Before we get too deep into the integration of leading change in project management, let's talk a little bit about where project management came from. projects have been around for a long time. One of the greatest pieces of evidence of a massive project that has withstood the centuries would be the pyramids in Egypt. However, the discipline of project management is relatively new. And that discipline has had a really strong foundation in engineering. arguably one of the godfathers of project management was Taylor, an engineer who in the early 1900s, did time and motion studies to increase productivity in organizations is calling Henry Gant was an engineer who studied naval shipbuilding and he developed the Gantt charts which are still used today.

US Department of Defense engineers they're developed the pert charts are program evaluation and review techniques. Again, still use today from the fifth These days we have very comprehensive project management software. Microsoft Project is a massive thing. And it's all grounded in engineering. We have got huge global organizations PMI, project management international or IPM, a international Project Management Association, who have done an enormously good job at bringing the science side with the engineering side of project management forward. Many organizations today have, especially large ones have actually got project management offices.

What's interesting is, in spite of that strong foundation in engineering, there is an art that goes along with the science. And I think projects have erred a little bit too much on the science and not enough on the art. And I think that's where some of the leading change ideas can come to balance and really help support the science side of this equation. It's important to understand that not all projects mean change has been a number of projects over the years, you've probably got some underway in your own organization right now, it could be a research project could be a data gathering project, could be an opinion survey, could be a maintenance project could be a shut down project. Those are called projects. But those aren't the projects that I'm talking about here.

I'm talking about projects that mean change. The key question to ask is, if this project is successful, will something be different? So the projects that we're going to talk about the projects I'd like to apply these ideas to, or indeed projects that mean change. My guess is if you've been around project management or been participating in project teams or been a project leader for a while, you know, that projects rarely, if ever fail on paper. The plan is great. The website is very comprehensive.

It's not until you put that plan in To a human system that things start to run into trouble. And when we talk about running into trouble, what we're talking about is that we're not going to get successful results from this project. So before we get too deep into this, let's look at how we define success. We could talk about success from a time, perspective, money, perspective and goals achieve perspective. We could also talk about success in terms of the people coming through engaged in your organization as a whole benefiting from all of these projects or your particular project. Project Management specifically, and typically always focuses on the top three time, money and results or goals achieved.

How does your organization define successful projects or successful change? If you're having this conversation with some colleagues, stop this for just a moment and answer that question, how do you define successful projects in your organization? however you define Find it in your organization. Let's look at some results from some statistics around success rates. Now in front of you, you're looking at a number of statistics here that come from Martin Smith, he wrote up this study 2000 to the International Society of performance improvement, that's the group he was with at the time. And he looked at the decade of the 90s.

And if you were around working in organizations in the decade of the 90s, you will remember it was an incredibly exciting, dynamic decade, lots and lots of money. The economy was roaring, lots of changes going on. Smith and his colleagues looked at 43,000 different organizations incorporating 49 different studies, and they found these success rates for any number of different changes from culture changes right up to a new strategic direction. And you can see the success rates, they're in percentages. What they found was there was two or three changes To achieve the desired results. So if you think about that in terms of percentages about a 33% success rate and about 66 or 67% failure rate, that's pretty depressing.

Surely things have gotten better from the decade of the 90s, to where we are now? Well, maybe not. The Standish group is an organization in the northeast of the US, they study IT projects exclusively. And they look at success based on is it truly successful in terms of time, money and results? Or is it challenged, but it's still up and running. So we might be 30% of our budget, we might be 40%.

Over on time, we might be a third less on the results we were looking for. But we still have something so that's the challenge category, or did it fail to get launched or when it didn't get launched? it collapsed onto itself. That's the failed category. And you can see the results. Well, there's been some increased From 1994 to 2015, from 16% 39%, it's still only 39%.

So that actually sounds pretty familiar to the other study that Martin Smith did. Here's another study that was done in 2011 by McKinsey grew up in Oxford University and they looked at big ID projects $15 million, on average, or more, they found 45% of the more of our budget 7% work over time, and 50 per 6% delivered less value. That's really depressing. What was interesting is when they looked more closely at the statistics that they were studying, they found an anomaly in the numbers. And they found what they called Black Swans, where one in six of these big projects really ended up being train wrecks. 200% over budget 70% over time, literally train wrecks catastrophes and if you've ever been involved In one of these black swan projects, they really do feel like a black hole.

And they're incredibly challenging environments to be a part of. There's some historical precedent set. I give you these numbers to really only do one thing. How does your organization compare? Are you significantly better than average, higher than average? about average, a little lower than average?

Or are you really not sure. If you've got some colleagues with you? Push the pause button and have a conversation. So, are your numbers come out? And I mean, do you? Are you about average, or are you a little higher than average?

Hopefully, it's one of those two. My favorite quote when it comes to success rates or challenges that project teams come across is this one by Douglas Adams who wrote Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. And I've yet to find a project manager or anybody that's participated in project came not smile when they read This particular quote. So, that's a little background on where projects came from and how good a job we're doing. Clearly we can see there's lots of room for improvement.