Managing Stakeholders--2. Identify the Goals of the Principal Actors

We have already noted that various stakeholder groups have very different concerns regarding a project's implementation, ranging from positive and highly supportive all the way to hostile. As a first step in fashioning a political strategy to defuse negative reaction, a project manager should attempt to paint an accurate portrait of stakeholder concerns: a portrait that is predicated on honest assessment, not self-deception. Fisher and Ury (1981) have noted that the positions various parties adopt is almost invariably based on need. What, then, are the needs of each significant stakeholder group regarding the project? Are their needs in line with those of the organization, or are they more parochial, focusing on protecting their own turf or maintaining the status quo?

Project teams must look for hidden agendas in goal assessment. Frame (1987) has argued that all departments and stakeholder groups exert a set of overt goals that are relevant, but often illusionary. In their haste to satisfy these overt or espoused goals, a common mistake is to accept these goals at face value, without delving into the needs that may drive them or more compelling goals. Consider, for example, a project in a large, project-based manufacturing company to develop a comprehensive project management scheduling system. The project manager in charge of the installation approached each department head and believed that she had secured their willingness to participate in creating a centrally-located scheduling system within the project management division. Problems developed quickly, however, because the IS department, despite their public professions of support, began using every means possible to sabotage the implementation of the system. What was their concern? The belief that placing a computer-generated source of information anywhere beside their own department threatened their position as the sole disseminator of information. In addition to probing the overt goals and concerns of various stakeholders, project managers must look for hidden agendas and other sources of constraint on implementation success.