Project Management versus Change Management

Is Change Management the same as Project Management?

This is the most common question I get on my organisational travels. It’s a short skip from ‘what do you do?’ to ‘what is change management?’ and a beat further is ‘where does that leave project management?’. I never get sick of it because it gives me a chance to evangelise! And it’s small wonder the question is common.

Project Management is the frame of reference many people have for organisational change. As a discipline, PM has been around a while (mid-20th century[1]) so it’s had time to mature. Change management, on the other hand, emerged as a profession around the turn of the current century[2] so CM is really still a pup.

For those interested in the history there are some references at the bottom but first things first…

The difference between Project Management and Change Management.

The simple answer is that PM is focused on the design and development of solutions while CM focuses on getting people to engage, embrace, and apply the solution. In other words, PM covers the technical side of change and CM focuses on the people side of change. This tends to provoke further questions. ‘Tech versus People? But what about the changes that are not technical?’

When I say technical I don’t necessarily mean technological. Technical includes ‘the stuff’ that people are expected to adopt and apply. Of course, it might mean a new ERP in the case of a digital transformation or a new Performance Management System for a performance enhancement change but technical can equally apply to say, a culture transformation programme.

At face value, culture may seem all about people and for sure you could call it a set of behavioural norms or as my friend, Tim McCleary[3] describes culture: ‘it’s how work gets done’.

But think about it, if you want to change how work gets done you need defined behaviours, processes, supportive rewards, recognition practices, a recruitment approach that helps you attract and assess accordingly. You need ‘stuff’ for people to adopt, use, and become proficient with. And to design, develop, and deliver that stuff you’re going to need project management.

It’s easy to mistake something as seemingly ‘soft’ as culture as something that does not have a technical or ‘hard’ component and it’s common to think that a technology project is just the technical design and delivery of a platform or system. But unless the platform has no reliance on people, which let’s face it is rather unlikely, then project management alone will not make for a successful outcome. The platform may be the best in the biz, a no-brainer even, but when the switch is flicked and an announcement is made you’ll hear crickets unless you give attention to the people side of change. We’ve all seen it, right? Celebrations for a project delivered on time/ in full but no one is actually using the platform? To shamelessly hijack a movie quote ‘one doesn’t applaud the tenor for clearing his throat’[4].

You’ve likely also seen a culture change announced with a compelling story at the company conference. Mindsets are challenged, commitment is secured but without any ‘stuff’ in place to support it, it dribbles and dies the same as the on time/ in full platform.

Much as I love the opportunity to evangelise about change management I don’t canvass for CM over PM or CM versus PM. If I had a bumper sticker (I don’t) it would read CM & PM Forever.

When I was first certified as a CM practitioner, my instructor used the analogy of a rope to describe an effective relationship between PM and CM. Strength comes from them operating together towards the same end rather than independently with their own agenda. But if PM is technically focused and CM is people focused don’t they have different agenda? Often they do but they shouldn’t.

PM should deliver technical solutions with user adoption and proficiency in mind.

CM should focus on the people side of change with user adoption and proficiency in mind.

CM should no more applaud itself for communications and training activities that don’t achieve that, no more than PM should congratulate itself on flicking the switch on a ghosted tech solution. So while PMs are busy with specs and builds and tech deliverables CMs are busy with communication, training, resistance management, if their independent activities are in service of the same aim they will arrive at a stronger outcome… together. Is success guaranteed? Of course not. It never is with the social sciences. But will it increase the probability of success? Hell, yeah. That’s what my alternative bumper sticker would say.

There’s a third party in the relationship so to speak that would be remiss of me not to mention even though you didn’t ask, and that is Sponsorship. Prosci benchmarking research[5] conducted with real world organisational respondents consistently cites active, visible sponsorship as the greatest contributor to successful change outcomes. But that’s a topic for another blog and another bumper sticker. For now let’s leave it at CM & PM Forever.

References

[1] Johnson,S.B. (2013) Technical and institutional factors in the emergence of project management, International Journal of Project Management,31(5),p670-681

While project management as an identifiable, recognizable profession and discipline is ubiquitous today, it was not always so. It was not recognized as a profession and discipline until such time as it was identifiable as significantly different from standard operations management practices. This recognition began in a specific time—the late 1940s through the early 1960s, in a specific place—the United States, with a specific set of institutional actors—the military and its associated industrial and academic contractors, and in a specific context—the complex aviation, space, and air & space defense projects of the early Cold War in the competition with the Soviet Union. Project management is a specific institutional and organizational response to the technical and organizational problems of novel, complex “high technology” developed in specific projects. That is, it is the managerial method dedicated to the management of knowledge creation.

[2] Quinn Worren, N. A. M., Ruddle, K., & Moore, K. (1999). From Organizational Development to Change Management: The Emergence of a New Profession. The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 35(3), 273–286.

Change management promises to be a discipline that will integrate the thought worlds that separate OD from strategy and technology, thus enabling the coordinated efforts necessary to bring about strategic change.

[3] Tim McCleary is a culture activation expert and Chief Experience Officer at Urban Emu

[4] Spoken in an entirely different context (and utterly inappropriate to this blog) in the film ‘Dangerous Liaisons’.

[5] Prosci Benchmarking Data from 2007, 2009, 2011, 2013, 2015, 2017, 2019