Andy Jordan is President of Roffensian Consulting S.A., a Roatan, Honduras-based management consulting firm with a comprehensive project management practice. Andy always appreciates feedback and discussion on the issues raised in his articles and can be reached at [email protected]. Andy's new book Risk Management for Project Driven Organizations is now available.
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Time for a few more sweeping generalizations, I’m afraid. It seems that whenever I write about stakeholders I always make assumptions about them that are none too flattering. Maybe there’s a subliminal message there based on my experiences, or maybe it’s just a project manager’s natural bias.
I prefer to think that it’s simply a case that I have less interaction with stakeholders than with other people that I work on during projects, so I have less opportunity to align them with my way of working. At the same time, they are likely involved in multiple initiatives and only have a need (or time) for high-level involvement.
So after that attempt to justify another “manage your stakeholders” article, here is my premise: As project managers we are starting to adapt to new ways of working--using technology to improve the way that we work with our project teams, especially when not everyone is located in the same physical space. But when it comes to managing our interactions with stakeholders, it’s not always as simple and straightforward.
In this article I want to look at ways that project managers can help stakeholders access the information they need in a connected world without creating huge amounts of project management overhead or stakeholder frustration.
Leveraging what’s there As we create more ways to work together with our project teams we also create a lot of information in an online format that is ready to be shared with other people involved in the project. For some of our stakeholders, it may be as simple as giving them access to that information. But for others it may require a degree of repackaging or interpretation. Either way, I see very little point in ignoring all of that information in favor of creating a whole set of different offline communications just because it’s a different audience.
Consider the standard status report. People are used to being handed the report in a meeting, having it sent to their e-mail address, etc. It’s a low-effort way to obtain the information, and unfortunately that often means that the message isn’t received--you don’t know that the report has been read. Consider as an alternative a status report that resides on your collaboration tool. With the latest version of Microsoft SharePoint you can create--on the fly--a summary report of basic project metrics from key project data that you are tracking as part of your team collaboration work. Not only does that make your job easier--you aren’t updating statistics all the time, it also means that the data is always current--someone doesn’t pick up a three-week-old status report and get the wrong impression.
Of course you still need to provide the analysis of the data--the project manager needs to interpret the numbers and identify the underlying issues that need to be addressed. But by providing a view of this information within the collaboration tool, you can do that at a time that makes the most sense. No longer are you arbitrarily working to a schedule for publishing status reports—instead, you can provide updates in real time and have your audience come to you to get the latest snapshot.
You can also take a copy of the report from the collaboration tool to use in your status meetings, executive reviews, etc. Personally, I wouldn’t take that approach--it tends to encourage stakeholders to stick to their old behaviors (of doing nothing and waiting for the status report to come to them). The real benefit of leveraging the collaboration tool is when your stakeholders seek out the information for themselves from the tool. This is a much more certain way for you to engage the stakeholders--they are taking conscious action to obtain the information and are therefore much more likely to actually read and understand what is being provided (as opposed to something that appears in their inbox or is handed to them in paper form). It also enables them to obtain the information on a schedule that makes sense to them. An e-mail received just before they go into an unrelated meeting is likely to be forgotten by the time they return. However, the ability to get up-to-date information just as easily as opening an e-mail at a time when they are actually thinking about your project is far more meaningful to them.
I’m not naïve; I recognize that there may be some initial reluctance from your stakeholders. The perception is that you are asking them to do more work--they have to go and get status updates rather than have them delivered. Selecting a favorite from a Web browser may be as simple as opening an e-mail attachment, but if it’s less familiar it will seem like more work. In my experience, there isn’t huge resistance when you can show the benefits of this approach--more up-to-date information available on a timeframe that works for them. But the real benefit comes from the next step…….
Adding more value Status reports are an easy starter for involving stakeholders in the collaboration world, but once stakeholders become comfortable you can add additional items. When you have deliverables that need reviews and approval, use the project’s virtual data space as the host for that review. Post drafts to the tool and have stakeholders provide their feedback and changes directly to that draft. Post the approval candidate that incorporates those changes to the tool and have the stakeholders provide their sign-off directly into the tool.
Not only does this help keep project information in one location, it also serves to create a little peer pressure between the stakeholders--they can see who has provided comments and who hasn’t. It’s a subtle yet public way of helping ensure you receive timely feedback and approval.
By bringing stakeholders into your collaboration community you are also helping to ensure that a greater percentage of the project artifacts are stored in one place. Not only does this make it easier to archive the project properly, it also helps leaders of future initiatives to access that information and gain from your experience--something else that at least some of your stakeholders will see a benefit to.
Of course there are projects where not all stakeholders should see everything (for example, when you have outside clients as stakeholders). Collaboration tools make perfect sense here as they allow for different security and configuration settings to ensure that only approved documents are visible, or that certain items are “read only” for some users and “read/write” for others.
Summary This isn’t rocket science, and it’s not a silver bullet. But if you can pull your stakeholders into your online project community, you will find that it can be a rewarding experience for both you and them.Will they need some help coming to terms with this new way of interacting with your project? Maybe…it might be new to them, but they will quickly grasp the benefits and you may be surprised how easily you engage them.
Andy Jordan is President of Roffensian Consulting Inc., an Ontario, Canada-based management consulting firm with a comprehensive project management practice. Andy always appreciates feedback and discussion on the issues raised in his articles and can be reached at [email protected]. Additionally, Andy is Vice President of a new Canadian professional project management body--the Project Management Association of Canada. Learn more about them at www.pmac-ampc.ca.
