Rules
Part of Stakeholder influence: who can stop your work and who hears it first
Spotting the stakeholder holes that cost a decision later
Stakeholder influence examples: five decisions where the map had a hole, who was left off, what it cost, and the question that would have found them.
Five decisions, five maps, five people missing from them. Every case below is public record: real organizations, named people, costs that were reported at the time. The stakeholder holes differ in detail and repeat in shape. Someone with a real stake was left off the map, found out late, and the work paid for it.
The reasons repeat. The missing person was junior, external, in a function nobody thought involved, or the one who never speaks. Each case ends with the question that would have found them, and none of the five questions takes more than a minute to ask.
What to take away
- The person missed is rarely the most senior. It is the one whose stake was invisible from where the map was drawn.
- Each case was recoverable, and each recovery cost more than the conversation that would have prevented it.
- After reading the five, draw your own current map and look for the same five holes.
Case 1: the A380 wiring harness and the plants left off the tooling decision
The decision. Airbus would build the A380 across four countries. Toulouse in France and Filton in Britain designed the aircraft on version 5 of Dassault Systemes' CATIA software. The map had the program office in Toulouse, the engineering leadership, and the launch customers.
Who was missed. The designers and manufacturing engineers at Hamburg's Finkenwerder plant in Germany and at Getafe in Spain. They worked on CATIA version 4, which could not read the full 3D data from Toulouse. Nobody had asked them whether their tools could consume the new model.
How it surfaced. In 2006, when the first fuselage sections were joined, the wiring did not match. The A380 carries about 530 km of wiring, and the German-built sections had been designed against a different digital mock-up. Rework had to be done by hand in Toulouse.
What it cost. Airbus put the cost of the delays at about 2 billion euros in lost profit. The first aircraft went to Singapore Airlines on October 15, 2007, after two rounds of delays, and Airbus delivered one A380 in 2007 against plans for more than 20.
Chief executive Gustav Humbert and EADS co-chief executive Noel Forgeard resigned in July 2006. Christian Streiff lasted about 100 days in the top job, and the Power8 plan that followed cut about 10,000 jobs.
What would have found them. One question to each design site: who consumes the data you publish, and with which tools? Agencies that have to identify affected parties in public work the same way, from the output backwards, as the federal public participation guide sets out. The Hamburg engineers were one question away. They would have asked for the mock-up in a readable format and a month of lead time.
Case 2: the film business that paid for digital at Eastman Kodak
The decision. Kodak would fund digital imaging while film still paid the bills, a choice its leaders discussed from the 1970s onward. The map had the chief executive, the digital group, and the research labs.
Who was missed. The film sales organization and the photofinishing labs. At its peak Kodak sold about 90% of the film bought in the United States, and film margins paid for everything else. The salesforce earned commission on film volume. Nobody had asked what a digital camera would do to those numbers.
How it surfaced. Kodak engineer Steven Sasson built the first digital camera in 1975, and an internal study led by Larry Matteson projected that digital would overtake film by about 2010. The company kept protecting the franchise. Kodak's own digital work competed for money with the business that reported the profit.
What it cost. Kodak filed for Chapter 11 protection on January 19, 2012, and came out of it in September 2013. Employment fell from about 145,000 in the late 1980s to about 17,000 by the filing. The company sold its digital imaging patents for about $525 million in 2012.
What would have found them. The budget question: what else is competing for this money, and whose numbers does the answer change? At Kodak the answer was the film business, whose margins and commissions funded the digital work. Asking early turns a fight into a sequencing decision.
Case 3: the pricing change at JCPenney and the staff who had to explain it
The decision. JCPenney hired Ron Johnson, Apple's retail chief, as chief executive on November 1, 2011. From February 1, 2012, he ended coupons and most discounts and moved to three price tiers under the name Fair and Square. The map had the board, the new chief executive, and the pricing consultants.
Who was missed. The store associates across roughly 1,100 JCPenney stores, and the coupon-dependent shoppers they served. Neither group sat in the room where the model was designed. Associates learned the change the same way customers did, from the advertising.
How it surfaced. At the register, over months. Sales fell about 25% in 2012, to roughly $13 billion, and the company reported a net loss of $985 million for the year. Shoppers who had waited for a coupon found no reason to come in that week.
What it cost. Johnson was dismissed on April 8, 2013, about 17 months after he started, and Myron Ullman returned as chief executive. The company had spent a year training staff to defend a model its customers had not asked for.
What would have found them. The consequence question: who has to live with this every day? In retail that is the people on the floor and the customers in front of them. They may not get a vote. They should hear the reasoning before the announcement, not after.
Case 4: the poll tax and the clerks who had to collect it
The decision. The Community Charge, a flat charge per adult, replaced domestic rates in Scotland in 1989 and in England and Wales on April 1, 1990. The map had ministers, the Treasury, and the party.
Who was missed. The council finance officers, registrars, and collection staff who had to build a register of every adult and bill each one. They would explain the charge to everyone who refused it and handle every exemption, discount, and appeal.
How it surfaced. Within months, councils were applying the rules differently, because each office decided the cases the legislation did not cover. That is street-level discretion: the people at the counter finish writing every rule, whether or not anyone intended them to. Westminster learned this from collection figures and from a riot in Trafalgar Square on March 31, 1990.
What it cost. Millions refused to pay, collection rates fell well below the old rates system, and the charge was abolished within three years. The Council Tax replaced it in April 1993. Margaret Thatcher resigned in November 1990, and Michael Heseltine's review set the replacement in motion.
What would have found them. Asking who would be answering the questions. The collectors had a resource stake, their time and their register, and a decision stake nobody had noticed: in practice, they decided every edge case. Half a day with them before the launch would have produced a list of the hard cases and one answer to each.
Case 5: the 787 delivery date and the customer who built a plan on it
The decision. All Nippon Airways ordered 50 Boeing 787s, announced in April 2004, with the first delivery expected in 2008. The map had Boeing's sales team, the 787 program office, and ANA's executives.
Who was missed. ANA's network planners, who had routes and aircraft retirements built around the 2008 date, and the engineers across Boeing's supplier network, among them Spirit AeroSystems in Wichita and Alenia Aeronautica in Italy. The airline had been told the date. Nobody had asked what the date depended on.
How it surfaced. The first 787 reached ANA on September 26, 2011, three years late, and flew its first paying service on October 26, 2011. ANA kept older 767s flying in the meantime. In January 2013, battery failures on a Japan Airlines 787 in Boston and an ANA 787 in Japan grounded the fleet worldwide, and the FAA approved Boeing's battery fix in April.
What it cost. Boeing took a charge reported at about $2.5 billion on the 787 in 2009, and the program ran years behind its own schedule. ANA had planned international growth on the aircraft and flew its old fleet for three more years.
What would have found them. The external question: has anyone outside the organization been told this is happening, and what have they built on it? Boeing's sales team had told the customer, the customer had told its planners, and neither was on the program's map.
The five holes
| Case | Who was missed | Why they were invisible | The question that finds them |
|---|---|---|---|
| A380 wiring | The Hamburg and Getafe design teams | Same org chart, different tools | Who consumes anything this produces? |
| Kodak | The film salesforce and photofinishers | Not in the digital group | What else is competing for this money? |
| JCPenney pricing | Store associates and coupon shoppers | Treated as the audience, not the map | Who lives with this every day? |
| Poll tax | Council registrars and collectors | Seen as implementers, not deciders | Who will be answering the questions? |
| 787 delivery date | ANA's planners and Boeing's suppliers | Outside the program office | Has anyone external been told? |
Five questions. None takes more than a minute to ask. Between them they find most of the people that a map drawn from seniority and reporting lines will miss, and they are worth asking of every significant decision before the map is considered complete.
Five questions to find holes
- Who consumes anything this produces?
- What else is competing for this?
- Who lives with this every day?
- Who will be answering the questions?
- Has anyone external been told?
The method for drawing the map, and for deciding the order in which the people on it are told, is set out in stakeholder influence. Once a missed person has been found, asking them for what you need, usually forbearance or a fortnight's warning, is the subject of influence without authority.
Case 2 is a negotiation over a fixed pot of money, and the preparation for it is in negotiation. Case 3 is the kind of quiet non-cooperation described in conflict resolution, and Cases 4 and 5 are the filtering problem from leadership influence, seen from the other end.
Common questions
These all seem obvious in hindsight.
They are, which is the point. Each was missed by competent people drawing the map from the organization chart. Airbus's program office knew the names at Hamburg. JCPenney's board knew it had stores. The five questions exist because hindsight is not available at the time and a checklist is.
What if asking the questions produces too many names?
It will not, if the test for each name is what their stake is. The questions find people with consequence and resource stakes. They do not find people who would merely like to know, and the two are easy to tell apart once the stake is named.
Is it worth doing this for small decisions?
For a decision that affects only your own team and can be reversed in a week, no. For anything that crosses a line, changes what someone else produces, or has been mentioned outside the building, the five questions cost five minutes and the holes cost weeks.
Who should ask the questions?
Whoever is drawing the map, and preferably out loud, to people close to the work. The Hamburg design teams were known to the Toulouse program office. Nobody asked them.
