Tuesday, September 2, 2008
Working with Sparkle #2 - Managing stakeholders with pain points
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Liz Mead interviews James Williams on the role of benefits selling and pain points in stakeholder management. We debunk engagement into simple into three easy measures and provide examples of how you can manage stakeholder engagement by mentally taking your stakeholders to a point of pain and then showing them a way to get out of that pain.
For more information on this episode including extra examples visit the website at workingwithsparkle.com and while you're there subscribe to this podcast so you don't miss the next episode. Thanks for listening to today's show.
A period of pain
When digging for gems it’s best to keep a clear head as the shifting landscape can cause pain. By finding your pain points, you’re more likely to uncover the most beneficial jewels.
This story is about managing extreme and risky engagement and it started with the sweeping statement
“Staff are having problems finding information on your website”
A strange statement considering we had just spent months consulting this specific group as to how they think about and search for information on the website. My immediate need was to determine the extent of this ‘issue’.
I use a process of questioning to uncover the root problem.
Q: “So what is it that people can’t find?”
A: “Procedures”
Q: As you know they are available from the front page of the website – do you know whether the person actually checked there?”
A: Silence
Q “Do you know how many people are having this problem”
A: “Well, I’m not exactly sure but the CEO tells me that somebody told him that they couldn’t find the procedures.” So we’ve come up with a new website design that will make the procedures easy to find.”
Now at this point our drilling is stalled. To proceed in this vein would endanger the gem.
This in-depth plan to totally rearrange the website navigation from the top down, the bottom up and inside out so that the whole website was focused around procedures was based on a conversation with one person, who most likely was avoiding a wrap on the knuckles for not doing their job properly. And it was causing me pain.
When in pain, it is essential to maintain calm. Using the whiteboard as a therapist (I’ve always found them to be discreet) I mouthed a series of silent expletives. Purged I could maintain a calm demeanour and think more clearly when I turned back to the conversation.
A change of strategy was necessary. I needed to shift the pain and fix the problem. Finer tools were required for this new situation.
My mind was a tornado of activity. I had to work out how to get this project back on track, without undoing months worth of work on interface design, and website usability.
The dig had unearthed a dangerous crevice in the rock face. As a skilled gemologist (communicator) I retreated to base camp and plotted a course.
This story is about managing extreme and risky engagement and it started with the sweeping statement
“Staff are having problems finding information on your website”
A strange statement considering we had just spent months consulting this specific group as to how they think about and search for information on the website. My immediate need was to determine the extent of this ‘issue’.
I use a process of questioning to uncover the root problem.
Q: “So what is it that people can’t find?”
A: “Procedures”
Q: As you know they are available from the front page of the website – do you know whether the person actually checked there?”
A: Silence
Q “Do you know how many people are having this problem”
A: “Well, I’m not exactly sure but the CEO tells me that somebody told him that they couldn’t find the procedures.” So we’ve come up with a new website design that will make the procedures easy to find.”
Now at this point our drilling is stalled. To proceed in this vein would endanger the gem.
This in-depth plan to totally rearrange the website navigation from the top down, the bottom up and inside out so that the whole website was focused around procedures was based on a conversation with one person, who most likely was avoiding a wrap on the knuckles for not doing their job properly. And it was causing me pain.
When in pain, it is essential to maintain calm. Using the whiteboard as a therapist (I’ve always found them to be discreet) I mouthed a series of silent expletives. Purged I could maintain a calm demeanour and think more clearly when I turned back to the conversation.
A change of strategy was necessary. I needed to shift the pain and fix the problem. Finer tools were required for this new situation.
- There is a perceived problem
- There is no shared acknowledgement that it is a problem
- There is a clear case of extreme non-specialist intervention
- There is an manufactured solution to a problem that may not exist
- There is an expectation that this solution will be delivered.
- There was danger to our program deliverables
- There was oppositional points of view
My mind was a tornado of activity. I had to work out how to get this project back on track, without undoing months worth of work on interface design, and website usability.
The dig had unearthed a dangerous crevice in the rock face. As a skilled gemologist (communicator) I retreated to base camp and plotted a course.
- Examine and re-examine the data
- Get clear on the implications (for us such a wide-scale change would add to the confusion of users)
- Form the argument
- Find a productive pain, (not physical pain, although perhaps tempting at the time!) rather, psychological pain.
- Focus attention on the most likely and least desirable outcomes of the alternate course (anger, confusion and frustration of users)
- Meticulously outline the findings to cause pain
- Emphasise the tangible benefits (high level of existing engagement from staff) to alleviate the pain
- Practice the 'thud factor' (dropping reams of printed data relating to time, effort and cost on your stakeholder's desk)
The thud factor sounded something like this:
Do you realise this means not just changing the website navigation, but that you are about to dismantle a website that the staff have built?
Are you sure this is what the staff want, because we have already built what they told us they needed?
Did you know that 3 months has already been spent collating very specific data about how staff across the organisation look for and think about website information?
Are you sure you want to enforce this change without looking at our data?
How would you plan to handle any objections from staff around your changes?
By the time these questions had finished, the level of perceived pain was palpable on the face of this well-meaning executive. It was then that we played our benefits card.
Fix the pain with something of benefit to both parties.
“I know our data is solid, and I understand that you need better exposure for the procedures. Why don’t we place the relevant procedures in each section of the website so that they are more easily accessible and relevant to the area being viewed?”
The executive had an answer for the CEO, backed up by data, and we had averted a significant risk to our program. The added benefit to us was an executive champion – who knew more about the program now than before, a virtual jewel in the crown.
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