Learning from Indonesia's National Football Team (Part 2)

Keeping the team focus – managing the stakeholder

 

As mentioned the first part of the note, Learning from Indonesia's National Football Team (Part 1), on the first game of final, it has been said that the Indonesia’s Timnas has faced lots of distraction during their practice session.

 

 

It has been said that there are lots of different parties that, probably due the success that the Timnas has achieved so far, wanted to take part in team success.  It has become a distraction in a way that it has shifted the focus of the team, that they are not seems to be able to fully concentrate on the preparation for the first final game.

The distraction, combined with a laser incident, and the fact that the Malaysian has also been playing very well, contributed to the only lost that the Timnas faced during the championship.  And the Timnas only lost, unfortunately, has become the one lost that prevented the Timnas from proudly claimed the champion title.

Keeping the Team Focus – Managing the Stakeholder

One way to help keep your team to focus is by managing the external factor or external influence towards the team.  This external factor/influence might be coming from people or group of people, which are affected by the deliverable of the team.

On the general terms, these external people or group of people that are affected by the deliverable of a team is called the team Stakeholder.

A stakeholder is any person or organization, who can be positively or negatively impacted by, or cause an impact on the actions of a company, government, or organization. Types of stakeholders are:

• Primary stakeholders: are those ultimately affected, either positively or negatively by an organization's actions.
• Secondary stakeholders: are the ‘intermediaries’, that is, persons or organizations who are indirectly affected by an organization's actions.
• Key stakeholders : (who can also belong to the first two groups) have significant influence upon or importance within an organization

And as you and your team become more successful, the actions you and your team have taken will affect more and more people. The more people you affect, the more likely it is that your actions will impact people who have power and influence over your work. These people could be strong supporters of your work – or they could block it.

For the Timnas case, unfortunately, a stakeholder might have affected the blocking of Timnas from reaching the success of claiming the champion title.

Stakeholder Analysis

Stakeholder analysis is a term that refers to the action of analyzing the attitudes of stakeholders towards something (most frequently a project). It is frequently used during the preparation phase of a project to assess the attitudes of the stakeholders regarding the potential changes. Stakeholder analysis can be done once or on a regular basis to track changes in stakeholder attitudes over time.

Stakeholder analysis has the goal of developing cooperation between the stakeholder and the team and, ultimately, assuring successful outcomes for the activity. Stakeholder analysis is performed when there is a need to clarify the consequences of envisaged changes or at the start of new projects and in connection with organizational changes generally.

It is important to identify all stakeholders for the purpose of identifying their success criteria and turning these into quality goals

There are several steps in performing Stakeholder Analysis as the following.

Step 1. Identify Your Stakeholders

The first step in your stakeholder analysis is to identify who your stakeholders are. As part of this, think of all the people who are affected by your work, who have influence or power over it, or have an interest in its successful or unsuccessful conclusion.

Remember that although stakeholders may be both organizations and people, ultimately you must communicate with people. Make sure that you identify the correct individual stakeholders within a stakeholder organization.

Important thing to note also is that you need to perform this step regularly as required, as your stakeholder might changes along the course of your project due to i.e. organization changes.

Step 2. Prioritize Your Stakeholders

You may now have a long list of people and organizations that are affected by your work. Some of these may have the power either to block or advance. Some may be interested in what you are doing, others may not care.

Map out your stakeholders on a Power/Interest Grid on the template as shown in below, and classify them by their power over your work and by their interest in your work.

Someone's position on the grid shows you the actions you have to take with them:

·    High power, interested people: these are the people you must fully engage and make the greatest efforts to satisfy.

·    High power, less interested people: put enough work in with these people to keep them satisfied, but not so much that they become bored with your message.

·    Low power, interested people: keep these people adequately informed, and talk to them to ensure that no major issues are arising. These people can often be very helpful with the detail of your project.

·    Low power, less interested people: again, monitor these people, but do not bore them with excessive communication.

There are other type of matrix that you can work with to be able to map your stakeholder, other example as below is used by WWF in their activities.

Step 3. Understand Your Key Stakeholders

You now need to know more about your key stakeholders. You need to know how they are likely to feel about and react to your project. You also need to know how best to engage them in your project and how best to communicate with them.

You can summarize the understanding you have gained on the stakeholder map, so that you can easily see which stakeholders are expected to be blockers or critics, and which stakeholders are likely to be advocates and supporters or your project.

If you are now considering the Timnas stakeholder influence in the success and/or failure of the team, do you see that there are several stakeholders that can be better managed ?

Reference:

-       Stakeholder Analysis – Winning Support for your Projects, MindTools.com, http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newPPM_07.htm

-       Stakeholder Analysis, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stakeholder_analysis

-       Stakeholder Analysis, World Wild Life foundation, http://assets.panda.org/downloads/1_1_stakeholder_analysis_11_01_05.pdf