Stakeholder

Methodologies define a step-by-step process for delivering projects. Each methodology will describe each step in adequate depth, so that the project team understands what has to be done to deliver their project. This is quite different to a standardised knowledge framework such as the PMBOK® Guide (for more on this see: PMBOK -v- Methodology).

By using the same steps for every project the organisation undertakes risks and uncertainty are minimised and there is likely to be an overall saving of time and effort on projects.

Defining ‘your’ methodology

The key steps to follow are:

• Define what it is that you want from your methodology, the type of content it should contain and the way in which it will be used.
• Create a set of specific requirements. Some options include defining:
  • How much of the project lifecycle needs to be incorporated
  • How much detail should be included? What practical templates and examples are needed to help to complete the step quickly and easily?
  • Should it follow one of the worldwide project standards such as the PMBOK® Guide?
  • Can/should the system be easily customised suit all project types and sizes?
• Determine the best methodology to use:
  • Review the methodologies used currently by your organisation and compare them to your requirements to see if there is a good fit.
  • Review the commercially available methodologies to see if there is a good fit.
  • Select the option with the best fit to your requirements
• The best methodology is still only likely to have a 90% fit (or less), this is normal. Make sure you can customise the remaining elements to meet your requirements.
• Ensure adequate flexibility for the range of projects in your organisation.

Implementing the methodology

The key steps are:

• Create an Implementation Plan supported by a change management plan. Implementing a methodology is a significant organisational change.
• Run the implementation as a change management program, including customising the methodology for your environment. Stakeholder engagement is vital to the overall success of the initiative.
• Train the users and support staff in the methodology and ensure ongoing support.
• Ensure the methodology is followed.
• Start improving the methodology (for more on measuring and improving the organisations project management maturity see Mosaic’s OPM3 home page).

Improving the methodology

Processes are always capable of improvement. Observing the actual implementation of the methodology will define actions and outcomes within the following matrix.

Unauthorised, unproductive activities need to be stopped and authorised productive processes supported. The two zones for process improvement are refining or removing elements of the methodology that do not add value to the overall management of the project and incorporating unauthorised processes that are not in the methodology but that are being used add value.

The easiest and most important area for action is rectifying the unproductive processes already in the methodology. Care need to be taken to ensure the definition of ‘unproductive’ is understood. Most planning processes don’t produce anything and consume effort; superficially they can be classified as ‘unproductive’. In reality, effective planning contributes significantly to the efficient delivery of the project and its value to assist in the efficient execution of the work being planned is significant.

Excessively detailed planning though is usually counterproductive. Value judgements are needed to assess the point at which adding more detail or rigour becomes ‘planning overkill’ reducing the overall value of the process and conversely, how much detail can be safely removed from a planning processes to improve overall productivity before insufficient planning starts to cause problems.

Adapted from Firdman, H. E. (1991). Strategic information systems: Forging the business and technology alliance. McGraw-Hill, New York.

Adapted from Firdman, H. E. (1991). Strategic information systems: Forging the business and technology alliance. McGraw-Hill, New York.

Ensuring the methodology is seen as ‘productive’ is essential for it to be generally accepted and supported by your stakeholders.

Once the existing methodology is optimised and firmly in the ‘authorised and productive’ segment, the next area is to examine unauthorised processes that aid productivity and progressively incorporate these into your methodology. The ‘unauthorised and productive’ quadrant is where you find genuine innovation and opportunities for organisational gain.

Summary

No methodology works ‘out of the box’ they all need customisation and tailoring. However, the effort is worthwhile. OPM3 has demonstrated standardised processes that incorporate best practices can provide significant benefits to an organisation (see more on OPM3).

The challenge is balancing systemised processes with the need for adequate flexibility to deal with the circumstances of each unique project. An effective project management methodology needs core components, scalable components and optional components designed to meet the needs of your organisation.

When considering stakeholders, there are very few one-to-one relationships. Most stakeholders are, and have been, influenced by a range of relationships in and around your project, program and your organisation.

Change Management and Stakeholder Management

Stakeholder management is a key facet of organisational management where stakeholder management is often aligned with marketing, branding and corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives.

Similarly, stakeholder management central to change management and the ability to realise the benefits the change was initiated to deliver. The benefits will not be realised unless the key stakeholder communities accept and embrace the changes.

Project and program management also has a focus on effective stakeholder management. In a change initiative, the project and/or program undertakes the work to deliver the elements needed to facilitate the change but are only ever part of the journey from concept to realised value.

A typical evolution of a change initiative would flow along these lines:

• The organisation decides on a major organisational restructure and as a consequence initiates a change management process and appointed a change manager.
• The change manager develops the business case for the program of work and the executives responsible for the organisations portfolio management approve the business case and agree to fund and resource the program.
• The program manager sets up the program management team, established the program management office (PgMO) and charters a series of projects to develop the various deliverables needed to implement the change.
• The projects deliver their outputs.
• The program integrates the outputs with the operational aspects of the organisation.
• The organisation’s management make effective use of the new systems and processes.
• Value is created for the organisation and its owners.

The change manager is the sponsor and primary client for the program but the people who need to be convinced of the value of changing are the operational managers and their staff. If the organisation does not accept and use the new systems and processes very little value is generated.

Within this scenario, stakeholders in the operational part of the organisation, and particularly the managers will be key stakeholders for a range of different entities:

• They are stakeholders in the organisation itself and part of the organisational hierarchy.
• They are stakeholders in the change process being managed by the change manager.
• As end users of the new systems and processes they are also stakeholders of the program.
• As subject matter experts (SMEs) they are likely to be stakeholders in at least some of the projects.

In one respect change management is stakeholder management. Therefore, in a change management initiative, stakeholder management should be an integrated process coordinated at the change manager’s level. All of the organisational elements working on the change need to coordinate their stakeholder management efforts to support the overall outcome. Confusing and mixed messages don’t help anyone.

But this is just one typical business scenario. When considering stakeholders, there are very few one-to-one relationships. Most stakeholders are, and have been, influenced by a range of relationships in and around your organisation. Consequently, focusing on a simple one-to-one view is unlikely to provide the best outcome for anyone.

Effective stakeholder management requires a mature organisational approach. One approach to developing this capability is the SRMM (Stakeholder Relationship Management Maturity) model described in my book. Stakeholder Relationship Management: A Maturity Model for Organisational Implementation. I will outline the SRMM model in a later post.

My book, Stakeholder Relationship Management, A Maturity Model for Organisational Implementation has launched on Amazon (www.amazon.com) and is selling well – last look there were only 4 left in stock (with more on the way). I also did a book signing at the CIPSA conference in Melbourne last month, with the Co-op Bookshop last month with very good sales.

Overall it seems Stakeholder Management is becoming a topic of interest to a wide range of organisations.

More later…..

When beetles battle beetles in a puddle paddle battle and the beetle battle puddle is a puddle in a bottle…
…they call this a tweetle beetle bottle puddle paddle battle muddle.
Excerpted from: Tweetle Beetles, ‘The Fox in Socks’, by Dr Seuss

The connection between a book written to be read to under 5s and business stakeholder management is the ‘puddle muddle’ otherwise known as the stakeholder pool. The challenge of managing stakeholders is a factor of the disturbance caused by dozens if not hundreds of battles most of which, the person attempting to efficiently manage his or her stakeholders has no control over whatsoever.

Most stakeholder management methodologies start by assessing the stakeholder from the perspective of the work. This is not unreasonable but can easily miss many important factors.

Figure 1: The Stakeholder Pool

Figure 1 shows ‘the stakeholder’ in the overall stakeholder pool being influenced by the ripples created by your battle in your part of the pool (your puddle). Unfortunately the stakeholder pool is a much bigger, more turbulent place.

Figure 2: the Stakeholder Pool with turbulence

Show some of the other disturbances in the pool and you start to see the stakeholder buffeted by waves and impacts from all directions, in Figure 2. ‘The stakeholder’ is continually being buffeted by waves from other projects, the organisation and many other influences. These other waves are one of the prime reasons stakeholder responses to your perfectly reasonable needs or suggestions are frequently so unpredictable. All of these influences, both current and past have helped shape the stakeholders perceptions and attitudes towards your industry, your organisation and ultimately, you.

Consequently, a single view point is really not sufficient! Effective stakeholder management needs an organisational approach. Successful stakeholder management requires all of the influences perceived by the stakeholder to be coordinated and authentic. And this can only be achieved by the organisation as a whole adopting mature, ethical stakeholder management as a core discipline.

Very little has been written about mature organisational stakeholder management until recently. To date, the focus of most papers have been one dimensional focusing on CRM and the ‘customer experience’ or one dimensional focusing on the relationship between the stakeholder and a project (or other organisational activity).

My new book, Stakeholder Relationship Management: A Maturity Model for Organisational Implementation, takes this next step to define the interaction between the organisation as a whole and its stakeholders using the Stakeholder Relationship Management Maturity (SRMM®) model.

Effective and ethical stakeholder management cannot happen overnight and cannot happen in isolation. The preconceived perceptions of stakeholders towards your work are based on multiple experiences over an extended period of time, and the stakeholder-to-stakeholder conversations that occur outside of your hearing or control. To actively improve these conversations and create a positive and supportive stakeholder environment needs a long term consistent effort, organisation wide.

The SRMM model offers a practical framework that can be used by organisations to build from ad hoc, single project attempts to manage stakeholders to a situation where stakeholder management is a core skill used by the organisation as a whole to maintain a competitive advantage. As with any culture change, this cannot happen overnight but at least my book provides a road map organisations can use to improve their management of stakeholder relationships to the benefit of both the stakeholders and the organisation.

Stakeholder Relationship Management: A Maturity Model for Organisational Implementation is published by Gower, ISBN: 978-0-566-08864-3

I have just seen some information on a 2007 survey undertaken by the PMO Executive Council (part of the Corporate Executive Board: http://www.executiveboard.com/). This snapshot survey, Attributes of a High Performance PM – 2007, found very little correlation between project management certification and project management effectiveness, or the number of years a person has been in project management roles and project management effectiveness.

The survey found the drivers for project management effectiveness were behavioural attributes such as problem solving and the ability to relate effectively with key stakeholders. Whilst many people may initially want to disagree with these findings, they are consistent with many other trends and on reflection quite logical.

Firstly, the survey did not look at the PM’s track record, merely the time the PM had been in project roles. It is reasonable to assume highly effective PMs will have a relatively short PM career and then move on and up the organisational hierarchy. Less effective PMs are likely to stay in their PM role focused on process and technology.

Secondly, whilst PM credentials such as PMP remain very effective tools in the job market; passing your PMP does not make you an effective project manager (see more on PMP). The PMP knowledge framework gives you the knowledge to be an effective project manager. Being effective requires you to become a competent project manager.

Competency has three aspects, knowledge, skills and behaviour:

• what you know,
• your ability to apply the knowledge (essentially personality traits) and
• your willingness to use the skills effectively (essentially behavioural traits).

Qualifying project managers based on behavioural competencies is in its infancy. The Australian Institute of Project Management (AIPM) has recently moved its professional certification program (RegPM) from a procedural view of competency (eg, do you have a project schedule – the artefact?) to a behavioural view of competency (how effectively do you manager the schedule on your project?). This is ground breaking work and still has a long way to go.

PMI have adopted a different, but similar approach in their program management certification (PgMP) with a 360 degree review testing how effective the candidate is in the workplace. These trends have a long way to go but are likely to be the next step in project certification.

Of more direct interest in the short term is the demonstrated link between how effectively a project manager engages with his/her key stakeholders and high performance outcomes. These skills are a core element in a number of workshops we run including Successful Stakeholder Management and The Science and Art of Communicating Effectively, and are supported in part by our Stakeholder Circle® methodology and tool set.

Learning how to apply the skills in the workplace though is not quite as simple as attending a workshop or buying a set of tools. Soft skills are very hard to acquire and use. My feeling is they are called ‘soft’ because they change shape and texture depending on the environment they are being applied within. The calculations for EV or CPM are universal; the best way to engage a senior stakeholder is totally dependent on the culture of the organisation. Some elements remain consistent (eg, the need for an effective relationship) but the way this is achieved varies.

Developing these advanced skills that are the attributes of high performance project managers requires context sensitive coaching and mentoring rather then formal courses (see: Executive PM Coaching & Mentoring). Ideally organisations seeking to develop high performance PMs will move beyond certification towards implementing internal mentoring systems – it’s the best way to ensure they are contextually relevant.

However, where we differ from the survey findings is that we believe certifications such as PMP are still relevant. Passing a PMI credential such as PMP or CAPM (see more on the PMI credential framework) is a positive demonstration of the initial knowledge component of competency; it’s just that knowledge alone is not sufficient.

Achieving this next level of high performance PMs will also require organisational competence in at least two domains. Process competence measured by tools such as PMI’s OPM3® framework and relationship management maturity measured by tools such as my SRMM® framework.

These are definitely interesting times for our profession.

We have had three intensive days at the 6th Annual Project Management Australia (PMOZ) conference http://www.pmoz.com.au.

Despite the GFC induced slow-down delegate numbers were surprisingly good. There was lots of interest in Lynda’s new book, our various papers and workshops were well received and planning for PMOZ 2010 in Brisbane, in August has started.

The key element of our involvement was to promote my new book: Stakeholder Relationship Management: A Maturity Model for Organisational Implementation (aspects of which were the basis of our workshops) this went well and we are looking forward to its publication in October.

More later.

[This post was originally published on the Mosaicproject blog]

I have been putting the hard yards into finishing my new book on Stakeholder Relationship Management Maturity (SRMM®) over the holiday period and have been considering the relationship between success and stakeholders.

One potential conclusion is that success is gifted to you by your stakeholders, you have to earn the gift but there is no way of knowing for sure if it will be granted. This means as a project manager, sports person or business executive, you have to put the effort in to ‘win’ by delivering ‘on-time and on-budget’, finishing first or achieving the planned objective; but achievement on its own does not translate to success. Success is when your achievement is acknowledged by your key stakeholders and they declare it a ‘success’.

Some of the world’s most famous buildings were project management disasters, but they are now considered outstanding successes. The Sydney Opera House overran time, overran budget and the original scope not achieved. The London Eye needed an additional £48 million loan from British Airways to finance is construction in addition to the original capital raising and was months late in opening to the public (in 2005 BA sold its share of the project for £95m and waived £60m of unpaid interest).

Success seems to come from a combination of two factors. One is delivering something of real value to the stakeholder. The other is when a critical mass of key stakeholders recognises the value and appreciates it. Value is not a synonym for ‘on-time and on-budget’ these two factors only matter to the extent that they impact on the usefulness of the outcome when it’s actually used by the stakeholders. Certainly time and money may be important, more often they are not; particularly if a longer term view of benefits realisation is considered. Benefits are realised when the product is actually used and this requires the relevant stakeholder’s participation in actually using the product or output to achive the intended outcomes.

Another important factor in achieving success is meeting the stakeholder’s expectations. This involves identifying and managing their expectations (unrealistic expectations are unlikely to be fulfilled) which in turn requires effective two-way communication. But the stakeholder community for any business activity can be huge.

There are a vast number of potential stakeholders who you don’t know and can’t see. This group is often considered as ‘classes’ of stakeholder such as ‘the public’. The only way to reach individual people this group is through broadcasting messages in a similar way to a corporation advertising it brand image to a general audience. Businesses see this activity as Public Relations (PR) or Marketing. In project space, this is the casual audience for general project newsletters, headlines on a project web page and the corporations ‘rumour mill’.

A sub-set of the overall group are the people you know you need to positively influence. In business these groups are the focus of targeted advertising campaigns with specific ‘calls to action’. In project space they may be groups such as the end users of a new system. You need to ‘sell the benefits’ of the product or project to this group so they buy-in to the concept and appreciate the value of the outcome you are creating. There are still too many for one-on-one communication but a carefully planned ‘sales campaign’ associated with effective change management and similar initiatives are critical if you expect a successful outcome. Many of this group may be recipients of routine monthly reports and the like but more is needed; you need to create positive expectations and then deliver on them.

The smallest and most important group are the key stakeholders who wield significant influence or power. This group require targeted one-on-one communication to build and foster positive relationships. It’s a two way process, you need support from them, they need to appreciate the benefits your project or activity will deliver. The Stakeholder Circle® methodology and tools are focused on identifying the ‘right’ stakeholders at the ‘right’ time in a project for this critical communication activity. Failure with this group will generally cause your project to fail and before you can ‘win’ you first have to ‘not lose’!

However, the thought in this blog is these key people are probably not enough on their own to declare the final result of your efforts and outstanding success. Real success requires buy-in from a much larger group of stakeholders, such as the 30 million visitors who have ‘flown’ on the London Eye. But is your organisation mature enough to support the type of structured communication needed to achieve this level of success?

My SRMM® construct addresses the maturity of an organisation to engage in effective stakeholder relationship management and this is a critical start. The bigger question is who’s responsible for the wider communication: the project team, the change manager, the sponsor or the organisation? Achieving real success is definitely a lot more complex than just being on-time and on-budget…. Perhaps this could be the subject for another book?