Innovation: The Ultimate Change Agent

 

Innovation has a way of changing everything, and usually in utterly unpredictable ways, which is why I’ve described it in this blog’s title as the ultimate change agent. Want to be a true agent of change? Come up with a way of providing a service or manufacturing a product better, faster, or cheaper, and the proverbial world will beat a metaphoric path to your doorstep. But what about those instances where the change sought isn’t of recent invention or discovery, but the target organization is nevertheless deficient in that particular capability, like, oh, I don’t know, Project Management?

This is where it gets fairly complex. GTIM Nation is familiar with my respect for Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolution (University of Chicago Press, 1962), where he points out that, while people tend to look back on the progress of invention and innovation as being somewhat even, what actually tends to happen is better described as advancing in fits and starts. An example Kuhn uses is the field of cosmology, and the transition between the Ptolemy model (Sun and planets revolve around the Earth) and the Copernicus model (Earth and planets revolve around the Sun). When our ability to collect more and more accurate data leads to observations that appear to contradict (or even overturn) the commonly-held theory in a given field, addendum to the prevailing theory, named cycles and epicycles, will be produced that appear to explain the anomalies in order to keep the prevailing theory from being completely overturned. Eventually, though, enough new data accumulates to initiate a crisis leading to a “paradigm shift” (yes, Kuhn was the first person to coin this phrase). It’s at this point in the transition that things get really interesting, at least as far as parallels to management science are concerned. In the run-up to the paradigm shift, many of those holding to the conventional wisdom will aggressively resist the newer theory, and do so in ways that suggest that their objections are not purely scientific in nature. After all, to cite the late Michael Crichton[i], real science has nothing to do with consensus – if one researcher in one laboratory can show reproducible results from a valid experiment based on Theory N, and Theory N is incompatible with Theory X, then Theory X becomes discredited.

Meanwhile, Back In The Project Management World…

All of which leads back to the at-first-glance strange phenomena of a management science world that is often unwilling (unable?) to adopt well-established business model innovations, specifically in Project Management. To be fair, I hold that much of the blame for this highly uneven adoption rate lies within the PM community itself. A person can tolerate just so much eat-your-peas-style hectoring in seminar paper presentations before the threat of being tagged as not “doing PM properly” ceases to have any effect as a motivational factor. That having been admitted, I believe that the majority of the energy against the acceptance and implementation of PM techniques resides with those who have something to lose if such techniques were enacted. Of course, I’m talking about our friends the Asset Managers.

Is there a focus on Asset Management techniques in the business world now? Almost certainly. The assertion that the point of all management is to “maximize shareholder wealth” is still being widely taught at the college level, despite the influx of data challenging that little axiom’s validity. Even if such a focus could be adjusted, we would still have the legal requirements of a comprehensive accounting system, quantifying virtually every transaction in the organization, remaining. Clearly, advancements in PM capability have nothing to do with challenging, much less overturning, Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), but it’s equally obvious (at least to us PM-Types) that a project’s Estimate at Completion (EAC) is best calculated using an Earned Value Management System. Trying to use projected average spending rates to derive it just doesn’t cut it.

When we’re talking modifications to an existing business model, we must acknowledge that those who are comfortable with the existing processes and systems stand to lose if such changes are successfully implemented, either with respect to ease of work or being seen as occupying a certain status within the current paradigm – hence massive resistance to change, even if the erstwhile change agent has discovered a superior (or even optimal) technical approach, and even if the existing problems represent a clear danger to the organization’s continued survival.

So, what’s the solution? Come up with an innovative implementation strategy. Genuine innovation is a powerful (ultimate?) change agent, especially when the commonly-employed devices of haranguing management to do better or getting them to sign some updated policy or procedure that mandates proper PM techniques have been tried, over and over, and have largely failed. There are other ways of advancing PM capability within the macro-organization.

And a real change agent/innovator will find them.

[i] “If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus. Period.” Crichton, Michael, Aliens Cause Global Warming, Caltech Michelin Lecture,  January 17, 2003.