Prioritizing Stakeholder Communications

Communication is critical to any project's success.  But to whom do you communicate?  How ofter? Using which medium?  These are not questions to be lightly considered.  Your success depends on the answers to each.

 

To Whom Do You Communicate?

Your project's stakeholders include the customer, upper management, members of your core team, extended team members and anyone who has any interest in your project. You need to communicate with each of them. However without some parameters, this can (and usually does) consume your every waking hour. You must prioritize your communication efforts. We suggest the Audience Focus Tool below to assist in this effort.

Audience Focus Tool

Communication with stakeholders in the bottom two quadrants (especially Influence) is important to initiate or nourish support for your project. Use stakeholders in the top quadrants (where support is high) to assist and build support. Your time available for communication should be budgeted to ensure you are building support for the project as well as maintaining existing support. The squeaky wheel analogy is really true here. Listen for unmet needs and focus time and effort on stakeholders in the Influence quadrant. This tool helps to properly allocate precious communication efforts / time.

 

How Do You Communicate?

Recognizing stakeholder needs / interests is important here. Today, no one needs / wants communication that isn’t focused on an immediate need or interest. Just recall the last telemarketing call you received during an evening meal. Ask yourself “What are this stakeholder’s interests in this project?” then be certain that your communications focus on those needs. Remember, management needs communication about all three elements of the triple constraint (time, cost and quality). Individual style preferences are reviewed below in the Styles Matrix.

Styles Matrix

Use of tools like Meyers-Briggs or DiSC (as shown above) to identify personal preferences can help you tailor the message to meet their individual information preferences. The first bullet in each box identifies the format preferences for each of the DiSC styles. Subsequent bullets identify the types of information commonly of interest to the person possessing that style. To use this tool it is important to be able to accurately identify individual style preferences. You should do this for each of your stakeholders, including core team members. Then, using members of your team with a particular profile to assist in communicating with stakeholders of the same preferences is a wonderful time saving idea that can serve to motivate core team members as well.

 

How Often To Communicate?

Stakeholders in the bottom two quadrants of the Audience Focus Tool will need the most frequent communication (especially those in Influence). We suggest two levels of communication; broadcast and targeted. Broadcast (possibly minutes from the core team meetings) should be enough for stakeholders in the top two quadrants of the Audience Focus Tool and for those in the D or C quadrants of the Styles Matrix. Targeted communications should be as often as the stakeholder wants them. Those in the I or S quadrants of the Styles Matrix or the top two quadrants of the Audience Focus Tool will need less frequent communications.

 

 

Core Team Motivation

The most commonly cited reason for project failure is lack of team motivation.  Without a committed and motivated team, even great ideas never make it to fruition.  What does it take to develop and maintain team motivation?  We’ve not got time to delve into the depths of motivation, but below are some crisp tips.

Developing Motivation

1.       Ownership – The fountain of commitment.  If they (the team) build it (participates in defining “how” the project will be completed), it (ownership / commitment) will come.  It is this commitment that drives results!

2.       Focus – Having a clear vision (mission statement) with a detailed knowledge of what each team member will contribute (work breakdown structure) and the result are primary factors in motivation.  Lack of focus is the most commonly voiced frustration of core team members and results in diffuse outcomes.

3.       Power Through Alignment – Teams desire power to accomplish tasks and meet deadlines.  When the Project Leader ensures that projects are visibly aligned with key business strategies, teams acquire that power by driving business results. Alignment of key stakeholder expectations also produces power for the team.

4.       Belonging – Individual team members will either spend their energy working with one another, or protecting themselves from one another.  Encouraging team members to invite co-worker involvement is difficult but produces great results.  The ability of each team member to express ideas / concerns is key to motivation.

        Maintaining Motivation

5.       Recognition of Needs – Project Leaders who quickly identify individual needs / strengths / weakness and assign work in a way to leverage each not only sustain motivation but also enhance results.  Doing tasks that challenge, offer growth possibilities and produce visible results motivate.

6.       Sense of Achievement / Momentum – Nothing is more frustrating than an absence of forward momentum.  Being blocked from accomplishment is frustrating and discouraging.  Project Leaders that monitor, actively communicate and encourage celebration of movement toward goals / milestones drive motivation.

7.       Meaningful Rewards / Recognition – Money is not the only reward, nor is it the best.  Recognition, challenge, change, involvement, empowerment, and growth are all more powerful motivators.  Working in an exciting / fun environment is more motivational than the money derived from working in a hostile one.

Managing Sponsor and Customer Alignment

As a project leader, there were many times that I became frustrated because the project sponsor and customer seemed to both have different views of the project than I did.  The sponsor's goal is to resource the project and keep costs and time to schedule.  The customer's goal is to derive as much value as possible from the project.  And the project leader's goal is to ensure that these often opposing parties are all happy when the project is complete.  Opposing perspectives can lead to all sorts of problems, and I eventually learned that before a project gets too far out of the starting blocks, a wise project leader ensures alignment between these three key stakeholders.

Reconciling your vision of the project (project requirements documentation or project charter) with the Customer and Sponsor will establish an initial “mind-meld” and ensure the project gets underway with aligned or homogenized expectations.  Once this is managed, then a project leader just needs to maintain that alignment - much easier than creating it mid-project!

The process of achieving this alignment is critical to the success of your project.  Following is the outline of a process you may find useful to ensure that you, your project sponsor and customer (or customer advocate) share common expectations: 

1. Get Customer and Sponsor Together: Never assume that the Sponsor and Customer have a common view / understanding of the project or have even spoken with one another directly about it.  Try to get both parties together in the same room with you when ever possible.  The more important the project, the more important this step is. 
2. Review the Project Charter:  Overview the draft charter you have created with both the sponsor and the customer.  Respond to their questions and take note of their suggestions, input and reactions. 
3. Begin by Listing Specific Expectations: Ask both parties to identify and list, in priority order, their expectations of desired project results (deliverables, time frames, acceptable risks, etc.).  Ask them to be specific.  Have them share their expectations and facilitate a discussion to initiate alignment.  Refer to Managing Expectations posts (Part One - Apr 13th 2011, and Part Two - April 25th, 2011) for information on how to gain alignment of expectations.
4. Identify Assumptions:  Work with both parties to identify assumptions that may underlie their expectations.  Work to identify those that may pose risk and incorporate them into your risk log.
5. Discuss Trade-Offs: Where differences exist, use Resolving Conflict to work through issues that may arise / exist and consider trade-offs.  Then document agreement by updating your draft Charter.  I usually come prepared to do this on the spot.  Getting all of these parties together again may be difficult.
6. Agree to The Revised Project Charter:  The final step is to get both to agree to the revised charter.  Your revised charter now needs to be managed throughout the project to ensure that expectations don't diverge as the project progresses and changes are implemented.

 Projects where I started this way usually went more smoothly than those where I skipped this important step.  If you will do these steps prior to or during your reconciliation meeting, you will successfully align expectations and start your project with support from your key stakeholders.  Try it, you'll like it!

Making Your Project Green

It’s increasingly difficult to go a day without hearing news of global warming or its impact on our planet and lifestyles.  Each day a larger percent of newsprint is dedicated to reporting on the ecological impact we are having on our communities, nations and planet.  We have known for years that our decisions impact our environment, but until now, the pain associated with those decisions was a future, not an immediate source of concern.  With the impacts of pollution, global warming, and increasing energy / food costs, perhaps it is time for us to add “ecological impact” to the list of important considerations as we make key project leadership decisions.

Typically the three mantras of all project leaders are “Quality”, “On-Time” and “Within Budget”.  However, a growing number of organizations are leveraging their success by innovating more eco-friendly ways of conducting their business.  As project work is typically at the cutting edge of innovation, it should be the front line for eco-friendly ideas and solutions.

Following is a list of some areas where we should consider the size of our “footprint”:

1. Communication – What is the most environmentally efficient way to communicate?
2. Vendor Selection Criteria – who can provide the best solution with the smallest negative impacts to the environment?
3. Resource Utilization – is there a better / less harmful way to accomplish each task?
4. Project Prioritization – how can we more actively integrate “environmental impact” into our decision criteria?
5. Quadruple Constraint – in addition to “better”, “cheaper” and “faster”, can we add “cleaner”?
6. Travel – Could it be accomplished as effectively in a more environmentally friendly way?

Here is a link to a short Environ Sim that may help you with this new thought process.  See how you do.  Let me know what other issues you'd like to see added.  Enjoy!