Leading Change from the Middle: A Practical Guide to Building Extraordinary Capabilities

5. Avoid Making Stakeholders DEAF

The first step of the Leading at the Crossroads of Change approach is to identify and categorize all relevant stakeholders. As this chapter makes clear, there may be a surprising number of relevant stakeholders. They will vary in their motivations and in ways that can materially affect the midlevel leader’s implementation plan both positively and negatively. When this variation is taken into account , stakeholders can be clustered into four categories: Superordinates , Subordinates, Customers, and Complementors/Blockers. To show how these categories can be defined and applied in practice, I discuss them in the contexts described earlier for Kurt and Stephen. Who Are Stakeholders? Whenever someone is assigned to lead a team to build a new capability , the number and variety of stakeholders extend far beyond the immediate supervisor and team working on the project. As the name implies, stakeholders include anyone and everyone who might need to contribute to the project or could be affected by it. The question is, how can they be readily identified? You begin by looking “up” the organizational hierarchy. 29 Categorizing Stakeholders THREE 2522-0-book Nickerson_nickerson 3/11/14 3:11 PM Page 29 Internal Stakeholders The first person to consider a possible stakeholder is the midlevel leader’s immediate supervisor. The new capability is obviously important to your boss; otherwise the project would not have been launched and resources allocated to it. Your supervisor is therefore one of the central stakeholders, but not the only one. If the project is important to your boss, then it may also be important to someone higher up. But how far up the chain of organizational command does this go? In some if not many instances, new capabilities are important to those all the way up to the apex of an organization: the chief executive officer (CEO) and board of directors in a private company, the head of a nonprofit or other agency, or politicians in public organizations . All such individuals in your chain of command must be identified. Other senior leaders not in your immediate chain of command may be stakeholders as well, since they, too, may be relying on the success of your project. These units might play an important role in creating the capability, using it, or receiving the benefits derived from it. Thus all of these other units are relevant stakeholders. That said, even stakeholders who have an interest in supporting your initiative might find their own workforce ready to impede your progress because of their inertia or resistance to change. Another factor to consider is the effect of the project’s success on your boss’s peers. If it brings your boss a relative gain in prestige and social position within the organization, then some of them may become envious or jealous.1 They might not just resist change but 30 CATEGORIZING STAKEHOLDERS 1. In common usage, the meanings of “envy” and “jealousy” are often taken to be synonymous, but the words do differ. Envy denotes a desire for an advantage or possession that others have. If a boss’s prestige increases because of the successful construction of an extraordinary capability, for example, others may wish they could achieve the same gain; that emotion is envy. Jealousy denotes 2522-0-book Nickerson_nickerson 3/11/14 3:11 PM Page 30 also actively try to impede it. Such politics can come into play in almost any organization. You therefore need to determine whether other leaders at your supervisor’s level and above are rooting for the project’s success or encouraging its failure. Also, how will competition for resources play out up the chain of organizational command? The response of higher-ranking members may vary in both intensity and degree of support. All of these actors—the critics as well as the supporters— are relevant stakeholders. It is essential not only to identify them but also to understand their motivations. Who are these other leaders? One group consists of those who perform financial, accounting, legal, human resources, and any other staff or overhead function needed to complete a project. Another group consists of the heads of other organizational units— department heads, line management, the executive suite, and the like. What seems like a localized set of stakeholders above you in the organization can in fact include a much broader group, whose members may not all have the project’s best interests at heart. Look “down” and “across” your organization as...