Why “Stakeholder Approach” for Global Project Management?
Previously, we talked about Creating Dynamic Project Culture. Global Projects involve new people from different cultures who join together as a temporary organization. The Project Manager needs to facillitate the creation of Global Project Culture. This means that the people share the same vision for what The Product of the project will look like when it is done. They create this vision by communication.
Respect, understanding, trust, responsibility, growth all these words mean different things in different cultures. People from one culture may be acting respectful, but the interpretation of another person is disrespectful. When people feel dis-respected they have to act to save face. A great Global Project Manager knows dis-respect is a root cause for meaningless conflict, and preempts negative with a positive attitude. The leader uses vision to bind diverse stakeholders to a common goal. For example: Some of us might eat spaghetti with a fork and spoon, some of us might eat ramen with chopsticks but for this project we are going to join hands and get it done together. As a team we need to invent our own shared understanding of how to communicate. For example how quickly to respond to emails or requests for information. This is best done by communication.
Shareholder management is a concept that simply says that the owners of the company are the number one metric. The president of the company makes authoritative decisions like a Military leader and controls the resources to maximize profits for the owners of the company or the Shareholders. The concept is simply maximize profits for the Shareholders.
Why do we use “Stakeholder Management” on Global Projects? Why not just follow the simple commands of the leader above us? Stakeholder Management utilizes the concept of Salience. Salience is relative importance based on context. Stakeholder Management is complex and it has the goal of Maximizing value. Stakeholder Management assumes that we can align the organizations Business Values and the End Customers values. How we do that is by understanding where both dimensions will be in the end. The team creates a complex quality matrix that traces the process of creating value back to the origin.
In Global Project Management the Customer is King. The project manager facilitates complex matrix management by getting the different cross boundary people together. Face to face is recognized as the best way, but of course we can utilize technology and modern cloud computing to approximate as a virtual meeting. The Global Project Manager fosters innovation by getting disparate specialists to recognize the links in the chain. The Global Project Manager helps the team to build the network.
The team needs to recognize that the next person in the the process is the Customer @Saladis. The process or network customer has the responsibility to clearly communicate what are their metrics for success. The process or network “vendor” has the responsibility to confirm that they understand. The team members are simultaneously transacting as vendor-customer. Sometimes they need to be merciless egotistical bosses that demand the correct grade and quality. At the same time they need to be entrepreneurial capitalists that engineer value to fulfill their customers orders efficiently. How do we do this?
