Influence of Internal Stakeholders

I worked under the same manager in an organization for nine years until May of 2008. When I started with the company we were an organization of 150-200 employees and when I left they were down to 13 people. Throughout my time with the organization I saw several changes occur within management but no matter the size of the organization some things stayed the same. The organization had a couple of things going on that would have and did make it a challenging work environment for any manager. Not an impossible work environment but definitely challenging. The organization is privately owned and the owners work in the day to day operation of the organization at the executive level. This placed these particular managers in the position of not only being stakeholders but also shareholders and as such they micro managed my supervisor who happened to be the only executive level manager who was not a shareholder.

When it came to planning for the team my supervisor, who had 20 years of experience in the industry, was not given the opportunity to set goals and develop action plans without someone constantly looking over his shoulder and causing him to second guess what he thought was best for the team. After a plan was in place then the roadblocks appeared because those who were shareholders were very cautious about what resources and employees we used no matter how beneficial they might be to the organization. Working in this environment made it very difficult for my supervisor to feel excited and motivated about the work to be done and in turn difficult for him to lead the team to perform at a high level. Controlling the direction of the team was a catch-22 situation because although my supervisor was on the ball to realize areas needing correcting the actual response could take too long to be effective due to the cautiousness of the shareholders.

As I mentioned earlier the company went from 200 people down to 13 in about 9 years. This changed occurred because of changes within the company but I think in large part a factor was also the value and influence given to internal stakeholders. Unless you are a shareholder or family of them you are not given a voice to contribute to the overall direction and decisions of the company. I don't believe stakeholders should have influence over a manager to the point of the manager not making the best decision for the organization but I do believe that internal stakeholders can provide a perspective that others may not see and should be given the opportunity to contribute.