I want to lead my readers on a little thought exercise. Imagine being a member of the Star Trek alien race Vulcan. Vulcans are logical and intelligent, usually above human norms. Now imagine visiting Earth on February 2nd of a given year in the 23rd Century, in a town in central-Western Pennsylvania, where you see a large group of humans – some attired rather formally – gathering around a burrow of a large rodent, to observe whether or not it will “see its shadow.” Several near-logical things pop to mind:
· Since we cannot know what the Marmota Momax perceives with respect to its shadow, the first line of inquiry should be to determine if the groundhog in question has a concept of casting a shadow.
· That the humans, apparently, have not conducted such an investigation, the question now seems to turn on whether or not the groundhog casts a shadow, the assumption that, if it does, it will see it.
· And change the weather.
· Wait, that’s a leap. We’ll leave unchallenged (for now) the assumption that groundhogs are aware of their shadows, and those circumstances where such shadows are cast.
· In other words, whether or not it is sunny.
· So, if the line of inquiry now is to ascertain whether or not it is sunny, why are the humans pulling the rodent from the burrow? Can they not simply look up into the sky?
· Additional lines of experimentation:
o Move the rodent away from Pennsylvania, to see if it is specifically the groundhog’s shadow that portends weather patterns, or simply the fact that it happens to be in that locale.
o If the former, many rodents from many locales should be pulled from their burrows on this date.
o Alternately, the humans from those locales could simply look up to see if they can see the sun, and leave the rodentia alone.
…and so on.
In short, the whole concept is profoundly illogical.
So, where did it come from?
Lots of speculation on this. Most of it centers on the Northern European customs from farming communities. You see, misjudging the timing of Spring Planting could easily mean the difference between affluence and poverty, or even life and death. Assuming that the forest animals had some kind of instinctive knowledge of when the last freeze would occur, the farmers would study some of them closely, to tease out clues that could be used to ascertain the exactly appropriate day for planting. By degrees, we get the happenings at Punxsutawney.
The point? Things change, and they do so in such ways as to preclude reasonable forecasting (one estimate of Punxsutawney Phil’s accuracy rate sets it at a dismal 39%). Recall the old axiom, that which is measured gets managed. Well, here’s Hatfield’s addendum to that: the future cannot be quantified, therefore, it cannot be managed. How the unfolding future impacts a given project’s scope, cost, and schedule baseline can be managed, but this is a very different animal (get it?) from actually managing change.While “change” really cannot be managed, performance can; however, real performance management hinges on accurate performance measurement systems, which, in turn, depend on non-rubber baselines to function.
So, there you have it: if the information you are gleaning from your de-burrowed rodent doesn’t change project performance, you’re not doing change management.
