Wheel of change

Abstract

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. ^[1]

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 by providing them with feedback - with so-called “feedforward”, focusing on changing the future behavior instead of focusing on the past. ^[2]

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”. ^[3]

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. ^[4]

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. ^[5] 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

Overall description

How to understand the tool as a two-dimensioned wheel
Using the tool for planning behavior changes
negative/positive
Change/Keep

Creating

Definition

Eliminating

Definition

Accepting

Definition

Preserving

Definition

Applying the Wheel of Change in management

How it can be applied
Different use

Reflections

Reflections of possible limitations
Using the tool when managing people in projects

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.