Question
Things have become difficult on my project, with some of the stakeholders in disagreement about the business changes that we can/should achieve, and it seems to be getting worse. Over the last month, several key senior managers seem to have ‘lost interest’ – they have stopped coming to most of my meetings, they never seem to have any questions and they rarely return emails. Yet I’m getting second-hand reports that one in particular is stirring up trouble – criticising my project, disagreeing with the sponsor, and generally being unhelpful with my team. What can I do about this?
Anonymous (major retail bank)
Our response
This situation feels ‘wrong’ on many levels, and you need to actively manage it!
Who owns this project?
A word of warning: you refer to this as “my project”. Remember that your role is in organising, managing and controlling the delivery of change into the business, but you do not ‘own’ the change. It has been requested by the business, for the business, and your job is to deliver the outcomes they determined. It is not in your gift to change the direction of the project, so you cannot become involved in negotiating scope and outcomes without the support and involvement of your sponsor and any other relevant senior stakeholders.
So do not consider for a moment tackling these troubles on your own. However the probable causes, and therefore responses, do differ depending on where you are in the project lifecycle. Early on and the problem is likely to be stakeholder conflict, whereas later it is possibly a ‘sleeper’ or two awakening.
Stakeholder conflicts
Let’s address the condition of stakeholders in disagreement.
It is to be expected that stakeholders will have different perspectives and even business priorities. Disagreement at the outset of a business change project or programme (BCPP) is in fact very desirable because it indicates high levels of stakeholder engagement. Conversely, mute agreement should be worrying: are stakeholders in agreement or are they not ‘switched on’? We would advise anyone initiating a BCPP to find ways to generate the debate and discussion necessary to identify these different agendas as early as possible.
The following two charts plot the level of discussion, debate & disagreement among stakeholders.
Figure 1: where disagreement is suppressed early in a BCPP, there is a period of relative calm, inevitably succeeded by recriminations and conflict at a point when it is less likely that there is time and money to put things right
Figure 1 is a useful conceptual diagram of what happens when a CPP starts off without the necessary debate or discussion of differences among stakeholders and where the BCPP is approved too ‘quickly’ or ‘easily’.
Figure 2: Explicitly managed conflict resolution at the outset will make stakeholders feel uncomfortable, even dissatisfied, but is the only way to gain broad agreement on the direction of a BCPP. The rest of the journey may still be rocky, but the major battles will have been fought, and key decisions made.
A more helpful way to think about engaging stakeholders at the outset of a CPP is illustrated in Figure 2, where debate is encouraged and conflict addressed early on. It can feel uncomfortable, even confrontational, and it does consume time up front, but ultimately it pays off in terms of saved time and effort on rework, and on increased, positive stakeholder engagement on the change journey.
So our advice to you is to bring your senior stakeholders into forums where they can identify and come to a negotiated agreement over the purpose, direction, scope and value of the BCPP.
There are no shortcuts or easy answers at this stage of a project. Furthermore you will need to engage your sponsor and other senior managers to help you make this happen. The results of these deliberations must be documented as they provide you with a compass to guide you on the change journey.
Incidentally, in the case where stakeholders cannot reach a large measure of agreement, and continue to argue for different agendas within your change initiative, then the only advice is to call for a halt until agreement is reached. Otherwise, your change initiative is almost certainly doomed to descend into conflict at a later stage. All manner of unhelpful organisational politics will emerge and consume the BCPP: professional experience tells us that it is unsafe to proceed.
When ‘sleepers’ awake
The emergence of conflict during implementation of your BCPP sounds more like the scenario in Figure 2. It is clear that some unhelpful organisational politics (political ‘game-playing‘) is starting to intrude. You have on board what are termed ‘sleepers’, who have now ‘woken up’ and are causing trouble.
These sleepers may have been genuinely unaware of problems and have just woken up to the implications of the change, perhaps because you didn’t do a very good job of engaging them early on. On the other hand, they may have been consciously biding their time for an opportunity to attack the project from the side-lines. It matters little – their behaviour is a threat to the project, and this must be addressed head-on.
The answer is not for you to try to placate them with last-minute changes to scope or promises of ‘goodies’ in a future ‘phase two’. Our advice is similar to the above: engage them with the other senior stakeholders in negotiating a way forward.
It will undoubtedly prove even more difficult and messy to negotiate a way forward now that the BCPP is well underway, but it is still essential: without a prompt resolution there is even more trouble ahead, so it cannot be ignored.
If the resolution results in the BCPP being radically altered, then you will have to re-plan it from the ground up; if no resolution is possible then it must be carried forward or halted – in either case your senior stakeholders must be involved in making the decision and supporting you in carrying it forward.
In conclusion
When serious senior management concerns emerge, they must be resolved at the appropriate senior level in the organisation. Make sure that you are not left alone to bear the brunt of dealing with senior stakeholder dissatisfaction.
