When King Charles IX forgot to tell France the New Year moved, chaos followed. Sound familiar? Avoid “April Fool” project moments with smart change communication and PMaaS support from Stoneseed.
The origin story of “April Fools” may also be the earliest recorded Project Management howler – A proper change management failure!
When France changed its calendar in the 16th Century, moving New Year’s Day from April to January, millions of people kept celebrating the wrong New Year.
They weren’t being stubborn – it was just nobody told them! Working in IT Project Management, delivering business change, that sounds familiar.
WHEN CHARLES MET JULIAN (BUT NOONE TOLD GREGOR)
The April Fools origin theory goes like this. In 1564, King Charles IX decreed that France would switch from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar, moving New Year’s Day from the 1st of April to the 1st of January.
The edict was issued. The change was official.
And that was, more or less, the end of the communication plan.
With no mass communication infrastructure to spread the word, people in rural areas carried on celebrating the new year in late March and early April, like they always had.
They weren’t rebels.
They weren’t even being resistant to change.
They simply hadn’t received the memo, I mean King Charles IX hadn’t even done a TikTok.
For their trouble, these April Fools were mocked, teased, and sent on “fools’ errands” by those who were “in the know.”
The April Fool was born.
THE DECREE IS NOT THE DELIVERY
This is the mistake that still plays out in organisations every day.
A decision is made at the top. An announcement goes out (an email, a Slack message, a slide deck) – and leadership moves on, confident the change has landed.
The thing is, issuing a decree and achieving a change are two entirely different things.
Charles IX signed the edict, but he did not follow up: he did not check for comprehension; he did not build in a feedback loop; he didn’t fire up his P3MO platform to check live progress. So, for years afterwards, pockets of France were operating on a completely different calendar to the rest of the country.
In an IT Project context, this is the difference between communication and confirmation. Real change communication isn’t one-directional. It closes the loop. It asks: did the message reach the right people, in a form they could act on, at a time when they could do something about it?
Here Charles could certainly have done with Project Management Office as a Service! A functioning PMO doesn’t just track delivery, it tracks comprehension. It asks whether the change has actually landed, not just whether the announcement went out.
MISALIGNMENT LOOKS A LOT LIKE RESISTANCE
One of the most damaging assumptions I’ve heard project teams make is that stakeholders who are “behind” are being deliberately difficult. The rural French villagers celebrating the 1st of April weren’t resisting modernity, they were operating on the best information they had.
Before diagnosing a stakeholder as resistant, a good PM asks a more uncomfortable question: did we actually communicate the change clearly, to this specific person, in a way that accounted for where they sit in the organisation?
Sometimes the answer reveals a gap in the communication plan, not a gap in the stakeholder.
Thinking about it, this is where Business Analysis would have earned its place in the court of Charles IX – not just gathering requirements, but understanding the human landscape the change is landing in.
RETIRE THE OLD PROCESS, DON’T JUST LAUNCH THE NEW ONE
Here’s something subtle the calendar story reveals: the 1st of April didn’t stop feeling meaningful just because the 1st of January became official. There’s a reason it lingered.
The old process had years of habit, ritual, and cultural weight behind it. Declaring a replacement doesn’t dissolve any of that.
Effective process transitions require more than a launch announcement.
They require an explicit end to the old way of doing things, clear guidance on what stops, when it stops, and what happens to the work that was in progress under the old process.
When teams are left to figure this out themselves, they don’t always pick the “new calendar”.
They run both in parallel until someone makes them stop.
That’s exactly the kind of thing a fractional, on-demand PM spots early, and sorts out before it becomes everyone’s problem.
THE PM IS THE MESSENGER AND THAT’S NOT A SMALL THING
The April Fools’ story has an uncomfortable undercurrent: the people who “knew” about the calendar change used that knowledge to mock those who didn’t. In organisations, this dynamic shows up more subtly, in impatience with stakeholders who “should know this by now,” or in the assumption that confusion is someone else’s problem.
The PM’s role is different.
It’s not just to execute the project, but to carry the context, to make sure the right people have what they need to stay aligned, to anticipate where the message might not land, and to treat confusion as a signal worth investigating, rather than a failure worth judging.
Nobody should be made to feel like a fool for missing a change that was never properly communicated to them in the first place.
THE TAKEAWAY
So, Charles IX changed the process. He just didn’t change the culture, at least he certainly didn’t change it for everyone.
Good project management isn’t just about making the right decisions. It’s about making sure everyone is on the same calendar.
Next time you’re rolling out a new process, retiring an old one, or navigating a transition that feels obvious to the people at the centre of it, remember the April Fools.
They weren’t fools at all!
They were just waiting for someone to actually tell them.
IF ONLY CHARLES IX HAD PMaaS!
Project Management as a Service exists precisely to solve the problem this story illustrates. Stoneseed’s people don’t just deliver projects, we make sure the right people are informed, aligned, and ready for change at every stage.
Stoneseed’s team of Project Management and Technical Professionals works on a flexible, on-demand basis, giving you expert delivery without the overhead. From strategy through to execution, we bring the communication discipline, proven methodology, and seasoned judgment that stops your stakeholders from celebrating the wrong New Year.
No long-term commitment. No bench costs. Just the right people, at the right time, actually telling everyone what they need to know.
When your projects need a better communication plan, and a team that treats that as seriously as the delivery itself, you need Stoneseed. Let’s talk about the next steps – book a discovery call today: 01623 723910.
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Sources:
https://www.stoneseed.co.uk/project-management-as-a-service/
https://www.stoneseed.co.uk/contact-us/
https://www.stoneseed.co.uk/faqs/
https://parade.com/985732/kelseypelzer/april-fools-day-origin