SAY

A radical new way of looking at stakeholders

SAY is an online interviewing method which intelligently asks the stakeholders about their objective observations regarding project critical success factors and their subjective preferences. The gathered data is then presented in a dashboard format which gives alerts about project aspects or stakeholder groups requiring special attention. SAY can be applied quickly without great organizational efforts, and does not require a new skills set. SAY thereby offers organizations the possibility to benchmark human factors in programs and projects, internally as well as externally.
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Dashboard for stakeholder groups

The weight of the human factor in programs & projects becomes more prominent for two reasons; The first reason is that projects are becoming increasingly more complex and the outcome can no longer be predicted beforehand. During execution of a project the positions of those involved can alter in a way that was not to be foreseen. The second reason for the increased weight of the human factor is due to the way in which a person develops himself. Fewer people are willing to just obey and follow the rules, and this is functionally true in professional complex organizations.

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Three mental arenas

Modern project and change managers influence project environment and teams. They keep an eye on interests and behavior of those setting the tasks, team members, sponsors, administrators, suppliers, and of course clients and end-users. It’s more about people than content only. Efficient project and change teams put the ‘we‘ side of projects central. As a project team you must ensure that all stakeholders become involved and stay involved. SAY is using a framework of mental arenas and the concept of value-driven behavior to determine the level of involvement of stakeholder groups and how to connect or re-connect them. SAY assesses stakeholder group drives and distinguishes between three mental arenas, the arena of interests, the social arena and the rational arena. By adjusting content and language to stakeholder groups mental arena messages will have more direct impact and can reach maximum effectiveness.

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Dashboard with active programs & projects

With each SAY measurement a written Project Observation Report (POR) can be provided upon request. PORs have been designed to provide a clearly written overview of how a project is experienced by the different stakeholder groups and what everyone’s emotional attitude is in relation to the project. A POR can be used to provide accountability to relevant people. In addition the report sums up which priorities the project leadership should set in stakeholder management (what to fix now and what to do in the future). For each stakeholder group that requires attention, the report provides a customised approach in order to keep them on board. This approach matches the mental arena and mood of the stakeholder group.