Many people don’t like change and yet life is constantly evolving.  After years, even decades, of relative stability we are being rapidly forced to change the way we work, interact and move about our daily lives.

Projects drive change, resulting in people doing things differently and no two projects are the same.  Even if the topic is the same, there are always variables, from the project size, to the different people and teams involved and it’s these variables that keeps Mint Blue Consulting’s operational projects with clients so varied and interesting.

Doing things differently is actually often a good thing, but it’s the transition approach that is really important as this will determine the success of the change.  Thinking about this reminded me of a team building event I attended many years ago:

We were divided into 2x teams of around 10 people and our challenge was to calculate the number of days it had taken to build the lost city of Atlanta in the fastest time possible.  Each team was handed around 40 information cards containing a mix of valid and red-herring data and we were also informed that the Atlanta working week was not the usual 7 days.  Our team was also instructed (it turned out mistakenly) not to write anything down whereas the other team had no restrictions on their approach.

The last instruction floored us initially as our natural approach was to write things down!  However, we had no choice, so as the Project Manager in the team, I asked our team to sit in a circle with a few cards each and we read out our cards in turn. 

Key information quickly came to light as we read round, the red herring information was discarded, and we established there were only 5 days in the Atlanta working week.  Those with the cards for the days of the working week were then seated together in order, then one of the group (who was brilliant at mental arithmetic), calculated the number of days it took to build the city.  

Much to our surprise, our team completed the task in 50% of the time it took the other team, who were still carefully writing down all the key information as we finished. 

Being forced to complete the exercise in this way meant we had no choice but to ‘do things differently’ and it provided some useful takeaways:

• Don’t duplicate written information where at all possible
• Use the strengths of your team members to complete the task, everyone has a role to play
• Take your team through the journey – in this instance, dividing the cards up lightened the load and kept everyone involved
• Being open and reacting quickly to change can make all the difference
• Doing things differently can potentially save time and/or money

Change, as mentioned, is often difficult, particularly where people have had the same routine or processes for a period of time and it’s important to take people with you on the journey.  Not easy in these times where there is little choice, but structuring your change through Project Management definitely helps to ease the transition.