Stakeholders Involved in the Project

¶ … stakeholders involved in the project to get together, assemble the different complexities involved in the project, and convene in peaceably and harmoniously forming decisions as how to proceed and deal with potential problems.

Sally Parker was in charge of the Cuyahoga River Project. That was intended to restore health and vitality to the region. Cuyahoga River (CRVO) had to still get the project off the ground and Sally was pondering how, given the hugeness and complexity of the project, the organization should be structured.

Cuyahoga River is itself a huge scheme offering many opportunities to its residents and having numerous physical, economical and regional assets offering many experiences to tourists and locals. It is an asset to the region and intended reforms to the region have to be carefully implemented so as to maintain their advantages and cause minimal unrest and disturbances to their environmental and social framework.

The Cuyahoga Valley Initiative, designed to supervise the region had established 6 goals for it: (1) working river- to ensure optimal maintenance of the Cuyahoga River); (b) Healthy Valley; © Destination -- that the Cuyahoga River Valley would attract tourists; (d) Art and design -- the Valley would become a place of creativity; (e) Business innovation -- economic development, and; (e) Community Capacity -- that its community would be harmonious and contributive. Cuyahoga Valley Initiative soon realized that in order to accomplish their goals they needed to involve more people and thus the CVO, under Sally Parker, was born.

Parker's field research led her to three conclusions: (a) The Cuyahoga Valley was a project that was worth working on but the Cuyahoga Valley Initiative was insufficiently inspirational for its regeneration; (b) For regeneration in the Valley to occur, the Cuyahoga Valley Initiative needed greater organizational capacity than it yet had. It needed a great diversity of organizations to work together and to productively collaborate on a variety of schemes for advantageous change in the region; (c) The community was reluctant for change to occur, therefore any organization would have to work to be recognized and accepted by the community as legitimate change-maker.

Sally decided that rather than a single organizational form, the design team would split up into four different networks working collaboratively, under one umbrella scheme (the CVO), to asses and implement change: (a) the Triad would be the group of individuals representing the three key stakeholders -- government, business, and foundation -- that were involved in the project; (b) network partners- the organizations and individual seeking change in the Valley; (c) Valley Projects -- those actually effecting change; (d) The CVRO -- the organization orchestrating the various resources and teams.

Analysis

Sally had to deal with the two issues of how to design the CVRO so that it should effectively orchestrate and manage all these different teams and stakeholders and how to develop its protocol so that it should operate effectively. The CVRO was in charge of five primary categories: leadership, network development, marketing, knowledge management, and funding. Making the CVRO work, legitimizing it so that it becomes accepted by the valley community, helping it successfully and diplomatically negotiate with and integrate its numerous players in diverse yet collaborate and harmonious partnership directed to the same goal was the key, and huge, issue that Sally Parker had to deal with.

Recommended Action

Sally is recommended to adopt the Forming, Storming, Performing, and Norming framework where it is recognized that for a team to effectually work and cohesify it has to go through various initial phases. Tuckman's model of groups that are characteristically formed of 4 stages - forming, storming, norming, and performing (with later a fifth, Adjourning, added) - can help here (Chapman, n.d.).

In the Forming stage, the CVRO can help representatives of each of the three other groups know each other and help them casually discuss their different ideas and objectives. The CVRO may use this stage in order to prevent the next one of storming (i.e. conflict) by encouraging them to generate possible differences in outlook and discuss ideas amongst each other. Once done, Norming occurs where co-operation prevails and the different participants listen to each other. Finally, Performing is the end-result where the group works effectively as a cohesive whole.