Stakeholder Dependency Mode

1. When do we use this mode?

• When there is uncertainty and ambiguity caused due to dependence on stakeholders such as
  • Statutory clearances
  • Government approvals
  • Proprietary technology suppliers – where you don’t have know-how
  • Community / Vendor partners
  • Employees
  • Operating plant

2. In this mode, outcome are:
   • Manage stakeholders well  (If you don’t manage stakeholders properly, project may become unpredictable)
   • Reduce impact on project parameters (cost / time / scope)
   • Retention of  key resources
   • Keeping people motivated. Such uncertainties rattle people
   • Ensuring key licenses are retained

3. What kind of work methods are to be used for this mode?
   • Your stakeholder map has to be much wider – only then you will be able to find out the hidden influencers and the power environment in which you operate. It can’t be in limited terms.
   • Mapping the key concerns of the stakeholder and addressing them specifically
   • Prioritize critical stakeholders and focus on the right outcomes we are seeking from them
   • You need to have domain knowledge to understand how each stakeholder operates. Example – you might need an IAS officer to help you to navigate and help you understand how the government works.
   • Providing controlled visibility to key stakeholders such as vendors / contractors / internal stakeholders, etc.
   • Navigating ambiguity (sometimes in your favor, sometimes not) by having a keen sense of what is controllable & uncontrollable and also have a keen sense of the probabilities of success
   • Pre-planning and risk management (in shutdowns) – Project has to be planned in a different way from when all the certainties are there.

4. What are the expectations from the leader?
   • High engagement
   • Tolerance for ambiguity
   • Ability to see dependencies / what is controllable and not controllable and being able to plan and make milestones in such an environment
   • Having sharp outcome orientation in ambiguous situations

5. What kind of team members do you need?
   • Need people with domain knowledge (e.g. how government works)
   • During this mode, the team will have two types of team members – Task-facing members and stakeholder-facing members

Stakeholder facing group: Team should be able to operate and manage stakeholders effectively. Here it needs specific engagement skill-sets.

6. What kind of environment should we create?
   • Strong co-creating/ listening / trust building environment
   • The team has to learn to operate in sense-respond mode with stakeholders

7. What kind of measures & milestones do you have?
   • Stakeholder facing – sense-respond measures
   • Task facing – operational milestones

8. Risks
   • If you don’t manage stakeholders well, the project may go into unpredictable mode
   • Cost / time / scope will go up
   • Retention of resources
   • Keeping people motivated in the face of uncertainties
   • Can lose license to operate your plant

9. Behaviors (leadership & team)
   • Stakeholder partnership
   • Needs more creative people – technical competency + empathy to convert to win-win
   • Anything is not 100% uncertain. But people take the uncertainty and let it vitiate the across the whole system. There may be a core of certainty. By separating out certainty and uncertainty may help.
   • Antidote is visibility and creating smaller feedback cycles
   • In cases of uncertainty, in financial markets, they use options as a mechanism to deal with the uncertainty.