Managing Global Programs Across Multiple Stakeholders

By Laura Hay, senior director of global program management at Trax Group | 2025 Winner, everywoman Customer/Passenger (Leader) Award

When people talk about managing global programs, the conversation often focuses on complexity. The number of countries involved. The size of the budget. The technology being implemented. The timelines, deliverables, and workstreams that need to come together successfully.

Whether in commercial transformation, operational rollouts, or distributed execution environments such as clinical development, these factors often appear as the “visible work,” but they are not what determines success. While those factors certainly add complexity, I've found that the biggest challenges in global program management rarely come from the work itself.

The Real Challenge In Global Program Management

The real challenge is aligning people.

Every stakeholder enters a program with their own priorities, objectives, pressures, and definition of success. Finance may be focused on cost management. Operations may be focused on execution and efficiency. Commercial teams may be thinking about customer experience. Vendors may be focused on service delivery. Senior leaders may be looking at long-term strategic outcomes.

In distributed operational environments where multiple functions must act on shared information across different time zones and systems, those priorities can become even more fragmented because each group is operating from a different view of the same system.

None of these perspectives are wrong. In fact, they're all important. The challenge is that they don't always naturally align.

Why Alignment Is Harder Than Execution

That's why I've always believed one of the most important responsibilities of a program manager is creating alignment. The role isn't simply to manage a project plan or track milestones. It's to ensure everyone understands where the program is going, why it matters, and what success looks like when it gets there.

When I'm leading a global program, I tend to focus heavily on three areas: governance, communication, and clarity of ownership.

Governance sometimes gets a bad reputation because people associate it with bureaucracy. But good governance isn't about creating more process. It's about creating confidence. It ensures stakeholders understand how decisions will be made, who is accountable, how risks will be escalated, and how priorities will be managed when difficult trade-offs inevitably arise.

Without that structure, decision pathways become implicit rather than defined, and small misalignments can accumulate across workstreams until they become larger execution breaks. Uncertainty grows. Decisions slow down. Accountability becomes unclear. Small issues can quickly become larger problems.

Communication is equally important, and it's an area where I think many organizations unintentionally fall short. One of the biggest misconceptions about communication is that sharing information and creating understanding are the same thing. They're not.

I've seen programs where every stakeholder received exactly the same update, yet everyone walked away with a different interpretation of what it meant. Effective communication isn't just about delivering information. It's about ensuring people understand the context behind decisions, the impact those decisions will have, and what actions are expected from them.

In complex, multi-stakeholder environments, even small differences in interpretation can propagate into misaligned actions downstream, creating unnecessary rework or delay. Consistent communication reduces uncertainty, creates alignment, and helps prevent unnecessary escalations.

I often compare program management to conducting an orchestra. Every musician may be highly talented, but if they're playing from different sheets of music or following different conductors, the result isn't harmony — it's noise.

The challenge is that in large-scale programs, there is often no single source of truth being actively maintained across all participants, which makes alignment more fragile than it appears. The program manager's role is to ensure everyone is working from the same plan, moving at the same pace, and focused on the same outcome.

Another area I care deeply about is making risks visible early.

In my experience, stakeholders rarely lose confidence because a risk exists. Most experienced leaders understand that every program carries some level of risk. What damages confidence is being surprised by a risk that should have been visible sooner.

Most issues don't appear overnight. There are usually warning signs long before they become major problems. A delayed decision. A missed commitment. Resource constraints. Shifting priorities. Small signals often point to larger challenges ahead.

One of my favorite leadership principles is that bad news doesn't get better with age.

The earlier a concern is surfaced, the more options the team has available to address it. Early visibility allows stakeholders to make informed decisions before an issue begins impacting delivery, timelines, or outcomes. In practice, early signals are often present but dispersed across teams, making them difficult to recognize without intentional information sharing and consistent governance rhythms.

I've also learned that successful program management is just as much about relationships as it is about execution.

We spend a lot of time talking about budgets, milestones, timelines, and deliverables, but programs are ultimately delivered by people. Building trust, understanding stakeholder motivations, and creating an environment where people feel comfortable raising concerns can often have a greater impact on success than any project management tool.

In many ways, program managers operate at the intersection of competing priorities. We don't always have direct authority over the teams we're working with, but we're still responsible for driving outcomes. That's why credibility, trust, and influence are often more powerful than process.

Leading Through Systems, Not Control

One quote I've always appreciated comes from Dwight Eisenhower: "Plans are worthless, but planning is everything." To me, that captures the reality of global program management perfectly.

The plan will change. Priorities will shift. New risks will emerge. Markets will evolve. What matters is not whether the original plan remains intact. What matters is having the governance, relationships, communication channels, and decision-making framework necessary to adapt successfully when change occurs.

I've never seen a global program fail because the Gantt chart wasn't detailed enough. I have seen programs struggle because stakeholders weren't aligned, risks weren't surfaced early enough, or communication broke down at critical moments.

Ultimately, successful global programs aren't delivered because the plan was perfect. They're delivered because people remained aligned, informed, and focused on a shared outcome, even when the path to get there changed.

For me, great program management is the art of keeping people moving in the same direction toward a common goal. When that alignment exists, even the most complex global programs become far more achievable.

About The Author:

Laura Hay is a global supply chain leader specializing in program management, customer success, and account strategy. She has a proven track record of leading cross-functional teams to deliver complex, high-impact initiatives on time and within budget. Laura is known for building strong stakeholder relationships, driving operational excellence, and managing multimillion-dollar programs. She is passionate about connecting people, processes, and technology to build scalable, resilient supply chain solutions that deliver measurable business impact.