Project Management

An issue we cannot duck

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One of the most fundamental and imperative things a project manager must do is to identify stakeholders.

We think this is best done by asking two thoughtful questions:

  • Who cares about your project?
  • Who cares about your project’s outcome?

We focus a lot on this last part – the outcome, because many times we’re so caught up in the project itself that we lose (in a forest-for-the-trees sort of way) sight of the steady-state operation of our project.  And this is where many of the issues of CSR (corporate social responsibility) and TBL (Triple Bottom Line) come into play.

We recently came across a great comedy clip from the August 2, 2011 rendition of The Daily Show (a Comedy Central Network TV show, staring Jon Stewart).  In this clip, The Daily Show’s Aasif Mandvi interviews a stakeholder in a proposed wind farm in south Florida, USA.  Here, a stakeholder appears and is very concerned about the project’s steady-state use and its effect on a natural resource – ducks.  We hate to give too many details because it may spoil the comedy of the clip.  So watch the clip and come back here.

 

Here's the link (below):

 

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-august-2-2011/fowl-wind

 

So if you saw the clip – and we hope you did – here are the learnings from our perspective:

  • Think broadly and deeply about who may be stakeholders  while the project is ‘under construction’.
  • Now, imagine the project is done.  It’s running.  It’s working.  It’s perhaps a year into operation.  What happens to your stakeholder set?  Acknowledge that it will change. Feed that back into your stakeholder identification process.
  •  Know thy stakeholders!

            -know – and expose as necessary - their true objectives and concerns (not always their spoken ones)

            -understand drivers of their behaviors

  • Know the interactions of stakeholders with each other

 

To shift a bit from comedy to reality, check out the actual sites of the involved parties here:

http://sugarlandwind.com/Environment.html

http://www.unitedwaterfowlersfl.org/

We’re interested in your feedback here.  What did you think of the video?  Did the stakeholders’ interests surprise you?  Where did you see hypocrisy?  How would you have dealt with this if you were the wind farm project manager?  How would you have dealt with this if you were the Waterfowl representative?

We know that this is a difficult part of any project, and so, with tounge firmly in bill, we wish you the best of flock.

(snicker)


Posted by Richard Maltzman on: August 03, 2011 11:43 AM | Permalink

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