Why do we need to rethink how we deal with people when we initiate, carry out a change project and reason about the results of a change initiative? Since we are all people it is pretty obvious that people:

• are rational
• don’t react to emotions
• sharing the same views as the project initiator
• have the same opinions
• have the needs we have defined
• cant misunderstand anything from the point of view of a project initiator or sponsor
• don’t have a history with other practices or solutions
• have less optimal preferences in relation to optimal choices

I’m ironic of course, we all know more or less that the statements above aren’t completely true. Instead we may be rational from time to time, may share the same views but still have different opinions and so on. But because we are are people we tend to make judgements and estimates about what other people think and how they will act based on what we ourself think and feel. Whats even more intriguing is that we may even have to much confidence in our own estimates about how we self would react in certain situations. Since we tend to make the wrong estimates about both ourself and often make assumptions based on how other people feel, understand or will react to for instance a change initiative it seems reasonable to strive towards a better understanding of adding a people perspective to a project or change initiative.

How do we add the people perspective to a project or add the weighted importance to a change initiative? First and foremost we need to change the mindset about the importance of people and use tools and techniques that adds more emphasis and weight to the people perspective. We will discuss this more in future posts.