Acknowledgements The unit has been adapted for OpenLearn by The Open University Business School from The Open University course B713: Fundamentals of Senior Management Except for third party materials and otherwise stated (see terms and conditions), this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlik
9 Summary This unit has focused on managing projects through people and how important this is in relation to: managing the relationship with stakeholders; motivating the project team to get results; dealing with senior management; building relationships across the organisation in order to encourage co-operation; satisfying the client and end user. Recapping on the learning obje
8 Satisfying the client and end user Most projects have an identifiable client or customer group which will benefit from or use the outcome of the project. The client may be external to the organisation which is implementing the project, for example, the customer for whom a new building is being constructed. Or the clients may be internal, for example, the users of a new IT system. As we have already seen, it is important that the client or end user shares and endorses the project's objectives and is actively involved in its dev
7.2.1 Labelling behaviour Signalling that you are about to suggest a solution to a problem or to ask an important question is one way of drawing attention to this and puts pressure on the person or persons at whom your signal is directed to respond.
7.1 Sharing the project As we have seen, the execution of a project may depend on the involvement and co-operation of several departments or functions within an organisation. If this is the case, then, for it to succeed, they must be prepared to share ownership of the project, be willing to work together to help the project achieve its objectives and be happy to release adequate resources when appropriate. The project manager and their team therefore have to create and maintain good relationships with all interested
5.2 Using political skills In particular, a project manager needs to employ good political skills in order to maintain the support of senior management, without allowing them to undermine or take over the project. However, this can raise questions about the ethics of their behaviour. Read the following account that was given by a member of an external consulting team working on a project for a local authority in Scotland. The project's objective was to revamp the structure of the council which had operated in much the
4.2 Assessing the strengths and weaknesses of a project team Those involved in a project may have skills that fulfil more than one aspect of the project agenda. This is likely to be particularly important in small-scale projects, where management of the content, process and control agendas are just as important to the project's success, but where fewer people are involved. 3 Identifying and involving stakeholders in a project For every project, there will be a range of individuals or groups who have an interest in the different stages of the project. It could be the end users of an IT system, the line managers who will be expected to lead a restructuring initiative throughout the organisation, or the marketing department which will promote a new product. The support of these stakeholders is essential, if the project is to succeed. Therefore a key responsibility of the project manager will be to identify these stak 4 Project inputs and outputs A project involves the transformation of inputs into an output or product. For example, people's mental and physical efforts, bricks and mortar, equipment or materials might be transformed into a new road, a municipal park or an advertising campaign. Or perhaps transformed into a stream of outputs or products, for example, attendances at a conference or exhibition, state school places or data from a new in-house costing system. The output or outputs might be used within the organisation 3.2.1 To draw a mind-map (manually) Put your paper (ideally a large sheet) in landscape format and write a brief title for the overall topic in the middle of the page. For each major sub-topic or cluster of material, start a new major branch from the central topic, and label it. Each sub-sub-topic or sub-cluster forms a subsidiary branch to the appropriate main branch. Continue in this way for ever finer sub-branches. You may Acknowledgements Except for third party materials and otherwise stated (see terms and conditions), this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Licence Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following sources for permission to reproduce material in this unit: Chris Stalker, He 3 Conclusion This unit has introduced a series of ideas that relate to campaigning and how organisations can adapt their outlook in order to achieve their campaigning goals. 2 Activity and questions Listen to the following audio clip between Terry O'Sullivan, Senior Lecturer in Management at the Open University Business School, and Chris Stalker, Head of Campaigning Effectiveness at the National Council for Voluntary Organisations. This audio clip is followed by a series of questions. It is suggested that you listen to the audio before attempting the questions. Click to listen to the audio clip. (13 minutes) 1 Problems facing campaigning organisations This unit aims to explore some of the problems campaigning organisations can encounter, and how such problems can be anticipated and even avoided. It consists of: a short case study about a parent teacher association which is campaigning for the lowering of the speed limit on roads within the vicinity of its school. an audio extract from a podcast interview on campaigning which forms part of the learning material for the OU Business Scho Learning outcomes By the end of this unit you should be able to: understand some of the necessary changes that organisations may have to make in order to achieve particular campaigns; give examples of how organisations have changed their campaigns to achieve their goals. Introduction Campaigning organisations, whatever their size or orientation, are intent on achieving change in the behaviour or attitudes of their target groups. But if you have ever tried working to achieve change in this way, you will probably know that getting the results you want from campaigning can be difficult. It is all too easy to get sidetracked, or run out of energy and resources, before the objective has been achieved. And the decision to campaign on a particular issue can expose tensions and c Acknowledgements Except for third party materials and otherwise stated (see terms and conditions), this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Licence Figure 1 (top right and left, bottom right): Mike Levers, Th References Introduction This unit will examine some of the key ideas connected with innovation in organisations. You will be introduced to some important concepts which are used to analyse innovation, in particular the distinction between innovation and invention. In exploring the theme of innovation, general links will be made to the implications for the business functions. This material is from our archive and is an adapted extract from Understanding Business Functions (B202) which is n Acknowledgements The content acknowledged below is Proprietary (see terms and conditions) and is used under licence. Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following sources for permission to reproduce material in this unit: Table 1: Eurobarometer 49, September 1998, © European Communities. www.flickr.com TPCOM All other materials included in this unit are derived from co
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