The month of July means a considered approach to the political landscape, patricularly when it comes to the nature of stakeholder. As Tipoffs often does, we're looking at the stakeholder management issues as they pertain to the project management community, and we're the watch dog this month for the 5W-How about stakeholders and office politics you'll need to be aware of.

Firstly we have a piece that defines what stakeholder management in fact is, tracking down exactly who stakeholders are or can be, whether or not their status is fixed and how you need to engage all parties effectively. Contributors from our LinkedIn Discussion on the matter will play a large role in this and other pieces.

Our next piece targets the inherent psychologies one must consider in engaging stakeholders, as well as the tools at the project manager's disposal that can best identify what is at stake for both the stakeholder and you in the commencing of your project timeline and eventual delivery.

Lindsay Scott switches tacts slightly to the matter of team & office-related poltical issues you'll have to navigate, particularly as it pertains to the jobs you apply for that have a high demand for solid stakeholder management skills and a savvy manner for handling potential political minefields.

Stakeholder management is also a matter of soft skills, as you'll learn in the latest edition of Question of the Month, while guest reviewer Geri McLeary (a commenter in many of our aforementioned articles as well) takes a look at Elaine Douglas' Bullying in the Workplace.

SPECIAL NOTE: Tipoffs is now available in podcast form for all of our audio fans keen on learning the ins and outs on project management, programme management and recruitment in the PPM world. The July podcast is now available. Click here to learn more our podcasts and subscribe to our regular feed, or here to download us on iTunes. For the on-the-go, instantaneous information public, Project Management Tipoffs and Arras People are ready for you.

Would you like to advertise in the next issue of Project Management Tipoffs? We publish on the third Thursday of every month, and would like to have all advertising data (images, click-through links, invoices) taken care of the week before release. Contact us, check our running schedule and our advertising guidelines today.

Words: Dan Strayer

Managed successfully or to failure, all projects ultimately have consequences - not just on the resources you are using, but on the people who feel the effects of the project. These people have expectations, realistic or maddening. These people deal with the project you’ve left behind long after you’ve transitioned any sort of needed handover and moved on. For every edifice with a plaque commemorating the project that built it, the architect is cited with regard; that architect, however, completed that project for the benefit of every person who ever walks past that plaque every single day, be they workers or customers.

You know these people as the project’s stakeholders, those crucial influencers that have varying amounts of courses on their plates, but all of whom feel the burden of that edifice as it pertains to their everyday lives. And to know the ins and outs of stakeholder management for your project managing ways, you’ll need to know a few things:

• Who they consist of
• Whether they change during the project’s timeline
• Does their status ever need amendment?

What constitutes your stakeholders?

There are a variety of people that can be labelled as a potential stakeholder in your project, and the list is not confined to mere individuals: groups and clusters can feel the heat of your project management fire, both internally and externally. If communications makes up more than three-quarters of project management, much of that communication falls in the department of the personalities you’ll have to massage in your stakeholder engagements.

“A lot of effort often goes into the management of stakeholder communications,” says Anne Dagen, a Senior Programme and Project Manager commenting on a LinkedIn discussion post hosted by the Arras People Group Page.(include link here) “It's much more difficult to manage stakeholder expectations, especially as these may be driven by factors outside the project and by people outside the project's stakeholder population.

“Expectation management requires substantial networking effort to enable the project manager to keep abreast of whom and what is likely to influence the perceived success of a project.”

Broken down further, who could be your internal and external stakeholders? A hypothetical list might include these personnel:

• Internally, it’s could be the managing director, the marketing director, a project team member, or the mailroom guy who’d like one of those aforementioned jobs some day in the new building, office, or utilising that new product that increases production and efficiency.
• Externally, your stakeholder population may include contractors, zoning officials, suppliers, the general public, the eventual customers, or even the non-customers who will be affected by the excess work area your project unavoidably creates.

Alternatively, it matters little who was with your team from the beginning or took notice of your project early on - down the line, some eventual stakeholders came into contact with the project, and they’re going to feel the effects. A commuter who has to get up 10 minutes earlier because of your roadwork project is a definite (and reluctant) stakeholder, one who (despite your planning and pre-emptive marketing strategies) may not have had time to read the roadwork announcement signs posted as they were, you know, watching the road!

Put simply, to determine who your stakeholders are: scope out everyone and anyone who can and will be affected by the project, both during management and after its delivery. Using tools and matrices to better define each stakeholder’s level of interest, needed degree to be informed, and concerns that need to be addressed (see next article), we can better appreciate just how we need to engage with each person or group affected by your project.

A stakeholder’s status is not set in stone

Yet stakeholder management is ongoing and in need of continued review and updating: in the scope of a project, a lot of things will invariably change, as deadlines shift and resource potential is fully realised. If change in any of these (and a wealth of other) circumstances is inevitable, we need to adjust our stakeholder engagement and analysis accordingly.

“I believe that in common with risk registers, the stakeholder mapping matrices and engagement plans are live and change as a project progresses through its lifecycle,” says Geri McLeary, a veteran project manager who also commented in our LinkedIn discussion. “The achievement of key milestone events provides convenient points to review the content of stakeholder mapping matrices and engagement plans as well as the deliverability of project benefits.”

If it’s live, stakeholder management should never be too far from the project manager’s mind and communications objectives. By no means is this universal, but project managers, according to another LinkedIn group discussion commenter, Chris Hodson, can expect that ongoing communications changes with stakeholders will slowly taper off. Yet most of that lies in the early work preparing to manage stakeholders: as time goes on, it can be expected that PMs have these templates and are able to make requisite changes where necessary. The engagement itself still remains, regardless of what stage you’re in.

“I am often asked how much time a project manager should devote to stakeholder management during the project,” he says. “I have discovered that my relationships with key stakeholders is at its most intense at the initiation and the planning stages and levels off during the delivery phase with a final peak at close down.”

“That said, the percentage of time a successful project manager commits during the whole process should not dip below 80% in any phase. This demands thorough initiation and planning, to enable a comprehensive understanding of what success looks like and the approach to achieving it among all those with an interest in the outcome of the project, combined with specifically targeted resource management during the delivery phase to ensure the project manager has time enough to manage the stakeholders while the delivery is made.”

Words: Dan Strayer

In terms of a project’s best interests, stakeholders are invariably different in influence or interest level. For all project leaders, the determination of how to handle these principals is, as you will learn later in this issue, an art form, one who’s proof of success lies in the eating of the pudding. No two taste buds are alike in one project, so you’ll have a big range of palettes to satisfy, or perhaps simply keep on the backburner as you prioritise those in need of satisfaction.

So how do you measure influence? Good managers of stakeholders tend to use a variety of matrices, scoping things such as influence and interest levels.

"I’ve seen and used matrices to plot stakeholder's power/influence over the project vs. level interest in the project in order to map stakeholders in a rational and objective manner and suggest potential communication channels to keep them involved and informed with programmes and projects,” says Geri McLeary, a Birmingham-based Procurement Director who also spoke in the LinkedIn discussion. “While I’ve seen others use 4*4 matrices (and bigger) I tend to use 3*3 matrices because 2*2 matrices are too blunt a tool and because most people can understand and memorise the content of a 3*3 matrix."

Geri adds that he has four key areas he wants to address when he uses matrices with risk register data:

• "Who should be considered as prime candidates for programme/project board roles (usually stakeholders who have lots of power/influence over the project’s deliverables and lots of interest);"
• "Who needs to be met regularly to update them about the project face-to-face;"
• "Who needs to be apprised of progress regularly by way of a newssheet and/or monthly highlight report," and;
• "Who just needs to be apprised about project outcomes (stakeholders who do not have much in the way of power/influence over the programme's and/or project’s deliverables or have a huge amount of interest in being closely involved in the programme or project)."

Research of relevant stakeholder matrices and tools will often turn-up numerous results. Here are a few measuring tools you may find useful:

• The Simple Stakeholder Analysis Matrix* is usually a 4x4 matrix that measures each stakeholder's degree of influence and importance as pertains to a project. This is a great tool at the onset of your stakeholder management tasks: you can quickly identify whose on board, who’ll need to be convinced, and who’s interest levels are where, exactly;
• The Stakeholder Identification Matrix (.pdf) affords you the opportunity to list who the stakeholders are, how important they are in the project's effectiveness, and give reasons why/why not;
• The Stakeholder Perception Matrix (.pdf) is two-for-one matrix measuring both individual groups and group clusters that have identifiable problems. The aim is to map out solutions to those problems AND the stakeholder's anticipated responses. This one is particularly good for high-risk public relations & marketing scenarios.

The ICRA link (.pdf) listed twice already can also tell you about other key matrices that can be helpful, such as:

• The Stakeholder Objective Matrix, which measures both the differences and the common ground in objectives between groups affected by projects. This is a great way to help conflicting interests find common ground in a collective action.
• The Stakeholder Role Matrix, which identifies which groups do what in relation to the ‘system of interest’, which allows for gaps and overlaps to be identified and acted upon. This matrix may be best utilised for internal assessment, as it can identify those tasks that are over-addressed or under addressed, allowing the opportunity to re-assign priorities and attain improved performance within a project in all areas.
• The Stakeholder Linkage Matrix, a cross-referencing matrix (see image at right for an example) that aims to identify the total health of relationships between sets of affected stakeholders in a project through notifications like “+” and “-”.
• The Information Needs Matrix, which takes relationships a step further as they pertain to getting the relevant information from one stakeholder to the next. The Recommendations column is an area to assign possible solutions to poor relationships between information holders and those in need of such information.
• The Stakeholder Benefits Matrix, which reminds us that certain parties in fact DON’T benefit from your project. This matrix allows us to know who gains and who loses from your effective delivery, and identify options for attaining social equity for all parties. This is good for cost benefit analysis along with other elements like determining the socio-economic effect brought on by the project, not to mention the long-term viability of the project after delivery.

Chris Hodson, a programme and project management specialist, says: "There are a plethora of tools & techniques associated with managing those with an interest in the delivery, progress and outcome of a programme and/or a project. There is little to choose (from) between most of them."

Ultimately, stakeholder management measures and reveals any previously undetectable psychological traits inherent with those who hold concerns about the project. As the Stakeholder Benefits Matrix reveals, not everyone is glad your project/product is on its way - the person who stands to suffer is surely someone you’ll have to manage. Differing expectations, indeed.

McLeary contends with this variety of expectations regularly in his dealing with stakeholders. His philosophy governs that different expectations mean specific methods of approach and contact, based on factors that include level of interest and even how each party likes their information given to them.

"I've found that it is also helpful to overlay some psychological theory on the above work to take account of the learning style of each stakeholder and/or stakeholder group," he says. "For example, some people prefer to read and act on factual data, whereas others prefer to operate in social settings. With large amorphous stakeholder groups it can also be helpful to identify key influencers within each group (in addition to the self-proclaimed leaders) but care needs to be taken on how these influencers and leaders are deployed on programmes/projects. Developing specific stakeholder engagement plans setting out who will be contacted, why they will be contacted, when and how they will be contacted and by whom in the programme/project team can also be helpful tools for managing this stakeholder."

But mixing the tools with the personal touch isn’t always as simple as it sounds. It’s Hodson’s belief that some trained project people need to combine the tools they’ve learned whilst developing a knack for dealing with the variety of stakeholders they will meet in the course of a project. And unfortunately, this more innately-driven skill is not always a given; or perhaps it has simply not been developed to satisfaction.

"Most assume a 'managing people' capability - having a degree of sensitivity to the way others think, respond to expectations and perceive both the positive and negative aspects of reward that may not be there," he says.

"Programme and project management education and training is very good when it comes to tools and techniques, but it’s not so good at developing the key socio-political skills needed to manage senior people, colleagues and subordinates. As a consequence, programme and project managers, often sporting advanced qualifications, are surprised by changes."

Hodson also advises project managers to "work with key stakeholders to manage expectations at the start, throughout the delivery and when the objective is achieved."

To break down just how real-life experience can teach more about managing stakeholders than most training situations, consider a lesson McLeary learned after going so far as to determine the level of interest of each stakeholder.

“Something that I learned after a painful experience is to avoid suggesting any stakeholder has a low level of interest in any project, because even if this is true in absolute terms it will not be politically acceptable to most people placed in such a pigeon-hole. I tend to classify levels of interest as: 'interested', 'very interested' and 'extremely interested'. Truly uninterested groups are unlikely to be project stakeholders and therefore should not feature on any stakeholder matrix.”

The beautiful part about combining tools with practise is that each matter is open for amendment, like a Constitution. Perhaps you can find a more politically acceptable way to define relationships in your Stakeholder Linkage matrix as a means to build consensus, for instance. Whatever the situation, don’t look at stakeholder management tools and practise as set in stone: rather, if you’re already amenable to things like change and dealing with new discoveries, why can’t you take stakeholder management processes and bend them for the benefit of your projects as well?

"While stakeholder matrices are a rational way of categorising stakeholders, they are subjective models," McLeary says. "This means that you may want to regularly review them once tabulated using your own empirical data as the project progresses and as your understanding of the stakeholder groups and their specific motivations increase."

Dan Strayer is a Marketing Coordinator of Arras People and editor of Project Management Tipoffs. To read more of his work on project management at How to Manage a Camel, click here.

Words: Lindsay Scott

It's a common cause of project failure directly attributable to us human beings if it is not carried out effectively. It's considered to be one of the arts of project management – not a science. It features prominently in job specifications and advertisements when organisations are looking for project managers. It basically covers the relationship and communication aspects of projects. There are literally hundreds, if not thousands of references to it across the web and in project management books. Getting to grips with complex stakeholder management and being a politically savvy project manager is in demand, but what does it all mean?

In this article we look at what organisations are actually looking for when they ask for “stakeholder management skills” and then discuss what it is that you should be displaying to prospective employers to demonstrate your competence – in your CV, the interview and also on the job.

With stakeholder management being all about identifying and then understanding the motivations and behaviours of anyone who can affect what you’re trying to achieve on a project; then developing relevant strategies to influence outcomes – it’s no surprise that stakeholder management is one of the top “soft” skills a project manager can have.

For a reference point I started with a quick search of a handful of current job specifications where stakeholder management is referred to and not unexpectedly it shows up in many different shapes and sizes as can be seen in the list below (the number in brackets is where it ranked in the overall importance of the project manager’s roles and responsibilities);

• Manage the expectations of stakeholders throughout the lifecycle of the project.(1)
• Experience of dealing with multiple stakeholders (2)
• Be politically savvy (2)
• Ensure that information systems are put in place to meet the information requirements of all stakeholders (5)
• Coordinate effective communication among teams and stakeholders (6)
• Produce stakeholder analysis (4)

So what are organisations looking for when they ask for “stakeholder management skills”?

Organisations are looking for project managers who can understand and act on;

• Who their stakeholders are (upwards, outwards and sideways)
• The success criteria for the project and how much of this is dependent on the stakeholders
• How many interested parties have to be considered (usually more than one, sometimes running into the 100’s, if not 1000’s)
• What drives stakeholders (sometimes they don’t know themselves)
• What power do stakeholders have? What influence can/do they exert?
• Are there conflicting interests amongst the stakeholders
• The need to know when and how to adopt new strategies
• The actions that are needed from stakeholders and how those actions will ultimately affect the outcome of the project.

There are tools and processes available for any project manager getting to grips with stakeholder management on their projects (some of which are covered in the “What is Stakeholder Management” article above); an understanding and experience of using them can be clearly used on a CV and talked about during an interview. Tool use alone does not tell us enough about your behavioural skills. It is these behavioural skills that make a real difference in stakeholder management, skills such as influencing; understanding behavioural traits of others; managing conflict; relationship management and negotiation. All of these behavioural skills need to be clearly conveyed in conjunction with the tools and processes you use.

Consider for a moment an interview question based on one of the roles and responsibilities highlighted above; "How do you manage multiple stakeholders?"

The question can be answered from the initial standpoint of understanding who the stakeholders are and establishing just how many make up the "multiple". What behavioural competences do you think you need to demonstrate in this initial step of stakeholder management? An answer which includes communications (including listening skills), relationship building and decision making perhaps? Moving on to profile who the stakeholders are; how they influence the project and what drives them: competences such as influencing, communication, relationship management, conflict management and social networking all features heavily. The interview answer can continue to cover specific examples, changes in management throughout the lifecycle, specific processes or tools that you use to support yourself in effective stakeholder management. And that’s really the key to successfully talking about your stakeholder management skills at an interview; making it clear that the tools and processes support your behavioural skills, leadership abilities and personal qualities. Concentrating on talking about your behavioural skills of influencing, negotiation, communication, conflicts, relationship management etc are what the organisation wants and needs to hear.

Mastering the behavioural competences of project management is something that all project management professionals strive for; mastering the so called "soft skills" is often the difference between a successful and unsuccessful project. In continuing to perfect their craft, project management professionals also need ensure that they become much better at talking about and conveying the behavioural elements of their roles. It is the exceptional behavioural skills of a project manager and how they choose to demonstrate these skills, not just in stakeholder management but also in other areas of project control, that help them stand out from the crowd. Ultimately it is these skills that make a project manager very marketable and in demand by organisations looking for the right talent for their projects.

Lindsay Scott is a Director of Arras People. To read more of her work on project management at How to Manage a Camel, click here.

This section is here to help you realise where to get help with your most basic and far-reaching questions alike. With just a little search, you can use the Arras People website to get ahead in your hunt for gainful PPM employment and advice. From time to time, we'll go beyond FAQs with this running feature as well - we're also happy to point you towards the tidbits of information you can do with, be it a handout, a testimonial, or reasons as to why a candidate can turn to Arras People. The main idea is to channel your regularly-asked inquiries into sections of the website that are set up to deal with them in a convenient fashion.

This month's Frequently Asked Question:

Image by sarbathory and re-used with permission.

Author: Elaine Douglas
Publisher: Gower (A Publishing Partner of Arras People)
Size: 1854 pages

Reviewed by Geri McLeary

This manual is an easy and thought provoking read that includes many useful examples of good and poor practice. While the manual was published in 2001, Elaine Douglas’s advice still seems relevant to me as a manager of a wide range of professional staff but who is not an HR specialist. The manual, however, needs updating to include revised financial data about the cost of bullying and perhaps examples of cyber-bullying, i.e. bullying via internet based social networks. It may also need to take on board any new ideas that may have developed since it was first published.
 
In summary, the manual comprises two parts:

• Part One– has five relatively brief chapters that seek to define what bullying is and the financial and personal consequences of allowing it to survive; it then goes on to discuss why bullying occurs and how organisations can develop and implement anti-bullying policies with specific advice and guidance for managers and other professionals

• Part Two– presents the detail of Elaine’s anti-bullying manual in a variety of toolkits; first by presenting several well-known models (such as Transactional Analysis, Passive Uncooperative Cooperative Assertive, etc.) which seek to describe types of behaviour; second, by supplying a range of questionnaires to help readers understand behaviours in organisations; and last by setting out several techniques for dealing with inappropriate behaviours.

In my view, the manual’s structure is both logical and sensible. I also particularly liked the way the practical advice set out in the book seems to be founded on established psychological theory.

Despite the manual’s focus on bullying in organisations, programme and project managers should find its toolkits helpful when seeking to model and understand the organisations within which their programmes/projects sit. It should also be helpful to those seeking model the behaviours within their project teams, as well as their own, to inform any actions that may need to be taken to improve the health of these teams. All in all, I valued approaches suggested in Elaine’s manual and intend to keep it as a useful reference text.

ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Geri McLeary is a programme manager who has delivered high profile deliverables in local and central government and who is often called on to reinvigorate struggling programmes and projects; and as a consequence, he has to assess organisation, team and individual behaviours to inform his improvement plans.

DO YOU WANT TO REVIEW A BOOK FOR TIPOFFS? Contact us today.

"How do I make myself effectively come across on a CV as having strong stakeholder management (or perhaps even just strong people) skills?" – Mike, Kent

Steve Trippier of Arras People says: Hi Mike, good question, and it is the sort of question that will always generate a good debate within the project community.

In today’s market place it is possibly even more relevant as candidates need to use their CV to its fullest extent in order to ensure that all their knowledge skills and experience are fully represented and that it differentiates them from the myriad of other candidates looking for their next role.

In my opinion it is certainly not enough to simply state: "I have strong stakeholder management skills"; personally, I would always look for such a statement to be qualified within a CV with some strong examples. However, before adding examples to your CV there are still a number of elements to consider.

First of all, you want to try and keep the examples fairly concise; you don’t want to be making your CV unnecessarily "wordy". Secondly, try and use examples that have a strong outcome, going back to your question you said you want to show you are “effective”, what better way than to have a positive outcome at the end of your example. Finally, I would also suggest you consider the level of role/s you are applying for and tailor the examples accordingly i.e. If you are applying for a more senior role then “I would hold monthly meetings/presentations/progress reports with the senior management team and project sponsor(s) to..." would potentially carry more weight than "I would chair weekly meetings with the project team to…".

By way of an example this is the sort of statement that is likely to catch the eye of potential recruiters and give them the confidence that you do have the ability to effectively engage/manage stakeholder and their expectations.

I championed the introduction of structured projects to gain control over ambiguous work specifications, constant changes and spiraling costs. By presenting monthly progress reports to the senior management team I was able to highlight the improved control over costs through more effective planning and communication. As a direct result the culture of the team changed from being reactive to much more proactive, not only improving the quality of deliverables but the team morale too.

If you would like to put a question to Steve or any of our other project management consultants, contact us and it could end up in a future edition of the Tipoffs Q&A. Also, be sure to check out both our Project Management Careers Clinic and also the Project Management Careers Advice pages for more advice related to project management careers.

Got a question for us? Contact us today.