

If project management – or the management of change – is not a completely different type of management, it should be.

In the early 1980s, whenever we presented a course on project management, invariably we would draw a picture of a triangle representing the organisation. It would be a triangle with the pinnacle representing the managing director as the very top.

We would then show how the organisation was divided into levels representing the executives, the divisional and then departmental and section managers, and so on down the organisation.

Then we would draw vertical lines showing how the organisation was divided into operational themes or streams – marketing, manufacturing, sales, finance, and so forth.

We then spoke about how this created “operational islands” within the organisation where the actual work of the organisation was performed.

This, we would tell our audience, is merely one reason why project management is difficult. This is because projects tend to cut across organisational boundaries – horizontal and vertical.

This is one reason why projects fail, we would tell our audience. And fail they do. Far too often for reasonable, rational people to continue to engage in such activity.

So why do they (people) engage in activity that fails so often?

Because they must.

I read somewhere that the total world gross domestic product (before the 2008 meltdown) was somewhere in the order of US$75 trillion.

More significantly, about one-third of that is spent in change of some or other sort. That, I reckon, is quite a good reason why we should get this job off right.

But, back to our operational islands: once we had drawn our diagram, we would tell the group about span of control – about how a manager in one of the themes could not instruct people in another theme. Information and control had to flow up the organisation until a common point was reached and back down again.

Sometimes, that common point was right at the pinnacle – the managing director or chief executive officer. Not the most efficient way of managing! Particularly if you are struggling with deadlines.

Since project managers are almost always struggling with deadlines, we created a rule: there must be a sponsor, and he/she should be the most senior person you can find.

This is the essence of project management: a project manager, who has no line authority, has to somehow get people – who are located on islands – up and down the organisation to stop what they are doing and devote time, energy, effort, thought and whatever else is necessary to project.

Is it not strange how the project manager, who may sometimes not even be an employee of the organisation, is often seen as the owner of the project? The one who is the disrupter of lives and demander of unnatural action?

Then, when it comes to performance review time, how many times is the project manager asked to provide input on the role the person played in the success (or failure) of the project? Or does the evaluee not rather end up having to justify his/her lack of performance in their regular job because of involvement in the project? Or worse, if the project fails, then this is a clear indication of their under-performance. Damned if you do; damned if you don’t.

In fact, usually the performance management system does not even have a place where the evaluator can tick a box relating to involvement in non-job function related work.

A change project is an error on the page that needs to be erased as quickly as possible so that we can get on with our normal work as soon as possible.

Then, there is another problem that we deal with: resistance to change. Despite the fact that the need for change is as inevitable as the proverbial death and taxes, most people have a built-in change resistor: they are. We even give them acronyms: NIMBY (not in my back yard). Anywhere but here.

Yet, this should be strange. Apart from the fact that the world is changing continually – even the proverbial rocks and mountains weather – growth (particularly positive) without change is an impossibility.

Most people will agree, grudgingly, that change is necessary, and then do everything in their power to prevent it.

A study conducted more than 20 years ago showed that in the most dynamic of professions – information and systems technology – it takes roughly 18 years for a good practice generally to be accepted. Like it or not, the bell curve! (see Fig. 1 overleaf)

Yet, this is counter-intuitive. The purpose of new methods and approaches is to reduce overall risk; not to increase it.

Initially, the risk will be high (due to novelty – as Shenhar, Levi and Dvir showed in their “diamond”); but that is another thing that is like death and taxes – risk; so manage it.
(see Fig. 2 overleaf)

No matter what the change is, it is initially novel. Unfamiliar or new = novel. Duh.

Question is, how much of the initial risk is due to the in-built change resistors? You decide.

So, what is to be done?

Once, I was having a conversation with a colleague about how to be a successful project manager. As the conversation drifted backward and forward, my colleague stopped and thought for a moment, and then he said, “So, what you are telling me is that you manipulate people.”

This statement rocked me to my foundations: manipulation was vile in my opinion. And yet, is this not what was at the core of what I and other project managers did? Is that not what influence was all about?

I could not answer my colleague, even though I found the idea repulsive and could not stomach the idea that this was what I was doing. This dilemma bothered me for a long time.

Thankfully, in time I came across discussions in the literature that built a model which described the difference between ‘bad’ and ‘good’ (see Fig. 3 overleaf).

However, again due to a quirk in human nature, it appears that we naturally seem to tend to the contrary things (due to expediency?) and that we have to be taught to do the complementary things – a sort of psychological entropy – as every parent knows. Unless we consciously decide to act one way, the other will be the default. Or so it seems.

Or why else would a normal rational being engage in destructive habits such as substance abuse, when they are aware of the harm that comes from such behaviour?

The comparison between builder and manipulator provides another argument for why the management of change should be a completely different type of management.

Manipulators usually operate ‘below the radar’ – with stealth.

For lasting, productive change, we require visibility.

People need to know what it is they are doing, and why.

So long as the management of change remains a sort of murky “stuff that must be done while you are doing what you should be doing”, projects will continue to live down to high failure rates.

Reference:

Shenhar AJ, Levy O. and Dvir D., 1997. “Mapping the Dimensions of Project Success”, Project Management Journal, Vol. 28, No. 2, June, pp. 11-12

Figure 1

Figure 2

Figure 3

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