Consider your internal stakeholders
Also take into account how your choices and ideas will affect the people around you in your organization—your supervisor, managers of other units and teams, and your direct reports. All of these people are internal stakeholders in any important decision you make. Some may have an interest in the decision's outcome. Others will be profoundly affected by that outcome. Still others may want to block your plans or even oppose your course of action outright. Whatever the case, you'll need their support to implement your decisions.
The following approaches can help you systematically consider your internal stakeholders' needs and concerns:
- Identify potential stakeholders and their interests. When you're considering a course of action or a decision, brainstorm all the individuals who may be affected by or have an interest in your choice. Consider the business process that your decision will affect. Ask: "Who's involved in this business process? What are their roles and responsibilities? What's the nature of the relationships among them? What are their goals?"
- Gather information from stakeholders. Present your ideas to the stakeholders you've identified, and invite these individuals to share any concerns and ideas they might have. Ask open-ended questions about your idea, such as "What problems do you foresee? What ideas do you have for improving the plan? What's needed for this idea to work for you? What do you see as the pitfalls?"
- Listen carefully to underlying issues. Define problems from the perspective of each stakeholder, listening carefully to their concerns. Look for ways to address concerns that overlap multiple stakeholder groups.
For example, suppose you advocate adopting a new customer database to better manage customer relationships. This idea may raise concerns for several stakeholders: The IT group will need to spend extra time researching and installing the database. Your employees will have to learn how to use the new system. The finance group may be concerned about its cost. Managers in other units may not want to take the time to input customer data from their records. As time seems to be a common concern, you might propose a short pilot project that enables everyone to test the new database quickly before deciding whether to commit resources to a larger initiative.
If you neglect to understand your internal stakeholders' concerns, you can inadvertently create widespread problems.
For instance, suppose you run a manufacturing group at your organization. You decide to buy a piece of equipment that lets you produce 5,000 units of a particular product part that your group manufactures, at a dramatically lower cost per unit. That's good news for your group's performance—but you discover that the decision has created problems for the key accounts group. Why? They've promised small, cost-effective, quick-delivery customized products for major customers. The set-up cost associated with switching the equipment for small runs is high in relation to the number of units being produced. Furthermore, to fulfill those orders, you have to wait until your new machine has finished a 5,000-unit run before you can use it to produce the smaller, customized orders. The expensive set-up fees and the delays in switching the equipment make it difficult for the key accounts group to promote customized orders and promptly fulfill those orders.