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Stakeholders must be important. A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK^® Guide)--Fourth Edition has over 380 separate references to the word "stakeholder."

But the thousands of managers struggling today to meet stakeholder expectations may be interested to know that only a few years ago no one bothered. The whole concept of business or project stakeholders is a relatively new phenomenon.

The legal concept of a stakeholder is not new. Neither is the concept of "having a stake" in something.

One must also presume the concept of delivering a quality product to meet the needs of the end user, customer or client is not new.

In fact, many 19th century businesses had enviable reputations for customer service. Which leads to the question: What changed?

The origin of a business stakeholder in management literature can be traced back to 1963, when the word appeared in an international memorandum at the Stanford Research Institute. Stakeholders were defined as "those groups without whose support the organization would cease to exist."

The concept of business stakeholders was also a core part of the work on systems analysis in organizations conducted by researchers at the Tavistock Institute in London, England in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The concept has since grown from those beginnings.

During the last 30 years, the people and organizations covered by the term "stakeholder" have continued to expand and evolve. Stakeholder theory now includes the concepts of corporate social responsibility, organizational theory, systems theory, customer relationship management and governance.

And in the last few years, stakeholders have come to encompass anyone with an interest in or who is affected by the work of an organization or its deliverables, or as someone who contributes to the work or its outcome.

Now that the idea of a stakeholder has come of age in the project world, the new challenge is stakeholder relationship management maturity. Organizations that develop this capability quickly are likely to have a significant competitive advantage--at least until their competitors catch up.

Imagine that the project you're managing has to be "right sized" for reasons outside your control. How would you keep up the team morale?

My team and I recently went through this process. (Thankfully, if you manage projects in a large corporation, you can sometimes relocate displaced team members to other parts of the organization. On my team, some of the people were able to be relocated.)

For those who remained on the project, here's what I did to maintain morale, learning a few valuable lessons along the way.

•    Communicate to your team openly. The worst thing you can do is to withhold information. Make a plan. Reserve a portion of your normally scheduled team meetings to keep everyone up to date on the current situation and listen for any concerns.

•    Explore, don't avoid, emotions. When a team member raises an issue or concern, don't wait for the chance to sit down one-on-one with him or her. Take the time right away to listen, understand and listen more.

•    Plan a course of action. 1. Inventory your team members' skill sets. 2. Analyze team member strengths that could benefit other projects. 3. Establish a specific follow-up meeting to communicate any news.

•    Focus on the future. After the restructuring, bring the team together and set the focus on the path ahead. Communicate the roles and responsibilities to mitigate any confusion between team members, which could lead to loss of morale. Without clear roles and responsibilities, it's like trying to drive uphill with the brakes on.

This "right-sizing" exercise has been a learning experience but I hope it will be a long while before I see another one ...
 

Also see the article, Motivating Team Members in an Insecure Job Market, from PMI Community Post.

Project leaders often conduct peer reviews in an effort to improve project performance. Part of the process typically includes the review of statistical process control (SPC) analysis to continuously monitor and improve the team's effectiveness in producing quality work products.

But there's a danger for team members to just "check the box," going through the motions of conducting a peer review because they were told to do so. So while organizations may have a peer review process in place, not all of them are actually measuring just how effective their peer review process is via SPC metrics.

Organizations need to have people who are trained in the role of process mentor to review what the SPC analysis is telling you and take the time to follow up. In our organization, continuous process improvement means the combined use of SPC analysis and the art of reviewing what the analysis is telling us..

Sometimes the project manager may have to take on the role of process mentor--interpreting and discussing the SPC results with the team.

When I review a SPC analysis for a project in which items have gone awry, I try to understand what possible areas the team needs to improve upon or what resources and training the team is lacking.

If you are already performing in this role of SPC analyst? Of process mentor? What role exactly? What has your experience been like?

Acting with integrity with other project team members implies being honest with them--and clear about your expectations, intentions and opinions of the work they do.

As a project manager, one has to have integrity in order to sell to the project team the need to succeed and deliver the project on time, on budget and within the scope of the project.

Not only will the team members buy into the plan of action and your project management methodology, they will also become a solid extension of you and remain committed to going out there and getting the job done.

Here are three tips for acting with integrity:

Be Impartial: Be fair and objective. Listen to both sides of the story, various opinions, without attaching oneself to any specific one due to prejudice or favoritism. Objective decision-making fleshes out the problems and allows teams to get to the bottom of them rather than patching them.

Be Thorough: Finish tasks completely, in a comprehensive manner. I find that being thorough in project planning activities means evaluating project requirements and any gaps in details. It also means validating steps against the chosen project management methodology. This ensures a much more comprehensive project management plan and that supporting documentation is produced.

Be Focused on the End Business Result: No matter when team members are introduced, they should verify--within the scope of their project role--initial business requirements and the work that is being requested of them. This allows them to provide their own input based on their subject matter expertise and strengthens the chances for project success.

Acknowledging people for the contribution they make to a project team or to their organization is such a simple matter. It's something I say repeatedly wherever I can get on my "soapbox": We can acknowledge people at any time, at no cost, without having to buy anything, install software or study an instruction manual.

Last night my soapbox was a live webinar attended primarily by project managers from all over the world, including Hong Kong, China, India, Brazil and the United States.

During the seminar I asked participants, "How do you feel when you complete a project that you put your whole heart, soul, body, mind and spirit into for the past several months, the users love the end result and your manager gives you nothing more than a quick 'thank you?"

This was the response via text chat:

Thomas: discouraged
Tanya: feel used
Srikrithiga: not interested to work
James: discouraged
Suganthi: Discouraged
James: feel indifferent
Sanjib: feeling of being empty--what was I doing all the time?
Ravindra: No motivation
Tanya: I won't give my best effort
Linda: lack of loyalty
Linda: feeling insecure, not as interested in working so hard
Fabricio: lack of motivation
Jade: feel not being valued, lack of respect

Then I asked, "How do you feel if your manager tells you what a difference your work made to the project team, how your contribution made the project a success, how much the users loved it, that she was getting wonderful feedback on it, and that the next time you would get more resources so you didn't have to work so many nights and weekends?"

And they answered:
 
James: I would feel appreciated; that motivates me
Shelley: Motivated...willing to give an even greater effort
Linda: enthusiastic
Ravindra: I would make extra efforts
Mariano: I would feel like a giant
Jade: more loyalty
Linda Benedict: my confidence would be boosted by the acknowledgement
Srikrithiga: I would give 200% for work

Performance, loyalty, engagement, confidence, motivation, self-worth are all functions of acknowledgment rather than compensation.

Especially during these challenging economic times--when everyone is working harder and having to do more--let's do our best to create a culture of appreciation in which people know their value and their worth.

There could be nothing simpler and more satisfying and with greater results.

Organizations always seem to be looking for ways to keep major talent engaged and loyal. Simple as it sounds, they need look no further than making sure that they have created a culture of appreciation.

I have heard acknowledgments referred to as "the double paycheck," which I think is very fitting. Even people who earn less than they feel they should,  will dig in and engage fully if that other "paycheck" comes regularly.

After a presentation I made to the PMI Information Systems Specific Interest Group last year at its Professional Development Day, a woman came up to me and told me that she had just left a high-paying, senior-level job, with no other job lined up.

She left it, she said, because she hadn't realized that her former job at Booz Allen Hamilton was really a dream job. Although it probably wasn't the best job in the world, there was a culture of appreciation at that company that made it a pleasure to come to work each day.

"I am going back there," she said emphatically. "Even if the job pays less and the level is lower, I don't care. I didn't realize what a difference the atmosphere of a company makes. At the job [after Booz Allen Hamilton], I didn't know my worth or my value and I didn't feel appreciated for anything that I did. I'm going back to Booz Allen Hamilton, no matter what."

I later discussed this example with a Booz Allen Hamilton partner. "Oh," she laughed. "We call those the 'come-back kids' and we welcome them back once they realize what they were missing."

And yes, it is a part of the company's philosophy and its mission to have a culture of appreciation. They most certainly seem to be doing something right.

So what is that double paycheck worth? Everything!

I recently presented a keynote session on the power of acknowledgment to 800 attendees at a global project management conference in Helsinki, Finland.

Before my presentation, I kept hearing project managers say things like: "In Finland you know you are being acknowledged when your boss says, 'That wasn't too bad a job that you did.'" They told me repeatedly that acknowledgment was just not done in Finland.

I'd heard a similar trend in Germany--being acknowledged is when your boss doesn't say anything to you, I was told.

Now, I'm a perpetually optimistic person who always tells people they can single-handedly be agents for dramatic and powerful change--that it only takes one person to start the process. If someone acknowledges others in a heartfelt and authentic way, it will start to catch on.

But an entire culture? Could 800 project managers turn a whole culture around? Even I had my doubts.

During my presentation, I invited everyone to think of one person in their professional life that wanted, needed and deserved their acknowledgment but to whom they had never fully delivered it. Two brave people stood up and shared their profound and heartfelt acknowledgments of their Finnish bosses--who just happened to be in the audience!

Each time I asked both the acknowledger and the acknowledgee to stand. People in the audience were deeply moved and said this kind of exchange never occurs in Finland. Well, it did. Just because something is missing from a culture does not mean that it is not desirable or essential. Acknowledgment is, I believe, a basic human need, no matter what one's cultural conditioning.

I have since received e-mails from people in Finland telling me they've started to acknowledgment colleagues and family members in a profound and sincere way and are extremely pleased with the results. So I'm now becoming confident enough to say that yes, one project manager can certainly begin to change a culture.

Now just think of what 800 can do!  Germany, stay tuned!

In Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs, the lowest level consists of basic needs we all have, like air, food and sleep. Once those are met, we begin to move up the hierarchy to higher-level needs, such as safety and esteem.

The same hierarchy applies to the project teams, which are comprised of people with various levels of needs.

We often assume everyone is at a level comparable to ours and our remarks or comments will simply be understood the same way we would understand them. This is not to say the age or experience of project team members is directly related to these needs, as even most experienced members of the team may have gaps in fulfilling their needs.

Whether it's the need of a job or of recognition, all of these needs influence behavior and it's important to be attentive to them. They can influence various project activities and their outcomes, such as meetings, conversations, use of resources, vendor relations, compliance, ethics and fraud.

When organizations recruit project talent, they look at skills and experience as well as personality and cultural fit. But attention should also be paid to team member needs, including those of the project manager, director and sponsor. Doing so can contribute to better understanding of the project environment and the elements that will require special attention.

Jim Collins (author of How the Mighty Fall: And Why Some Companies Never Give In) had a famous line: "Good is the enemy of great." Those six words neatly sum up the need for a passion for excellence required for any team or organization to reach world-class standards. However, this is an abstract concept and difficult to keep front and center on a day-to-day basis.

Symbolism can be an important part of this motivation as is constant positive reinforcement.

University of Notre Dame football coach Lou Holtz put up a sign that each team member touches before entering the field. It simply reads: "Play like a champion today." With its appearance, team performance "magically" improved--and the sign is now a legendary icon of the university.

Easy implementation: Copy the sign and put it in your stairwells--maybe it is truly magical.

Tougher implementation: Come up with your own symbolism.

Here's another interesting question I received from a student in the University of Maryland's e-Business and Project Management Program conflicts resolution course:

I enjoyed the book and I, too, am convinced that recognizing someone for a job well done makes them feel appreciated for their efforts.

There is another side to this coin, however, that I think needs to be addressed. The generation currently entering the workforce expects to be praised for everything they do.

Being raised in an era when everyone is a winner so as not to hurt their feelings and where everyone gets an award just for participating, they come into the workplace thinking that any accomplishment no matter how small should somehow be recognized.

What would you do in a situation like this so as to keep them engaged yet not play into their feelings that they are somehow entitled to praise?

John

We keep hearing that young people have been so over-validated and acknowledged for the most meager of contributions that they now expect it wherever they go. The generation gap is well established in the United States, but I checked with some colleagues in Europe and Asia who report the same issues there.

Younger workers seem to be getting a bad rap simply for being different from their older colleagues--and that's not entirely fair.

Elizabeth Kearney, Ph.D. says in the article "It Takes Six Steps to Build a Cross Generational Team," these younger people have been encouraged to:

1.    Step out and discover new ways to do things
2.    Move quickly
3.    Feel free to ask questions and expect them to be answered
4.    Believe in themselves and their ideas
5.    Use a team approach to solving problems
6.    Readily share their views
7.    Expect praise for their actions, which means that they may well react negatively when told "no."
8.    Expect help when it is needed--coaching, support and/or encouragement

These are not bad qualities. They are excellent, action-oriented, results-producing characteristics if properly utilized and appreciated by project leaders and key stakeholders.
We want to validate these people for the ways they help us meet our project goals, stay within our timelines and meet our budgets.

But the way we deliver this form of praise needs to be quick, specific, clear, yet heartfelt. If they expect praise for their actions, give it to them--but only when it is deserved.