Wheel of change

Project management is not just about having the competencies to manage processes. It is also about having the competencies to manage the people being part of a project. Focusing on people and human behavior in project management, whether it is a team or an organization, is seen as important as planning the process to succeed with a project.

According to Marshall Goldsmith, coach, and member of the 50 Thinkers Hall of Fame, an essential part of managing people to get them to deliver the best, is to provide them with feedback - with so-called “feedforward”, focusing on changing the future behavior instead of focusing on the past.

To help with this, Marshall Goldsmith has created a tool designed to help change future behavior, referred to as “the Wheel of Change”. It is a two-dimensional wheel consisting of pre-dominant axes: change or keep and positive or negative. The other dimension divides the wheel into even four additional quadrants: creating, eliminating, accepting, preserving. These quadrants help identify and plan future behavior changes to reach the desired state.

This article gives a brief insight into human behavior, as this plays an essential part in managing teams, just as processes. Further, the article will provide an overview of the general characteristics of the Wheel of Change and how managers can use it in project, program, and portfolio management. Finally, the article will include a reflection on the use of The Wheel of Change as a tool for managing people and behavior in projects by focusing on the actual usage compared to other tools.

Human Behavior

To outline why The Wheel of Change is used to manage people in projects, it is first essential to specify the impact of ‘behavior’. Behavior or human behavior is defined as a person’s actions and reactions in response to external or internal stimuli. In other words, one can say, that human behavior is being developed through experiences and that it is the unobservable and ingrained ways of responding to different actions and other behaviors, in a complex way that has been slowly defined throughout decades. Robert M. Sapolsky, professor of biology and neurology at Stanford University, California, describes the arising of human behavior in his book Behave as followed:

“A behavior has occurred – one that is reprehensible, or wonderful, or floating ambiguously in between. What occurred in the prior second that triggered the behavior? This is the province of the nervous system. What occurred in the prior seconds to minutes that triggered the nervous system to produce that behavior? This is the world of sensory stimuli, much of it sensed unconsciously. What occurred in the prior hours to days to change the sensitivity of the nervous system to such stimuli? Acute actions of hormones. And so on, all the way back to the evolutionary pressures played out over the prior millions of years that started the ball rolling”.

By this, it is made clear that the explanation of human behavior is complex and the reason for the way humans behave is not relying on one simple thing. It should be understood as behavior is an outcome of culture, which marks the ingraining aspect of how ways of acting arise, e.g., how we communicate, how we schedule our day, simply how we eat, and how we react to things.

Furthermore, behavior often apprehends other ‘selves’, why the way of responding to external stimuli turns into interactions between individuals, e.g., when communicating. The phenomenon is defined as social behavior and has for a long decade been highly perceived as beneficial for the greater.

Hence behavior is highly ingrained ways of doing things, and habits we perform without really thinking and reflecting, these will unfortunately not always be desirable and for the best – both for individuals and in social contexts. According to Goldsmith, such behaviors can be difficult to change, why it is crucial to managing how to change these, by reflecting on the different perspectives of one’s individual and social behavior. The following part specifies the two dimensions and the quadrants of which the Wheel of Change is composed.

The Wheel of Change

Marshall Goldsmith is an American executive educator. For four decades he has been coaching people in understanding how environmental triggers can lead to undesirable behavior, and how to perceive positive, long-lasting changes in behavior. A collection of such tools was published in 2015 in his book Triggers; Creating Behavior That Lasts – Becoming the Person You Want to Be, whereas one of the tools for changing behavior is the Wheel of Change. Goldsmith’s Wheel of Change is more specific a tool for planning how one’s behavior should be changed in the future, with the overall goal to become a better and more beneficial version of either yourself or a group of people.

The Wheel of change was originally designed for individuals, but as cross-functional teams are becoming more and more used, the Wheel of Change has as well become a highly important tool to address behavioral changes on a collaborative level.

When using the planning tool to address the changes needed, one should understand the two coherent levels; the two dimensions, with the pre-dominant axes: “Change or Keep” and “Positive or Negative”. Further, the other dimension consists of four options also referred to as quadrants, each describing what to do with a specific behavior; what you are going to create, what you are going to keep, what you should just accept, and what you should focus on to eliminate.

The following section is describing the separate levels and dimensions of the Wheel of Change.

The pre-dominant axis

The Negative-to-Positive axis defines the elements that can either be beneficial or hold us back. It can be seen as desirable and undesirable elements of behavior, that must be considered when planning how to behave in the future. The Change-to-Keep options clarify the elements of our behavior that we determine to either change or keep in the future. This axis is more ‘active’ and strives for action, compared to the Negative-to-Positive axis. These two axes of the Wheel of Change give four options, that is composing the before mentioned quadrants. The quadrants make it possible to either change or keep the positive elements and to change or keep the negative elements. How exactly this should be done, to achieve the desired status-quo can be handled/reflected on by coding the different behaviors in the four following options of actions:

Creating

Considering the Wheel of Change as a visual tool, ‘Creating’ is the positive-change option. When focusing on this option of changes, the user(s) of the tool get the time to consider any new improving elements of behaviors to add when planning the future way of behaving. Which new behaviors should be implemented or created? What can be added to improve efficiency and effectiveness, and become a better version of the present?

Preserving

The opposite is the positive-keep or so-called ‘Preserving’. It gives the option of considering what elements of existing behavior should be maintained. It focuses on keeping the positive elements of behavior, instead of creating new ones. Even though the wheel is a tool for changing behavior, it is crucial to still maintain the current useful and efficient elements that give a positive outcome.

Eliminating

Eliminating is the third option. It is the negative-change and helps point out the elements that should be eliminated, reduced, or removed. As changing behavior can be incredibly difficult in some situations, this quadrant is crucial to reflect on, especially when it comes to the executing of the plan in practice. Generally, this option is made to eliminate the inefficient elements of behavior; what should be removed, what could be done less to give place for other more desirable elements.

Accepting

As opposed to eliminating the fourth option of planning what changes are needed for the future, is defined by the negative-keep: It is the elements of behaviors that simply need to be accepted. As for the elimination of elements, accepting can be extremely hard when performed. But as an individual or team, some elements must simply just be accepted to achieve one’s overall purpose.

Applying the Wheel of Change

The original idea of the Wheel of Change was to offer a self-reflecting tool for individuals to make them turn into better versions of themselves. Nowadays the tool is as well used in the management of project teams. It is transforming the complexity of conflicting behavior, into simple groups of different behaviors, that can easily be assessed and evaluated by the one’s acting them.

Project management and the purpose of the Wheel of Change

Traditionally, the elements of Project Management are centered around tasks like defining the scope, making a schedule, ensuring the budget, doing the procurement, and handling risks. But people and their social behavior has taken their arrival in the area and is as well essential in Project Management to achieve the wished goals. Human behavior has become one of the key factors to manage when it comes to successful Project Management.

Conflicts may occur at any time when social behavior between individuals takes place. Hence conflicts during projects will as well include conflicts when stakeholders with different professions and cultural backgrounds. Given a project with a composition of different stakeholders, managers must possess the competencies to overcome such potential conflicts. To cater such conflicts, project managers must implement management techniques to help them process and manage the behavioral aspects if a project shall succeed. If not applied behavioral conflicts within a project can result in a lack of motivation among the project team, delayed project deadlines, and decreased productivity.

How to apply the wheel

As the Wheel of Change is used highly with the purpose to destruct any undesirable behaviors and internal conflicts that may occur in the project team; as a tool for solving problems, the tool must be implemented during the process As a project manager, The Wheel of Change should be implemented during the project a couple of times, to force the project members to reflect on the behaviors constituted in a team before it escalates. By using it in teams it can prevent undesirable behavior from reaching a level where the efficiency starts to affect the project and goals to be achieved.

Conclusion

• Conclusion

Annotated bibliography

• Goldsmith, M., & Reiter, M. (2015). Triggers: Creating behavior that lasts-- becoming the person you want to be.

This book is about what Triggers the human being, how it affects human behaviors, and which tools can help change our behavior to become a better version of ourselves.

• Goldsmith, M. (2015) :Try Feedforward Instead of Feedback: An article

About feedback and how to use it in the best way https://cphrbc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/MGoldsmith-article-1.pdf

References

https://positivepsychology.com/behavior-change/

https://www.businessballs.com/self-awareness/wheel-of-change/

https://www.pmi.org/learning/library/project-environment-eleven-project-conflicts-7348%20/

https://www.apm.org.uk/blog/people-and-behaviours-in-project-management/

https://methodsof.com/using-wheel-of-change/