Society rings in changes to project management style

In the first of a series of three articles, we will discuss the implications of so-called Generations Theory for the project manager.

In this first article, we will discuss the background and describe the main protagonists.

In the second, we will expand on the concepts with reference to examples and the implications thereof for society.

Finally, in the third article, we will attempt to describe the implications of this for project management in general and project managers in particular.

For example, it is common knowledge that some of the most important advances in project management theory were developed during World War 2. Are we on the cusp of a similar expansion in the discipline?

So what has the popular revolution in Egypt to do with project management?

Quite a lot, actually.

As we have discussed in previous columns, project managers live in change. We are thus supposed to be the intuitive masters of change and the ones best able to manage through it.

When any institution moves from a current stasis to a new stasis, the management techniques that are applied in routine operations simply do not cope with the needs of flux. Without project management, chaos, corruption and disorder become the order of the day.

But, back to Egypt.

According to Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, the baddies at the bottom of all this turmoil are the youth.

Now consider this: Many of our generation will remember, or at least know about, the Flower Children – the not-so-subtle revolution that occurred in the 1960s in most of the Western world.

In fact, 1968 was described by The Economist: Intelligent Life magazine as “the year the modern world was born” (March 2008).

A November Newsweek cover describes 1968 as “The year that made us who we are.”

Eminent historian Paul Johnson, in A History of the Modern World from 1917 to the 1980s (p646); and even Pope Benedict XVI, in his Introduction to Christianity (preface), have noted the significance of the period – specifically 1968.

Some in South Africa will mark two events as being the pivotal points that determined the end of apartheid – the Soweto uprising (school children protesting against the use of Afrikaans as teaching medium); and the use of conscripted young soldiers to maintain law and order in the
black townships.

The former is well documented in general historical material, and the latter in the book Voëlvry: The Movement That Rocked South Africa by Pat Hopkins, about the rise of alternative music as a form of protest.

The pattern is repeated elsewhere (not always for evolutionary purposes): the role of the Hitler-Jugend in Nazi Germany and Tiananmen Square in Beijing.

The old grey heads are seldom seen in the pictures and clips of these events. They are usually in the background calling for restraint, while it is the ‘hotheaded youth’ who provide the energy to these movements.

This begs the questions: Why these youths? Why these youths at this time?

Why were they not protesting in the ‘50s, or ‘80s, ‘90s or early 2000s in the West?

Of course, there are always groups such as Green Peace, but these are seldom popular movements.

It was questions such as these that caused historians Neil Howe and William Strauss to look back over the ages and identify a pattern, which they then called Generations Theory.

What they initially observed was that there seemed to be a repetition of similar attributes that flowed through time.

More detailed research then reinforced this and convinced them that these patterns repeated almost perfectly in 20-year chunks – from as far back as the 16th century in the United States and even longer in Europe.

The authors noticed the same in other cultural or regional groupings, such as northern, Central and southern Africa, China, southern Asia, Indo-China and so on.

Colloquially, the theory has entered into common use through familiar terms such as “Gen-X”, “Boomers”, “Silents” and so on – but how many realise that the theory is a remarkably accurate predictor of the challenges that project managers are likely to face into the future?

Project management is all about people – even “technical” projects such as research, construction and engineering.

All projects are initiated by people, they are conceived by people, run by people, planned by people, executed by people, paid for by people, approved by people – and cancelled or terminated by people.

For more than 20 years, I have been studying these people, asking just what it is that makes us tick.

My framework of choice has been Temperament Theory – or more popularly referred to as “personality typing”.

At one point, I counted more than 120 different variants – quite confusing!

However, I found one that worked best for me. It was the one I could model the most consistently in a practical sense.

What’s more, in the late 80s it was instrumental in saving a risky project at least a couple of times.

Since then, I have used Temperament Theory to describe the people problems in a project, and to describe the most effective team mix.

Of course, life is never perfect, and so it is not always possible to implement the proposals, but it does help to manage the attendant risks.

I am very interested in history and, at some point, I started noticing that different historical ages seemed to have a personality as well. This led me to reading in anthropology (which is to groups or cultures what psychology is to persons).

Thus, when I came across an article by Howe and Strauss in Harvard Business Review, things immediately clicked for me.

Subsequently, I discovered other interesting implementations of the Generations Theory in places such as a financial blog and surveys. (For more information, see the references at the end for some other examples.)

What is Generations Theory all about?

Two key contexts play a role: the one is the people who act out the events, and the environment or terroire (sense of place) in which they find themselves. (Actually, this is not a chance affair, since it is the prior generations who have created this environment.)

The people are grouped into archetypes, and the place in which they act are referred to as eras, initiated by turnings.

Generational archetypes

As we find so often in nature, there are four archetypes and four eras (ages or locations in history – what I prefer to call “terroire”, but I will stick to the standard nomenclature in this article).

Each of the four archetypes shares a similar era (age or location in history), as well as similar attitudes toward family, culture and values, risk, and involvement in society.

In terms of biological age, each archetype persona undergoes profound and characteristic changes. Each is spread over roughly 20 years. This corresponds to the research of developmental psychologists such as Jean Piaget.

There are four archetypes: Artist, Prophet, Nomad and Hero.

Each archetype passes through four stages or phases in life. The stages or phases vary by archetype.

Consider how the names and descriptors describe the phases through which an archetype passes:

The baby Prophet is typically born to sensitive Artists who indulge the young child, and since these Artists become increasingly indecisive as they become older, Prophet children enter into teens freed to be visionaries (“blue sky thinkers”) in young adulthood.

In turn, the visionary young parent Prophets, indulged as children, focus on achieving those dreams, which means long hours spent in developing careers and making money to live out the vision.

They sire latch-key children (Nomads) who learn to fend for themselves. The family structure takes second place (if it exists at all, other than as a legal or convenient arrangement with both parents working) so that the Prophets’ Nomad children experience a sense of abandonment.

As a consequence, these young adult Nomads are alienated from the values and ideals of their parents and grandparents and become more and more pragmatic in their thinking, opting for whatever works and they have little time for moralising.

These Nomads have a sense of knowing what is better for their children to ensure they do not suffer from the same sense of abandonment, and so they bring into the world overprotected Heroes.

Being protected, these young Heroes experience a sheltered life relatively untouched by the harsh realities of life and are thus ready to tackle any challenge that life may present.

According to Howe and Strauss, this is determined by the social role they play as they pass through life. The first four correspond roughly to the seasons in nature: spring, summer, autumn and winter.

The authors describe them as:

• Childhood (age 0–20): emphasis on growth – receiving nurture, acquiring values;
• Young adulthood (21–41): emphasis on vitality – serving institutions, testing values;
• Midlife (42–62): emphasis on power – managing institutions, applying values;
• Elderhood (63–83): emphasis on leadership – leading institutions, transferring values; and
• Late elderhood (84+): emphasis on dependence – receiving comfort from institutions, remembering values.

Howe and Strauss suggest that the eras they describe are typical for Americans, but that they may vary for other cultures.

In the case of Americans, they show a pattern back to the Revolution (late 1700s). They suggest that the actual birth age spans may be different in different cultures. (I think South Africa is closely correlated to the United States, if following it by a few years.)

Every now and then, it seems a big ‘reset’ button is pressed in history, which brings things back into sync. Think of World War 2 (not so much World War 1, which was predominantly a European and Western war), the Black Plague or the Reformation.

Generational eras or “turnings”

When the ancient sage and king, Solomon, says there is “nothing new under the sun”, he describes a world doomed to repeating cycles. Howe and Strauss call these “turnings”.

These eras are distinguished by common beliefs and thus behaviour, and because humans are social creatures, they influence each other, and these beliefs and behaviours tend to coagulate into a common historical location (what I refer to as “terroire”).

The authors believe these eras change roughly every 20 years (a “generation”, in their terms), and is thus a “turning” from one era to another.

They say that, “A society enters a turning once every 20 years or so, when all living generations begin to enter their next phases of life.

“Like archetypes and constellations, turnings come four to a saeculum (see definition at end of article), and always in the same order:

• “The first turning is a High. Old Prophets disappear, Nomads enter elderhood, Heroes enter midlife, Artists enter young adulthood – and a new generation of Prophets is born.
• The second turning is an Awakening. Old Nomads disappear, Heroes enter elderhood, Artists enter midlife, Prophets enter young adulthood – and a new generation of child Nomads is born.
• The third turning is an Unravelling. Old Heroes disappear, Artists enter elderhood, Prophets enter midlife, Nomads enter young adulthood – and a new generation of child Heroes is born.
• The fourth turning is a Crisis. Old Artists disappear, Prophets enter elderhood, Nomads enter midlife, Heroes enter young adulthood – a new generation of child Artists is born.”

The schematic below from Howe and Strauss describes how the generational eras develop.

Good times tend to result in decay. This results in an unravelling, which in turn leads to a crisis that shocks society into re-evaluation of its morals and values.

There typically follows a dictatorial (semi or full) period of rebuilding, based on very tightly held values (good or bad – consider the French and Russian revolutions, World War 2).

Once the rebuilding has reached a point, it tips over and then society becomes fat and happy and an unravelling occurs again, and so the cycle repeats itself.

Of course, each generation’s oldest and youngest are touched in different ways, but they still share much in common, though the demands on them may be quite different. Consider, for example, Nomads born in 1966 and those born in 1980, in relation to the “new South Africa”.

Each of these generations has a common perceived membership by which they define themselves.

“Perhaps the most important aspect of a generation’s self-perception is its sense of direction,” say Howe and Strauss. “Ortega once wrote that each generation is ‘a species of biological missile hurled into space at a given instant, with a certain velocity and direction’, which gives it a ‘pre-established vital trajectory’.

“Mannheim likewise referred to each generation’s sense of ‘essential destiny’. For some generations, this sense of destiny can be overwhelming.

“The cohesion of postwar GIs reflected a massive generational consensus about the world they wanted and were expected to build.

“Thomas Jefferson’s peers once felt the same way after the Revolution.

“Yet, for other generations, this sense of destiny is something quite different.

“The Silent see their work as smoothing out the harsh edges of life – a task reminiscent of Theodore Roosevelt’s ‘Progressive’ peers.

“Boomers see in themselves a mission of vision and values – a quest others accede to them, if begrudgingly.

“Abraham Lincoln’s generation was much the same.

“And Gen X-ers have come to expect little of themselves as a generation, a fact which itself has become part of their collective persona. A similar trait arose in the generations of George Washington and Dwight Eisenhower.”

Reactions to these shifts can vary enormously. (For example, we are currently undergoing such a shift – from Unravelling to Crisis.)

The event that can be terrifying to a 10-year old may be empowering to a 30-year old and inspiring to a 70-year old.

So, when you watch the events unfolding in North Africa and the Middle East, be less surprised.

As the Ancients used to say, “It has been written.” Perhaps it has.

Regardless, the suggestion is that we are in for some interesting times, and it is my hope to initiate the discussion on how to deal with them and traverse them without too much harm. 

Elmar Roberg

Roberg has almost 40 years’ experience managing projects, programmes and portfolios in a variety of industries.

He can be reached via e-mail: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

References

www.lifecourse.com: the website of Neil Howe and associates, one of the leading experts on the subject. Howe and Strauss co-authored the Harvard Business Review article, “The Next 20 Years: How Customer and Workforce Attitudes Will Evolve” (July/August 2007), and other books and articles.

www.generationaldynamics.com: Journalist, researcher and historian John J. Xenakis uses what he calls “Generational Dynamics” to make sense of the flow of history. He has a free ebook downloadable from the website, which is an excellent overview. He applies it especially to finance and investments.

http://pewsocialtrends.org: includes a host of surveys and other materials relating to generations.