Overview

The purpose of this blog post series is to provide a conceptual framework and a set of tools that can dramatically improve your performance as a leader. No matter where you are in your organization, from construction crew or design/engineering team member, a foreman or project manager to corporate executive, new operations best practices driven by lean and progressive design-build, require us to rethink leadership.

Objective

Welcome to this sixth post where we present more of what you need to know to become a High-Performance Leader! In this post we move from the granular focus on meetings as the forum in which leadership actions take place, to the purpose for which we have all those innumerable AEC meetings: to engage the right people, at the right time, using the right process, to make the right decisions, with the required level of commitment to make the project a success.

High Performance Leadership: Stakeholder Engagement

Welcome back to this High-Performance Leadership Blog Series. If you have not read Posts 1-5 yet, please consider doing so. They will set the stage for this discussion.

In Post #5, we concluded a presentation of facilitation skills for High-Performance Leaders. We argued that meetings are where your leadership skills are on display. Any failure to utilize facilitative tools to engage the hearts and minds of your team members will undermine your leadership and the performance of your team.

Even great facilitation skills are not enough if you can’t get the right people together to address the right issues at the right time. We need sound agreements that drive action. To avoid leaving our important stakeholders, you could invite everyone to everything - and get little done. Or, at the other extreme, you could avoid engagement until there is a “reason” – such a big problem that you can’t avoid wider involvement. By that time your team is already aware of the problem, pissed off and stressed. High-Performance Leadership provides a much more nuanced and purposeful approach.

To start, we must understand what it means to be a “stakeholder”. Most projects have no explicit strategy or system for stakeholder engagement and have not communicated expectations about how to behave and participate. When we don’t know what sort of involvement is desired and appropriate, whether it is OK to offer suggestions, raise issues, share their expertise, or take part in decision-making, we are not empowered.

Absent a stakeholder engagement process we rely on individual job titles and roles to define who has a voice and who does not. Decision-making is left to “senior” levels. This practice moves decision-making away from where the work is being done and where problems surface. This separation of workers from decisions slows response and reduces agility. When workers feel unempowered they may create “workarounds” – unplanned work and the good ideas workers could offer are left unconsidered.

Since the inception of Lean Construction, practitioners have complained that project members fail to stick to decisions or follow directives. When decisions don’t stick, one root cause is always an inadequate engagement process.

People help implement what they help create!

This fundamental principle of collaboration requires a strategy to engage hearts and minds, as well as hands. We must design and manage efficient systems to get input and make decisions. How we define the term “Stakeholder” is critical.

In the AEC world, we often assume that the “Owners” – whoever pays the bills – are the only stakeholders. During design we might include the Owner’s users and facilities personnel. That slightly expands stakeholder engagement but is still too narrow a process. Stakeholders vary with the issue at hand.

A “Stakeholder” is someone who has “stake” in a decision, i.e., someone with something to gain or lose, the degree of risk they feel varies by issue. Some stakeholders are at risk in only a few issues and others have a stake in almost every high-level decision. Here is a working definition:

Note that this definition of “stakeholder” avoids position titles. When our goal is to make great decisions, with equally great implementation, we must identify all these types of stakeholder. Our typical focus on decision-makers overlooks those who can block or undermine a decision. (More on this in an upcoming blog post!) Often there are stakeholders with some sort of “pocket veto”. Inspectors, committees, boards, unions, facility users, may be overlooked until a decision is announced. Positive engagement up front, avoids rework and resistance.

Total Quality Management (TQM) established that problems are solved faster when “the point of control in operations is placed as close as possible to the point of variance”. For a more inclusive perspective, start analysis from the bottom of the above list of stakeholders – those who must implement. Work back up to the final decision makers.

• Who is going to implement whatever we decide? Will life be better or worse for them?
• Do they have information or experience to improve this decision? How will we get that information?
• Who else is affected (e.g., other design teams, facility users/maintenance, suppliers, etc.) and needs to be informed and involved?
• Who are we missing who could throw a wrench in the works?
• How will we get buy-in to the best possible decision?

“Stakeholder analysis” is the process used to address these questions. A project-wide analysis needs to be updated as each phase of work progresses, and for each important decision/agreement within each phase to drive high-performance implementation. Here is a simple template that you can use:

Note that stakeholder “Types” are listed above the table to remind us to cast a broad net. Diverse roles in a project organization require a team structure to balance the needs of the stakeholders and the project.

Target Value Delivery (“TVD”) is an essential lean practice. Some great courses and books are in the works. TVD requires careful, detailed stakeholder analysis. The analysis defines what distinct value is important to each stakeholder. For example, in healthcare, the design of a hospital patient room must facilitate both the care activities to be performed and patient comfort. A surgical or radiation treatment area will share overlapping patient comfort values but address very different activities and equipment needs. The hospital enterprise has an overarching set of needs and value targets for market share, financial viability, reputation, etc. In a recent TVD presentation at a NorCal LCI COP meeting, the speakers provided an example of a hospital project with 22 distinct value targets that were defined clearly enough to be measured and managed. Failure to define stakeholders or to agree on value targets is at the root of almost every design and engineering failure. Clear targets with defined conditions of satisfaction don’t limit creativity, they enable it.

We can create a range of ways for stakeholders to be involved based on how big a stake each interested party has in an issue, individual personalities and needs, and positional responsibility. When we invite a stakeholder representative to be part of a project team, ask them what level of involvement they want. Typical responses range as follows:

1. I don’t need to be involved. I trust that the right decision will be made
2. I want to be informed on progress so that I can support as needed
3. I want to have input, possibly through a team member who represents my interests
4. I want to be directly involved – to be a core team member or formal team resource
5. I want a say in the final decision

A ward nurse will want level 3 or 4 engagement in patient room design, but a level 1 or 2 engagement in surgical theatre design, where the surgical nurse will be more engaged. Building façade decisions may be of interest but require no engagement from these nurses.

To accommodate these levels of engagement, project team roles listed above include:

• Team Leader – ideally, a person with “High-Performance Leadership” skills. They convene the team, lead meetings, lead the collaboration process, communicate with more senior levels, secure facilitation help, etc.
• Core Member – a full time, dedicated team member, empowered to represent not only their company, but their professional discipline. Expected to be at every regular meeting, participate in decision-making, act as a liaison/representative of their team to coordinate with other teams and with senior executives who appoint and empower them.
• Resource Members – on the official team roster, required to attend meetings when their stakeholder expertise is needed and participate in decisions. May be a Core Member on a related team designated to coordinate interdependent design or construction work. Must be made available as needed and stay aware of upcoming issues that demand their participation.
• Subject Matter Experts – technical/process experts, consultants, resources. May represent suppliers, inspectors, regulatory authorities, lean coaches, etc. Do not have team decision authority except to inform about regulatory compliance and other requirements/limitations. May provide essential support in evaluation of attributes and benefits of design options or construction means and methods, etc.
• Facilitator/Recorder – (optional, recommended for Big Room and critical decision meetings) neutral servants of the team who help facilitate meetings, coordinate activities, capture information generated, etc. When team members have been trained in these skills, a general rule is that members who have the lowest stake in the issue being discussed can be more focused on the meeting process should volunteer to facilitate. Giving facilitator/recorder roles to more junior (but trained) staff provides great professional development exposure. These same staff members often keep production planning, BIM and other software up to date as well.

Now that we have a better definition of the universe of stakeholders we must engage, our next post will address how to organize efficient stakeholder engagement when we have multiple, interdependent teams, diverse stakeholders, and complex issues in uncertain and changing conditions. We know that “process blindness” is the root cause of most of the wasted time and effort in meetings. Complex design and construction efforts also fail when there is “engagement process blindness”. The antidote is skills and tools to make the engagement process visible. Tune in to the next post, coming soon.