Are you ready to be a change smith?

Eddie Obeng on seeing through the fashions of change to forge project success.

Recently, we gave my father‑in‑law a copy of George Orwell’s Animal Farm. Orwell called it a fairy tale about revolution. The clue to how the story ends is in the word ‘revolve’, like a wheel returning to its starting point.

The animals of the farm overthrow the humans, adopting the slogan ‘Four Legs Good; Two Legs Bad’. After a while, that changes to ‘Four Legs Good; Two Legs Better’ and finally to ‘All animals are equal but some are more equal than others’. There is plenty of change – projects to repair mills and upgrade the farm – not to mention battles (more chaotic projects) and lots of hard work! The role of pig project managers was to enable the animals to do what humans had done previously. Each project was a success but, in the end, the overthrown humans return to rule the farm.

Does all change lead you back to where you began?

Not all change is improvement. With revolutionary change, although the projects are well run in an agile way with effective coordination, stakeholder engagement and de‑risking, the outcome may be undesirable, like a project version of ‘the operation was a complete success and the patient died’.

Not all projects lead to revolution. Have you noticed how over time you feel more or less the same person as your body clearly changes? You only feel like a new person if something, usually dramatic, causes you to transform. Has that ever happened to you? You’ll recall that you can barely remember the previous you. In transformational change the endpoint is not more of the same. To test if you are involved in transformation, just ask yourself if the vision, goals and approach can be well articulated. If the answer is yes, you are not in transformational change, just change.

You may begin with a level of certainty, but all transformation projects include a degree of ‘fog’ – unknown goals or methods. You must pass through a zone of high emotion, learning frantically to emerge alive on the other side. Your leadership skills will be tested and without superb stakeholder management you will flounder. Transformation demands change skills for three sets of projects. The first set is when defining goals and scope is straightforward and your coordination skills will be useful. The second set is about setting up ‘scaffolding’ for constructing the new or removing the soon‑to‑be‑obsolete. Here your ability to pre‑liminate risk will help. And the final set is when needs are hard to define, even for you. You will need attention and learning.

And so to change

David Lomas, my techno‑wizard business partner, uses ‘horseshoes’ to explain how his ‘digital smithing’ has shaped QUBE’s virtual world. He says: “When a blacksmith shoes a horse, they don’t try to fit the horse to the shoe. Instead they fit the shoe to the horse.” It should be the same with all digital technology. I see project managers as ‘change smiths’ who shape the world of change to produce what all their stakeholders see as improvement. All projects are change. And just as a blacksmith must understand how to heat, melt and shape the iron, we must know the properties of change and how to handle it. So, off you go. Put an anvil on your shoulder and forge the future, change smith!

The seven laws of change

All change obeys the same laws. You may recognise them.

1. One change leads to another. You can see what’s coming next from what you did last.
2. Adding change to change creates chaos. This is why you look to the future to pre‑liminate issues.
3. People create change; people constrain change. This is why you engage people first.
4. To accomplish change, choose carefully. This is why you scope and chunk change by time, people or deliverable.
5. Accumulated complacency creates challenges. Projects that don’t turn into processes unravel.
6. Resistance means changes often can’t all go through at once. Don’t push the whole world because it pushes you back.
7. Sparsely coupling your changes creates calm. When each project consists of effort and benefit and a stepping stone to the next, you can sleep at night.
   
   

Discover more project management articles in THE SPRING 2023 ISSUE OF PROJECT JOURNAL, FREE FOR APM MEMBERS.