It’s Time for a Change

 

Turn on your volume and watch the clip below in full screen (wait for the download to finish before you start to watch). Make sure you follow the instructions given in the clip for best result.

If you have paid attention to the clip above, you probably will be surprised by how the effect has taken place. This is one of those experiments conducted by Daniel J. Simons to study a psychological phenomenon that he called 'Change Blindness'. According to the findings in his research, most people are unlikely to notice the changes in the environment if the changes are small and gradual or the person is focused on doing something else. The research was initially used to study how people could have missed crucial environmental changes resulting in car accidents (click here to watch the clip on Change Blindness).

How can we apply this in project management? It is very common for us to manage change and the expectation of change in projects. Changes that we usually encounter include process change, system change, people change and sometimes, even lifestyle change. One of the many aspects in change management is to manage the expectation and mitigate the impact of change on the people. The direct approach that is widely adopted usually involves investing more time and money for better training and communication. Unfortunately, this approach only helps to ease out the transition part of the change; it doesn't make the change oblivious (or transparent) to the people. Ideally, people that are subjected to the change shouldn't even notice that there is a change in the first place. Over communicating the change will have an adverse effect of propagandizing the change to the people (this should be done more prudently). Alternatively, we may borrow some ideas from Daniel's research that shows how change could be introduced without people significantly noticing it. First, we may consider introducing change in smaller steps, one at a time gradually so that people will not be aware of, and therefore not significantly affected by, the change happening around them. Another more unusual approach is to keep people busy working on something else while the change is taking place. This shifting of focus technique gives people a false perception that the change is indirect and therefore, has minimal impact on them. For example, in an office relocation project, instead of directly telling people to prepare for the shift, you may organize a competition for them to compete to be the first to finish the relocation preparation. By shifting the focus from a mundane preparation task to an exciting competition, you have actually implemented the change in a fun and innovative way. Does change management need to be daunting and tiring after all?