Do change programmes consider the future?
Long term consequences of change.
When I was a teenager, my friend and I would find a local pub to serve us some beers, even though we were underage. Most bars would refuse to serve us but we found a couple that did.
The landlord would take our money and we would scuttle off to the back of the room and gleefully drink our beers with a feeling of satisfaction and, more importantly, rebellion.
Rebellion is what almost all teenagers do, I believe it is in our biology to rebel. Pack animals drive away their teenage equivalents to prevent them from interbreeding, we are also tribal pack animals, we should do the same with our teenagers but we don’t because we are emotionally attached to them after 13+ years of love.
I digress, I want to focus on the impact of change because all projects are about changing something somewhere.
Project managers tend to focus on delivering something new or significantly different from what exists today. A new software solution or the construction of a new building are two simple examples.
Programme management tends to be more focused on a vision for the future and what the future looks like and they should be focused on the future state rather than on an individual project. As a result they will be open to ideas and experimentation as they explore ways to achieve the organisation’s vision or goals. That word, should, isn’t necessarily as simple as it sounds, but programme managers should be focussed on the future. For more about that word click here:
Stopping teenage boys and girls from drinking underage has been a long term challenge, someone somewhere in the UK government decided that underage drinking needed to be regulated, heavily regulated.
The Intoxicating Liquor (Sale to Persons under 18) Act 1923 prohibited the sale or purchase of alcohol to or by any person under the age of 18 years. The act also made it unlawful for a person under 18 to consume alcohol in a bar, or any person to purchase alcohol for consumption
Local authorities today employ young people to enter pubs and attempt to buy alcohol, if the bar staff do not ask for identification, they risk heavy fines and loss of their licence which means they lose their business.
Nowadays young people have enormous difficulty buying alcohol, they can get it from their parents but that’s not rebellious.
DRUG DEALERS DON’T ASK FOR ID.
The pub landlords that served my friend and I in the 60’s looked after us, if we drank too much they sent us home, neither myself or my friend were negatively impacted by drinking beer.
Infinitely more youngsters are negatively impacted by easy to access drugs and no amount of government interference seems to help. In my local pubs today, drug taking is open and obvious amongst youngsters despite signage saying they will be banned and reported.
This is just one small example of how the Long term consequences of change are not fully considered when change is enforced.
MSP (Managing Successful Programmes) states that the business case should consider lots of costs, including capital and change management costs. It doesn’t mention ongoing operational or maintenance costs because?
It’s usually a different income stream, revenue it’s sometimes called.
Is this why drug abuse has increased so dramatically despite billions of taxpayer funds being thrown at it?
I suspect it is a clear example of what Thomas Sowell describes as first stage thinking.
Thank you for reading this, I appreciate your thoughts.