CHAPTER 11
Communication and Political Management Strategies to Enable Innovation

What is strategic communication, and why does the business analyst need to use it? For business analysts to communicate effectively with all key stakeholders, they need to be both credible and influential. They need to respect the valuable time of stakeholders, think holistically, strive for innovation, continually focus on business benefits, and make themselves not only heard, but also memorable (see Figure 11-1).

FIGURE 11-1. Elements of Strategic Communication

Before building a communication plan, the wise business analyst works with other project team leaders to assess the political landscape, including the organization’s culture, decision models, and the project stakeholders and customers.

ASSESSING THE POLITICAL LANDSCAPE

Make no mistake, organizational politics will impact your effectiveness. Politics is defined as dealings related to power and influence within an organization. Politics is neither good nor bad; it just is. Things happen when politics works. Decisions are made, projects move forward, goals are met, and innovation is achieved. How can that be bad? Positive politics is about getting positive results for the team, for the organization, and ultimately for you. The positive politician uses influence rather than authority or manipulation to achieve tasks or goals. She starts from a solid basis from which to influence: status, trust, integrity, consistency, and knowledge.

To effectively negotiate your organization’s politics, seek out opportunities to help your project team and the business manage organizational politics. First, gather information about your organization, specifically:

Work closely with the project manager and other core project leaders to identify customers and stakeholders who provide budget, oversight, requirements, and input to your project and who receive output, depend on your deliverables, and benefit or suffer from your project’s success. For each, key customer/stakeholder, capture pertinent information, including:

Document the information in a simple tabular template (see Figure 11-2). This and the other templates presented in the section can be customized to meet the unique needs of your project.

FIGURE 11-2. Stakeholder and Customer Intelligence

Then, as a project leadership team, identify the issues and concerns about the project that are important to each stakeholder. Ask, What’s in it for stakeholder #1? What does stakeholder #1 need to view the project positively and actively support it? What innovation does stakeholder #1 need to succeed? Develop an influence strategy for each key stakeholder (see Figure 11-3).

THE POLITICAL ENVIRONMENT

Work with your project leadership team to determine the answers to these questions:

Capture the information in a simple tabular template (see Figure 11-4).

FIGURE 11-3. Stakeholder and Customer Influence Strategies

FIGURE 11-4. Organizational Political Information

YOUR POLITICAL MANAGEMENT CAPABILITIES

Armed with this information about your project and the political and cultural environment, work with your project leadership team to assess your individual and collective political capabilities as project leaders including how well you do the following:

Capture this information in a simple tabular template (see Figure 11-5).

THE LANDMINES AND RISKS

Using the information you have collected, assess the political risks. Determine strategies to lessen the impact of the risks that may negatively influence the project, and leverage those that are positive to promote innovation. Work with your team to devise strategies to:

FIGURE 11-5. Political Capabilities

Capture your political management strategies in a simple tabular template (see Figure 11-6).

Next, for each strategy, identify what success will look like. Focus on outcomes: how will you evaluate the effectiveness of the plan? Continually refine your strategy. Capture your success strategies in a simple tabular template (see Figure 11-7).

CRAFTING STRATEGIC MESSAGES

Armed with the business intelligence you have captured and your political management plan, you are now ready to begin to craft customized messages for your key stakeholders and customers.

REALLY GETTING HEARD

When presenting information to overworked executives, managers, employees, and distracted customers, you have only a few short minutes to get your message across. You need to become expert in constructing memorable messages, customizing your message for the audience, really getting your message heard, and getting decisions made quickly so that forward progress is not stalled.

FIGURE 11-6. Political Management Plan

FIGURE 11-7. What Will Political Success Look Like?

THE MESSAGE

Compose a customized message for each key stakeholder. First, determine the purpose of the message. Is it simply to create awareness about your project objectives? Is it to enlist support for your project? Is it to dispel negative feelings about your project? Is it to make a decision about your project approach? Is it to gain support to resolve an issue? Once the core purpose of the communication is understood, draft the message, composing it from the stakeholder’s perspective. Be sure to determine what’s in it for the stakeholder and tailor the message accordingly.

The Catchphrase

A catchphrase is a short phrase or sentence that deftly captures the essence of what you are trying to say. In the media world, catchphrases are referred to as sound bites, very short pieces of a message. The goal is for the catchphrase to capture the heart of the message in a snippet, to clearly and cleverly make a point, and to stand out in the audience’s memory. One might say, in the words of Mark Twain, that a catchphrase is “a minimum of sound to a maximum of sense.” Examples of catchphrases include “I have a dream,” “The buck stops here,” “Just do it,” and “Joe the Plumber.”

The Slogan

Often used effectively in advertising, a slogan is a short phrase used as a rallying cry, and like a catchphrase, it is designed to make the message memorable. It is intended to be motivational—to be a call to action. Examples of slogans include “Don’t leave home without it,” “Yes we can,” and “We’re the dot in .com.”

The Delivery

Once you have determined the message you want to deliver to each stakeholder, you are ready to develop your pitch, sometimes called an elevator speech. A pitch should be about 100–150 words in length and should take no more than 30 seconds to deliver. Use a compelling “hook” that motivates people to further engage, and include catchphrases and slogans when possible. Capture the content of your pitch to each stakeholder in a simple tabular template (see Figure 11-8).

STEER YOUR STEERING COMMITTEE

Many projects are challenged—or even fail—because the project leadership team does not perform the critical analysis that is needed to determine the best path forward, both at the start of the project and all along the way as more is learned and issues arise. These project leaders do not take the time to analyze all possible solutions to the business problem or assess varying managerial approaches before marching ahead. They are not asking and answering questions such as, “Once we have defined the business problem or opportunity, should we build the solution in house?” “Do we have the appropriately skilled and talented resources? Are they available? Do we need outside expertise?” “How fast do we need the solution?” “What are our competitors doing?” The list goes on and on.

When proposing a new product innovation, escalating project issues, proposing a course correction, securing the best resources for requirements sessions, or advocating acceptance of scope changes that add business value, you are essentially in a sales role, seeking approval from upper management. There are many pitfalls: management is impatient; you must not only be brief, you must also demonstrate the wisdom of the recommendation you’re making. To do so, you must facilitate an expert team to identify all potential options, fostering creativity and out-of-the-building thinking, and then ask upper management to make a decision on the option you recommend.

FIGURE 11-8. Pitch to Stakeholders

How can you make sure management’s decision goes the way you want? You need to guide your project leadership team, augmenting it with additional SMEs if needed, to analyze the issue, identify all potential options, and propose the most feasible solution as discussed in chapter 7. Use the results of your alternative analysis as decision-support information when presenting your recommended approach. Include the names of those who participated in the analysis, all the options considered, and the feasibility of each option: the economic feasibility, the time-to-market feasibility, the cultural feasibility, the technical feasibility, the success feasibility, the business process feasibility, and the feasibility of achieving an innovative solution. After this analysis is complete, it is usually very clear which option is the most feasible. Capture your feasibility analysis in a simple tabular template (see Figure 11-9) and use it as decision-support information when meeting with management.

FIGURE 11-9. Feasibility Analysis Worksheet

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER: WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR THE BUSINESS ANALYST?

Don’t let the political environment steer your project in the wrong direction. Establish political management and strategic communication plans to negotiate environmental land mines, manage stakeholders’ influence, develop your political skills, respond to political risks, and seek approval for recommendations that are supported by rigorous alternative and feasibility analysis. Your project team will respect you, and your management team will notice your logical and disciplined approach.