Chapter 3 ideas

In chapter 3, the most important point is to identify who are our stakeholders. The reason is that stakeholders has direct or indirect stake in an organization, and they may significantly influence the success of an activity or a project. If a business organization want to success on a project, identifying stakeholders is a primary task.

So, the question is " Who are our stakeholders?"
The chapter listed out stakeholder roles by different perspectives. They can have positive or negative views regarding a given project. The point I have learned here is that the more disagreement those stakeholders have with one another, the more difficulty the project may be done with. Therefore, knowing the key stakeholders and also win their cooperation is the most challenge.

Each stakeholder is important to the project, and the customer is the most unpredictable and hard to deal with for me. In my job, I sometimes have to deal with customers when they are unsatisfied with my work. Maybe I am more professional than the customer in my field, but I am in no position to argue with them but follow their desires, because they are the one paying for it, and my salary is actually indirectly from them. If the customer doesn't satisfy with the project, then the project directly fails no matter how good the manager or project team think. The customer holds the final decision on if the project success or not.So, how to get an agreement between an organization and the customer is a skill we need to learn.

A leader who I admire

I admire Steve Jobs not only for his great achievement on today’s technology but also for his innovative and unique idea as a leader. Sure competent and determined play an important part forming a good leader. But a leader must be inspiring and imaginative as well. He/She must always pay attention to what is going on now, but also look to the future. Jobs is truly a innovator who always think out of the box.

Another key to make Job successful is that he loves what he is doing and believes in himself. “Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did.” (by Steve Jobs) Even when he hires somebody, his question to those people is “Are they going to fall in love with Apple? Because if they fall in love with Apple, everything else will take care of itself.” They’ll want to do what’s best for Apple, not what’s best for them, what’s best for Steve, or anybody else. In a team, it’s important that everyone unites in one mind. Being loyal is also a characteristic that a good leader should has.