One senior executive decided to establish strong procedures to control resources and monitor the benefits produced by the projects executed by her division. She appointed a project manager to lead an organizational change initiative to create the new PMO department reporting to her, and establish a methodology to manage portfolios, programs and projects. During the planning workshop for the new project, the team members noticed that three senior managers (all reporting to the senior executive and located in different countries) were unhappy with the project objectives, opposing the assignment of their human resources for the project execution. The project manager suggested evaluating the situation during the stakeholder analysis, before preparing the communications management plan. The main outcomes of the brainstorming session for the three main opposers were:

Manager of the Asia-Pacific region - high levels of power and influence, could not see the benefits of a PMO and was afraid of losing importance if some experienced project managers were transferred to the new department. Coming from a country with strong uncertainty avoidance culture, the resistance to innovation of this manager was well known by many team members.

Manager of the Latin-America region - medium level of power but highly influential, this manager also came from a strong uncertainty avoidance culture and was intrigued by the real reasons behind the creation of the new department, having heard rumors that the senior executive was unhappy with the results of recent projects coordinated by project managers in Latin-American countries.

• Manager of the European region - this manager would prefer to keep control of the PMO, as the original thoughts were to create a PMO department reporting to the European region, managing all important projects and the portfolio for the whole division. Coming from a short-term oriented culture, this manager was struggling to see how a PMO director could work with team members across the three geographical regions.

Some project team members were suggesting that only regular face-to-face meetings with the three regional managers could increase their collaboration. However, the time and cost required for the travel could have a negative impact on the project schedule and budget. After performing a cost-benefit analysis, the project manager decided to organize regular meetings by video conferencing, nominating one local coordinator in every region and asking them to be present in the same room as the regional managers, trying to exert some influence and helping to moderate the meeting. Other suggestions took into consideration the cultural dimensions.

Problem statement:

Analyze the scenario and note the underlying issue you see