Forgotten stakeholders

Once, I worked for a wealthy organization that, besides running its own projects, used to fund a few not-for-profit projects as well. One of them I was aware of was a project run by a small organization to build a shelter on top of a mountain. It was specially interesting to me because I loved hiking back then. (I really miss hiking now that I live in one of the flattest places on Earth!)

The representatives of that small organization used to come to our office once a month, submit a report of what they’d done so far and another of what they were going to do, with an estimate of its cost, and we used to give them the money. One day, I realized I’d not seen them for a while. I asked around and realized that they hadn’t submitted any new reports for a while. When we called them, they told us that the national cultural heritage organization had stopped their project because they were building it on an ancient road!

The ancient road was hardly visible, and you could easily have mistaken it for a track organically created by hikers. A lot of money was wasted on that project (building something on top of a mountain is very expensive), and a historic artifact was damaged as well. So what went wrong?

Before starting the project, they could have gone to the spot and asked the hikers what they thought about building a shelter there. Some of the experienced hikers would have known about the road and could have told them. They could even have got other useful information by doing this. Better still, they could have put a notice up there, announcing that their organization was going to build a shelter there and asking the hikers to send their comments.

Having this type of concern is what separates a great project manager from a good or an average one. Some people would object that you’re wasting time doing this kind of thing instead of starting work immediately, but you’d know better that it can help prevent a lot of troubles in the long run. It’s not about how soon you start the work, but how soon you finish it, and with what quality, cost, etc.