Hi everyone, Margaret Maloney here. I thought that I would take some time and share a stakeholder story with you. And the purpose of sharing this stakeholder story with you is to talk about the importance of stakeholder identification and knowing who stakeholders are. You know, we talked about stakeholder analysis and understanding what motivates our stakeholders, why they are a part of our project, what are their true interests. We also discuss how important it is for us as project managers to manage our stakeholders, and their expectations, and keep them interested in the project. We acknowledge that all of this great stakeholder information should be part of our communications plan. That is all good. Maybe it would be helpful to consider some real-life stakeholder management stories. And so in that spirit I thought today, I would share with you a real story of how this can all fit together. So our story starts, I'm sitting in someone's office. And this woman, she looks at me and here's what she says. She says, you know, I liked your presentation, but you forgot to introduce yourself. Those were the first words I ever heard from this particular business unit manager. And, you know, she was correct. When I started my presentation I didn't say, hi this is Margaret, or this I'm Margaret Maloney. Because I was next up on the agenda, [LAUGH] I just stood up and launched in my presentation, so she was right for those one lesson learned. But I was in her office because when I had made that presentation where I forgot to introduce myself, it was a large project kick-off. And so she was referring to the presentation I gave during that project kick-off, and she led a team who had a small role in the project. Now, small but significant their piece was not the largest, and it didn't require the most work. But it was work that helped the users of one part of the system provide information to the users at the other part of the system. So there I was, following up with her. Now, before going on with the story, let's look at some of the pieces that we've already covered from a project management perspective. Okay, so here's what has happened so far. Key stakeholders had been identified through reviewing the business case you know, reviewing the business case for the project and tracing the flow of the system and the system changes from one group to another all the way along the system, like, you know, off of a flow chart. To identify the points and the people who represented those points, that's stakeholder identification. Next, these stakeholders were invited to a large kick-off and it was held as a celebration, a launch party. There was a theme and decorations and catering. It was not inexpensive. But you know what, this is how we did things at this company, and to do otherwise would have been to go against company culture. And this would have potentially upset the stakeholder group. After all, important projects were always announced with a lot of fanfare. Knowing that, was stakeholder analysis at a high level. That understanding of, this is how we do things here, so this is what my stakeholders are expecting. That was a little bit of stakeholder analysis. Following up with each stakeholder, and conducting interviews with them about the project. That was an additional piece of stakeholder analysis, and also stakeholder management. See the purpose, the reason I was sitting in her office when she told me that I forgot to introduce myself at the beginning of my presentation, the reason I was there was a follow up session. To learn more about her, to understand more about her expectations from the project, and to kind of assess, you know, what did I get from her? Did I get that she was positive about the project? Was she neutral about the project? Was she a resistor? That was the point of the follow up, which I conducted with her and with any others. Something else she said to me during this meeting. She said, you know, I hope you will schedule more events like this one on a regular basis. They are so good for morale. The irony there I'll say is that I had just come from a meeting with one of the finance managers who had said, I hope you do not schedule events like that on a regular basis because they're too expensive. And prior to the finance manager, I had met with an operations manager and the operations manager had said, I hope you don't have big meetings like that too often. It's a waste of time to have so many people in one meeting at one time, and they get, you know, too hyper from all the celebration, and then they're not productive. Now what did I know? Okay, I've got one manager who wanted team building events because they were good for morale. I had one manager who was okay with team building, but didn't want them themed, and catered, and big because it was too expensive. And I had another manager who did not want large groups of people in the same meetings. What was, what was I did do? Could I satisfy all of those managers? No. Or could I? What I could do was manage their expectations. I was not going to promise that there would always be big parties for team building. I was not going to promise that there would never be any money spent on team building. And I was not going to promise that there would never be meetings with large groups of people. So that's managing their expectations. That's part of that stakeholder management. What I could do was I could work to create a communication plan with this information, perhaps a communication plan could include some celebrations, as we completed important milestones. Maybe some of those celebrations would be larger than others. Maybe some would be coffee, tea, and cookies. Maybe others would be breakfasts and lunches. So, different levels of celebration, different cost expen, cost expenditures. Now, what about that having, you know, large groups of people in too many meetings. Well, I could definitely, I could seek to have, you know, what we call tighter agendas where some groups attend for a specific time and then they could return to work. I only make sure I have people in meetings when it's really necessary. Maybe instead of having an entire group, somebody in the group acts as a liaison for the group. But the truth is, I didn't actually have to figure this all out by myself. I could use my stakeholders, my identified, their opinions, who had come and surfaced through analysis and some management techniques to manage their expectations and work with them to figure it out. And so, what I did was I brought my key stakeholders together, and showed them a basic plan. And in this instance, what I was specifically looking at was the milestones and the celebrations, the big things. The manager who wanted team building, you know, while she understood the perspective of the finance manager, who is worried about costs. She also understood the perspective of the operations manager, who is worried about time being wasted. The finance manager, finance manager understood the value of team building. The operations manager did in fact understand the need for people to work together and from time to time for the whole group to be together, and so truthfully, once they sat down and put their heads together, I almost felt unnecessary. I almost didn't need to be there. But I was, and I captured the results. They were the ones who decided if a milestone was small, medium or large. They looked at the project, they looked at the milestones, and they designated them as small, medium or large. Then they decided what kind of celebration would go with each. Only large milestones would be these, you know, big events. Smile, small, excuse me, small milestones were coffee or cookies. Medium may have been a lunch, but on a smaller scale. For example, less expensive take-out meals. But what helped make them a little special is the stakeholders agreed to act as the serving staff for the team. Now, in terms of taking too much time or having too many people together in one meeting at a time, they put their heads together on this too, and they worked out a schedule. A coffee break milestone celebration was going to be 30 minutes. A lunch break celebration would be an hour. And then to help with people, you know, this operations manager, remember there was a concern that people got into like part mode when they went to these events, and then they came back, and they weren't productive. So often we agreed that we would hold some of these events on a Friday, or on a day when the workload was lighter, and in that way if it was really true that people came and they were in a kind of a celebratory mode and they weren't as productive, it was okay because it was a lighter work day. This is just a small success story of how stakeholder identification and stakeholder analysis followed by some stakeholder management, help to create a successful project communications plan. And I wanted to share that, to kind of show how, you know, we talk about these topics, and we say, oh, you know, your stakeholder plan should feed into your communication plan. And I just wanted to help illustrate how one really did flow in the real world on a real project, will you always have similar results to this? Maybe not. But you know what, you can't have these results if you don't integrate your stakeholder management with your communication management. And that's the point. Thanks for being here.
