Stansburys Blog

• 13Jun

  Cloud Computing – 3 Categories to Make Sense of it All

  Business, General 2 Comments

  Cloud computing seems to be all the rage at the moment.  There are many good reasons for this and others that will just prove to be hype over time.  However there is not doubt that this could be as disruptive to the software industry as iTunes, Napster and others are proving to the music industry.

  In this article we will outline the 3 key categories of cloud computing – all ending in “aaS” (which stands for “as a Service”).  This will give us a good starting point from which to discuss the larger and more radical points alluded to above later.

  By the way the term “cloud” originates from the cloud symbol used by techies to represent the Internet on the majority of diagrams.

  CaaS

  Cleaning as a Service.

  No prizes for guessing we have made this up (there are really 3 types, not 4).  But it should help demonstrate the service principle without any IT jargon.  For those who want to dive straight in, jargon and all, then skip to SaaS below.

  Imagine a world where you do your own cleaning, you bought the vacuum cleaner and pay for its repairs and replacement, you buy the bags, cloths and cleaning fluids and other items as you go along.

  You decide there must be a better way, you discover the kids are pretty keen on this and want the pocket money so you pay them to use your vacuum cleaner.

  You discover they are not so good at the job (more interested in playing with the gadgets than the business of cleaning) and keep forgetting bits.

  So you decide to outsource to a cleaner but find you are still providing all the tools and consumables and probably find yourself feeling embarrassed and doing cleaning before they arrive.

  Then a salesman turns up and you are persuaded to buy a robotic vacuum cleaner that does the cleaning by itself.  But when it breaks down it’s a pain to fix.  Then somebody offers you a self-healing upgrade so the vacuum repairs itself (they claim) and it’s just getting too confusing.

  And so it goes on until you find somebody offering CaaS – you just pay them a monthly amount and they do all the cleaning. provide all the equipment, maintenance and consumables and, heck, they even bring their own electricity and water.

  You just order the service you need.  The Spring Cleaning service please, the Window Cleaning Service please….

  And so it is with cloud computing – you are just buying a service and letting somebody else worry about all the rest.

  SaaS

  Software as a Service.

  Here you are paying for a service that covers everything needed to provide the software (the servers, internet connection, maintenance, licences etc. etc.)  Salesforce.com is a pioneer in this field and a classic example of SaaS.  A typical feature of a SaaS offering is that you pay a fee (hopefully small) per user often starting with a small number (e.g. 5 users) at a price you could never match if you were to build and buy your own servers and run a deployment project to get it all live.

  PaaS

  Platform as a Service.

  Here you are paying for a service that covers everything to provide the platform to run your service (servers, operating systems, internet connection etc.) but not the software itself or at least the development effort to create the final software.

  In this case it is often about software development, you have the developers but don’t worry about providing everything else they need to do the job in house.  Often this services includes presenting the software to customers via a website when it is live, so you really are just doing the design, development and test bit in the middle.

  A good example of this is Google AppEngine.  You start out small, but if your application suddenly becomes massively popular you just buy more storage and bandwidth as you need it rather than panicking and running to your hardware supplier.

  IaaS

  Infrastructure as a Service.

  Here you are paying for a service that covers the infrastructure (often referred to as the “tin”).  So all the servers, storage, networking etc. are part of the service but none of the software.

  A good simple example is Amazon ECS which provides on demand servers.

  Some simpler services are just about on demand storage.

  Key Features

  So what things really unite all of these offerings as cloud services:

  • On demand – you buy what you need, when you need it
  • Elastic – you take as much or as little as you need
  • Fully managed – somebody else is looking after it for you

  Sometimes people use the term “utility computing” imagining that you buy computing much as you buy electricity or water from your utility company.

  And to top it all we haven’t even got the space to look at the types of cloud (e.g. private, public, community or hybrid).  Perhaps another day.

  

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• 15May

  Building a Powerful Guiding Coalition

  Business, Change, Management, Politics, stakeholder management 3 Comments

  Now that the election is behind us I have found myself surprised by just how alien the concept of coalition is to so many people.  Luckily for the country the two relevant (i.e. Lib Dem and Conservative) leadership teams seem to “get it”.  By this I am not saying whether or not it is the “right” coalition but merely thinking about what it takes to make and maintain an effective coalition.

  Then it occurred to me that I should not be surprised.  This lack of understanding is a fundamental blocker to successful business change.  Thinking back to Kotter’s approach to successful change the second stage is build the “powerful guiding coalition”.  So this set me thinking about lessons we might take from this recent coalition forming process.

  The word “coalition” comes from the Latin coalescere, meaning to join or grow together.  Typically we think of a coalition as an alliance that forms in political or commercial contexts.  This can be approached from so many angles, but one interesting approach is proposed by Steven Brams and he has looked at the importance of the formation process.  He has proposed two broad coalition types:

  Fallback (FB): Players seek coalition partners by descending lower and lower in their preference rankings until some majority coalition, all of whose members consider each other mutually acceptable, forms.

  Build-up (BU): Differs from FB, in that only majorities whose members rank each other highest form coalitions.

  They conclude that the Built-Up coalitions tend to be more stable since people tend to be with the partner they really want to be with rather than ending up with other partners (second best or worse).  In many examples it appears the final stable coalition starts with smaller BU coalitions who subsequently coalesce into a larger, majority coalition.

  In the case of the general election it is interesting.  It would seem that for the party leaders the current coalition is a BU alliance (with first choice partner) and that negotiations with Labour were the start of an FB coalition – or perhaps just a negotiating ploy.  However it appears there are very many Lib Dems and Tories who see the current alliance very much as FB (each preferring a Labour/rainbow coalition and no coalition but minority government respectively).  Whatever the intentions behind the Labour negotiations it certainly made it clear that Labour did not want to talk, and that those who preferred Labour were left facing an FB coalition or no coalition at all.

  There is the sense that the Lib Dems are in fact the initial BU coalition, albeit formed many years back.  This further coalition with the Conservatives does put some pressure on the initial coalition.  It would appear that there were several opportunities for opponents to have a say, the Lib Dem MPs, the Federal Executive and even a special party conference (which I understand was not technically necessary, but held nonetheless).  So the engagement has been wide and effective, though hurried through as a change many people have had the opportunity to scupper the deal and so far Clegg has carried his party with him.

  What can we take away from a management perspective?  Companies implementing change will often try to brow-beat people into a grand coalition.  Additionally they often won’t open things up to key stakeholder groups thus denying them a chance to air their objections and concerns publicly.  As a result many managers and teams will see themselves forced into an FB position, which would appear at best a semi-stable arrangement and probably worse than that when many stakeholders are disgruntled.  Much better, from this analysis, is to build small, but stable BU coalitions and then work on developing real common ground between the smaller coalitions until you have the majority support you need for a successful transformation.  Remember, too, that with stakeholder mapping it is often worth plotting groups as well as individuals.

  This might take a little longer in the early stages, but is the route to effective and lasting change.  While so much of the press was haranguing Clegg and Cameron for taking so long I couldn’t help but wonder at how quickly the coalition seemed to be pulled together.

  There is a further interesting perspective.  In business senior managers often take the “burning platform” for granted and assume everyone will be swept along with the new transformation.  Even as the press and the markets seemed to be fanning the flames into inferno proportions, many players in both parties saw no pressing need for coalition and would have preferred to go it alone – doing the same as they had always done.   Creating that “sense of urgency” (Kotter step 1) can also take longer than first expected, but is key to “making it essential”.  Maybe it was the prospect of the Queen flipping a coin that made the difference………

  

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• 04May

  UK Election 2010 Poll Tracker

  External factors, General, PESTLE, Politics, strategy No Comments

  With only a few days left until the UK general election 2010 we thought we would take a slight diversion from our usual themes and share this visual election opinion poll tracker. Not a complete diversion as this is about is big as it gets when you are doing an external analysis using PESTLE (as we briefly described in an earlier article) or other similar approaches.

  We hope you enjoy it – might even give some useful hints on how to build the next management dashboard……

  The poll data is provided by ComRes, YouGov, ICM, Angus Reid, Populus and MORI. The poll tracker also includes a seat forecast, Betfair overall majority forecast and the option to embed this political poll tracker in your websites.

  

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• 12Mar

  The Green Hierarchy of Corporate Behaviours

  Business, Customer behaviour, General, Green 4 Comments

  

  I have been doing some work with the team at EvocoGreen on developing a hierarchy of green behaviours – and we have produced this:

  Polluting for Profit

  This is business at its simplest and most raw.  The pursuit of profits is a task far too important to be diverted by concerns for pandas, polar bears and far away ice caps (just look at how much snow we had this winter!).  There is often a successful meeting between the bottom line and NIMBY(Not In My Back Yard) blinkered consumer behaviour.  While the customer might espouse green values they often cannot resist a bargain, and turn a blind eye to the pollution that has been outsourced to some offshore, probably third world location.

  Accidental Eco-Warrior

  The climate is saved through happy accidents rather than design.  Companies seeking to cut costs and become efficient often cut power consumption, waste and packaging in pursuit of profit rather than the green agenda.  They may, or may not, claim green credentials retrospectively (moving themselves up in the hierarchy to ‘Visible Green’ in the process) but do make a positive environmental contribution nonetheless.

  Visible Green

  At best these companies are making a real green contribution, at worst they are proudly wearing their eco-bling in public.  Their offices will have some solar panels or a wind turbine and their vans will have carbon neutral stickers clearly visible through their exhaust fumes.  The joy of being in this zone is that often an organization does not change their behaviour; they just pay others to change for them (through carbon trading, outsourcing or off-shoring their least green activities), and bask in the resultant green glow.

  This is often a form of product differentiation on meaningless attributes.  The companies involved probably haven’t improved their products or the lot of the planet in any meaningful way, but you would never guess that when you listen to the PR.

  Arguably the Visible Greens might make less of a real contribution than the Accidental Eco Warriors in terms of real environmental impact.

  However the negatives should not be overstated to the detriment of those companies making a real contribution.

  Competitive Green

  These companies are seriously looking at green options, doing some proper sums and trying to gain genuine competitive advantage (not to be confused with good PR and marketing hype) through their green actions.

  They are often quite subtle in their approach, for example Nokia have a strong track record in reducing toxic chemicals, recycling phones, sourcing energy from renewable sources but its mainstream marketing focuses on traditional product attributes.

  Kenco with its 97% less packaging campaign has clearly struck a chord with consumers, but the sums still need to be done comparing the use of recyclable glass versus the new, hard to recycle foil and laminate.

  Ben and Jerry’s probably live here with their “lick global warming” campaign and media coups such as the 1,100 pound baked Alaska for Earth Day back in 2005.  High profile marketing perhaps, but with a sense that the company is sincere enough in its aims to earn more than Visible Green status.

  Eco Pioneer

  Pioneers have always been a diverse and eccentric bunch and the green ones are no exception.  On the one hand you have companies blazing a trail in thin film solar, on the other the likes of Toyota with the highly successful Prius.  While there are some who might argue that a Prius is  eco-bling with its embedded carbon, toxic chemicals and the like, but Toyota is investing vast amounts of money into developing the market for low energy cars.  If the numbers do not fully stack up for the Prius today – the truly green cars of the future will owe a debt of gratitude to Toyota for the commercial gamble it took.

  New generation solar panels increasingly depend on materials like Cadmium which is highly toxic (e.g. to aquatic life).

  The Holistic Measurement Challenge

  One of the biggest problems in assessing the environmental impact of actions is that of taking a properly holistic view.  This has been alluded to in the sections above and there are so many variations on this theme.  Take packaging: what relative value do you attach to reduced packaging vs. recycled content vs. recyclability vs. miles travelled vs. biodegradability?  Add to that there is no universal view – the level of recycling in the US and Germany is vastly different, so similar initiatives could have vastly different environmental impacts.

  Take bio-fuels: chopping down vast swathes of Amazon rain-forest in order to grow bio-fuels may actually create a carbon debt that may not be paid back for hundreds of years.  There is the balancing act between short-term pain and long term gain.  The case of the Prius was mentioned above.  Tetra-Pak has invested a lot into recyclability and recycling of its foil-lined cartons, but availability of recycling points is still limited – what is the impact and how do you rank the investment.  Some would call it pioneering others would call it a cynical marketing abuse of the recyclable emblem.

  Take public transport, an empty bus pollutes far more than an empty car and an empty bio-fuel bus may fare even worse.  More effective and holistic measurement will help move companies up the green hierarchy.

  

  

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• 09Feb

  Making the MOST of your Strategy

  Business, External factors, Management, PESTLE, Politics, strategy 6 Comments

  Strategy is a word much used and much abused (and particularly abused in the context of those making poor attempts to claim strategic alignment when building business cases).  However, let me lay aside my cynical and critical hat and share with you a process that really helps me whenever I have to address the creation of a strategic direction or the review of a strategy paper.  Hopefully it will help you too.  Firstly remember where strategy sits using MOST:

  Mission - this should clearly and succinctly define the main purpose (e.g. of your organisation). A Mission is about “what” and a well known and succinct example comes from 3M:

  “To solve unsolved problems innovatively.”

  Objectives - have to be more measurable and are typically results or desired states along with a timescale (remember SMART: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Timed).  Some people use the word Goal for the more nebulous description of where you are going, with Objectives being precise and measurable as described here.  Objectives are about “what”.

  Strategy - is the means to the ends defined above, a long term direction.  Typically this looks at the strategic options available, selects from them and sets out the high level approach and plan.  Strategy is about “how”.

  Tactics - describe how to put the strategy into action.  These are often small moves, gestures and actions that all add up to achieving the Objectives.  Tactics are about “what”.

  Focussing on the strategy, we recommend a fairly standardised approach that starts with a review of the Mission and Objectives.  An analysis of the external environment is then carried out (e.g. PESTLE - Political, Economic, Social, Technological and Environmental factors; market conditions and competition) followed by an internal analysis of the organisation (e.g. capability and capacity, core competences and financial position).  These are then summarised into a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) analysis.  A handy hint here is just use internal analysis for Strengths and Weaknesses and just the external analysis for Opportunities and Threats.

  Remember that strategies can exist at several levels.  For example you would expect a large organisation to have a Corporate Strategy, several Group Strategies under that and then Programme Strategies or Account Strategies or some other set of layers that reflect the business.  There should be a “golden thread” running through each of these and linking them together, this is all too often lacking.

  As an example I was advising somebody recently who had been beaten up for their lack of a well documented strategy.  This was not corporate level stuff, so I suggested they go back to the internal audit team (those doing the beating) and ask for a copy of the Business Unit and higher level strategies, as clearly they should align to these.  Needless to say the higher level strategies were neither readily available nor in great shape, so this took some of the heat off them while they put their house in order.

  As the old saying goes “If you don’t know where you are going any road will get you there”.  I believe that was Lewis Carroll.  While I have heard this used against planning as you will still get “there” you have to remember that in this case “there” is actually “anywhere”.  A good strategy will go a long way to help you get where you want.

  Often more favoured in business circles is the Chinese general and renowned military strategist Sun Tzu.  He wrote (back in the 6th Century BC) “Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.”

  

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• 19Jan

  Stakeholder Management- Finding your Champions

  Business, Change, Management, P3M, P3MO, Portfolio Management, Programme Management, Project Management, stakeholder management 4 Comments

  Previously we have looked at the power interest matrix for helping you map and manage your stakeholders.  Now we will turn our attention to an Energy vs. Commitment matrix.   Now you plot the individual stakeholders and stakeholder groups against these criteria – their commitment to you change / programme and their natural energy for communicating and acting – which gives us four groups:

  Blockers – to watch as their high energy makes them likely to communicate widely and act vigourously.  Their low commitment to your change affects what they say and do, which makes them likely to land up standing in your way.

  Champions - why do we never seem to have enough of these?  The same high energy as your Blockers but committed to your change.  Look after these stakeholders when you find them.

  Preachers - are committed to your change and also may talk a lot, but their low energy means they are unlikely to take much other action.

  Sleepers - well the hint is in the name.  They are not really committed to your change and don’t have the energy to do anything about it or talk about it.  Unless you know they are because they don’t understand what is coming (and therefore might move to another quadrant when they find out) you don’t need to exert too much time or effort looking after them.

  As we often say, the key to using these models is not just doing the analysis, but actually doing something active with the results.  When you find Blockers it may be their low commitment is based on misunderstandings or fear and uncertainty.  We have found many cases where it’s possible to engage these people and turn them into Champions.  If not, it is important to find ways to counteract the communications and actions of these people (particularly if they have positions of power and/or influence).

  Stakeholder communication links back effectively to Kotter’s 8 step approach – in particular, step 1 of “creating a sense of urgency” and step 2 “building a powerful guiding coalition”.  And don’t forget, the earlier you start these activities the better!

  

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• 31Dec

  Apostles and Terrorists – Understanding Customer Loyalty

  Business, Customer behaviour, General, Management 4 Comments

  We love this model – created by Harvard Business School professor James Heskett and developed by the likes of Jones, Sasser, Xerox and Intuit. This can be used in so many situations including projects where you may not appear to be selling anything. In this approach you represent customers graphically plotting satisfaction against loyalty:

  

  Terrorists - at the very bottom of the scale you have customers who are extremely dissatisfied and have very low loyalty. They can do great damage to your business – particularly in the Internet age – just take a look at this website orangeproblems to see this sort of action, though blogs, emails and word of mouth are the more likely outlets.

  Apostles - at the other end of the scale the highly loyal and highly satisfied customers.  What sets them apart is the fact they actively go out and spread the good word. Some interesting research carried out by Xerox found that customers rating “extremely satisfied” were 6 times more likely to repurchase than those ranking “satisfied” the very next option down.  These are your company’s best friends.

  Hostages - with medium to high loyalty and satisfaction these customers tend be to “stuck”  – think of contracts where you are locked in for 12-18 months, not very happy but no easy way out or where other “costs of switching” keep you locked in to your current supplier.  Monopoly / oligopoly supply situations create hostages too.

  Mercenaries - often the bulk of your customer base. Apparently satisfied and loyal these people tend to switch to the best deal as they see it.   In industries with a low cost of switching they are likely to change supplier quickly and without warning. For example where there are plenty of reasonable “me too” products then price / special offer is often the differentiator.  Many Mercenaries have the behaviour to deeply ingrained to change, but others would willingly become Loyalists when they receive the right product and service combination from a supplier.

  Defectors - neither particularly loyal nor particularly satisfied.  If they haven’t already left they are likely to.  However they tend not be as vocal as the Terrorists in expressing their dissatisfaction.  They are often one trigger away from leaving.  As with Mercenaries many would willingly become Loyalists when they receive the right product and service combination from a supplier.

  Loyalists - High satisfaction and high loyalty but do not spread the word that much. What separates loyalists from apostles is really how they spread the word. As well as being active Apostles need to be very well connected and typically influential – i.e. they are able to spread the word to lots of people and those people are likely to listen.  However the loyalists can be thought of as the bedrock of your company, they keep on coming back.

  As with all such models the key lies not so much with the analysis, but what you actively do to improve things for your business. How do you win over the terrorists or increase the number of apostles, for example.  It would be wrong to stand idly by and watch all your defectors defect, though it may be the case that not all of them could be cost effectively satisfied and retained.

  One area to look at is ensuring the dissatisfied have plenty of places to express their frustration – if they can’t vent at you then they will vent to others even more vigourously.  Of course it goes further than just listening, you need to make amends too.  Look out for cheap, unempowered, “customer service ” help desks, I typically put down the phone even more frustrated than when I first called in.

  Remember, one shoddy product or one bad piece of service could tip a Loyalist into the Defector zone – however effectively and rapidly addressing the problem can really increase loyalty and even create an Apostle.

  

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• 14Dec

  Puzzles, Problems and Messes

  Business, Change, General, Management, Quality 2 Comments

  Why is solving problems never as easy as it seems?  We won’t attempt to provide a complete answer in a single blog, but we hope to share a very important idea to help in the process.

  Time and again we find too many people rush headlong into “solution mode” and start assigning available resource without first getting to grips with the “problem space”.  Trying to solve a problem before you understand it properly will not only decrease your chances of success but will also increase the chances of creating further problems rather than solving the initial one.  Yes, there are “happy accidents” where people manage to solve the misunderstood problem – but you are far better off to stop for a moment and consider which of the following you are actually dealing with:

  Puzzles, Problems or Messes

  Basically you can divide your challenges into three groups – puzzles, problems and messes:

  1. Puzzles.

  These occur where there is a single, clearly agreed definition of the problem.  Generally there is just one correct solution and the challenge lies with marshalling and guiding the resources to achieve the solution.

  2. Problems

  These occur when there is an amount of ambiguity or incompleteness in the available information.  While it is still quite easy to reach a single, agreed definition, there is probably no single, optimal solution as several might be sufficiently good.  Often different parties will have different opinions about which is the best solution.

  3. Messes

  These occur when there is a large amount of ambiguity and incompleteness in the available information.  Both the definition and optimal solution are open to discussion and, often, disagreement.  These should really be unravelled into problems before addressing.  However urgent it might seem – failing to carry out the extra analysis almost always leads to lost time and money.

  The table below summarises this:

  	Definitions	Solutions
  Puzzle	One	One
  Problem	One	Many
  Mess	Many	Many

  Puzzles (e.g. a Rubik cube, crossword or jigsaw) seldom occur in the business world, or when they do are not usually in need of a structured, problem solving approach.  So messes and problems are where we generally work.

  We will return to further tools for problem solving in the future.  But for now, next time you encounter a challenge don’t rush to label it a problem.  You may well be facing a mess and the need to take  time to fully understand the component problems and evaluate who and what is needed to solve them (and which ones you should be trying to solve).

  

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• 29Nov

  Unproductive Busyness

  Business, General, Management No Comments

  

  As the economic gloom spreads and job cuts spiral – who wants to be seen to be doing nothing?

  Beware, the current climate might only serve to increase the incidence of an old problem. Research has suggested that 90% of managers spend their time in unproductive busyness or busy idleness. An oxymoronic scourge on corporate productivity. This appeared in the Harvard Business School press in 2004 and deserves a close look.

  10 years (or more) of study helped Heike Bruch and Sumantra Goshal reach the conclusion that only 10% of managers use their time effectively. How does this break down?

  Energy and Focus

  Bruch and Goshal identified 4 managerial behaviour types based on energy and focus.

  The Purposeful

  The 10% who are highly focused, energetic and come across as calm and reflective when all around appears chaotic.

  The Frenzied

  the 40% who are highly energetic, enthusiastic and identify strongly with their jobs. However the need for speed can overwhelm and distract them.

  The need to do more and more without time to reflect as the pressure builds can be highly destructive.

  The Procrastinators

  The 30% who procrastinate on the important work in favour of minor details and possibly fear failure.

  Sometimes these people can be recovering Frenzied managers who choose to procrastinate to avoid the pitfalls of frenzy.

  The Detached

  The 20% who are focused but low in energy and coming across, perhaps, as aloof and tense.

  This is an interesting piece of work because it turns the spotlight back onto the individual. We can all blame the tight deadlines, and external pressures, when perhaps we should consider underlying patterns of behaviour.

  Without action it’s about self-sabotage and a focus on making the inevitable happen rather than making a real difference. With the right action it’s about harnessing your will power to ensure you remain effective, energetic and focussed in spite of the inevitable disruptions, distractions and blockers that occur in every day business life.

  Look at yourself and where do you fit? Look at your team and where do they fit?

  Remember one of the golden rules of management “you get what you inspect, not what you expect”.  Are corporate metrics and incentives encouraging people to occupy one or more unproductive boxes?  This could be an unintended side-effect of apparently good metrics, or the lazy application of metrics (measuring what is easy rather than what is important).

  Find ways to help the Frenzied to pause momentarily and reflect. Take a break from their incessant toil and unhesitating action.

  Procrastinators often fear failure, what is at the root of this? In other cases it appears the Procrastinators are actually reformed Frenzied managers resorting to inaction after becoming dis-satisfied with the lack of real result from their activity.

  Resolving this is not easy, in fact could be called a Wicked Problem (more on this another day). Measuring real productivity is not easy. Measuring activity is much easier and activity is, therefore, often used as a proxy for productivity. Measuring and rewarding activity can easily create a feedback loop that encourages Unproductive Busyness.

  

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• 19Nov

  Stakeholder Mapping Part 1

  Business, Change, P3M, P3MO, Portfolio Management, Programme Management, Project Management, Quality 4 Comments

  There are few things that are more important than understanding and managing your stakeholders.  There is too much to cover in one post – the hint might be in the title – I plan to return to this topic…………  Let me introduce the first tool I recommend to you – the Power-Interest grid:

  

  Stakeholder map - power interest

  Map all your stakeholders against this grid.  Basically you are looking at their interest in what you are doing (e.g. project, programme or business change initiative) and their power to influence what you are doing.  According to their position you can start to select the appropriate actions:

  Minimal Effort - phew, the people with a low interest in your initiative combined with their low power places few demands on your comms and stakeholder management teams.

  Keep Informed – a bit more required here, particularly on the communications front.  These people have a high interest in what you are doing, but relatively low power.  Don’t become complacent though, the combined effect of many disgruntled individuals can grow.  Additionally the opinion of one individual may feed up into more powerful bodies such as unions or the press.

  Keep Satisfied – these people need to be kept happy!!  Those with a high level of power but low level of interest need to be kept satisfied.  Bear in mind the level of interest can change rapidly when a stakeholder becomes dis-satisfied.

  Manage Closely – here come your “key players” who should be the key focus of your stakeholder management time and effort.  We will come back in to this in other posts, looking at ways to manage these people.  Above all don’t forget to give them a really good listening to from time to time.

  Remember this map may not remain static over time. In a long and complex programme a stakeholder might have a low interest initially with increasing interest as the change came closer to them.  Also external changes, scope changes and role changes might all move people from one box to another.

  This approach links back effectively to Kotter’s 8 step approach – in particular, step 1 of “creating a sense of urgency” requires effective working with all stakeholders and step 2 “building a powerful guiding coalition” means working effectively with your key players.  And don’t forget, the earlier you start these activities the better!

  

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