Stakeholder management is a method that every project manager finds themselves using eventually. You might think a couple of meetings here, and there will cover you, but as you grow, you learn that that is simply not the case.
Every project takes place inside an environment, which is almost entirely set up by the stakeholders involved. Their expectations, needs, interest, potential impact, and influence all present independent risks to the project. That means all of those details need to be documented and watched—and that’s a lot of work.
Without a proper understanding, structure, and plan, this practice is essentially useless, so we are going to fix that for you.
This guide post will give you all of the following.
- Knowledge of what a stakeholder is
- What stakeholder management is
- How they can affect your project
- Explanation of why exactly stakeholder management is needed
- How to manage stakeholders
- The process of stakeholder management
- Details on each part of a stakeholder management plan
- Instructions for creating your own stakeholder management plan
- Skills needed for stakeholder management
- Tips and tricks for optimal usage of this principle
What is a Stakeholder?
Everyone involved in or relying on the outcomes of a project, organization, or business is a stakeholder. As you’d imagine, that’s a lot of people. This is such a far-reaching term that it can include
- Clients
- Investors
- Government bodies
- The Community
- Suppliers
- The media
- Employees
- Management
Again, it’s anyone who has a concern or interest in the situation. For the sake of clarity, we divide all stakeholders into two categories, internal and external.
Internal Stakeholders
Of the two, internal stakeholders are far more complicated. They live much closer to the issues the project or organization faces, which means they are much more affected by the outcomes. Also, these people tend to be eventual users or benefactors of the result you are working towards, making their need for success (or failure) a bit sharper.
And while external stakeholders get the most bad press, internal stakeholders can be much more problematic. Many people inside an organization have hopes and goals for a project, but few actually have to do with the actual project.
If the forecast says those goals may not be met, internal stakeholders can easily throw their weight around and block the project.
External Stakeholders
As we said before, these people get a lot of heat, but when handled correctly, they aren’t that bad. External stakeholders are those not part of the team or the client organization, yet they still have an interest in the project or organization.
This group consists of
- Financers
- Organizational shareholders
- Users of the end product
- Regulators
- The affected by the construction, creation, or existence of the end product
- Members of the press and media
Any project, product, or organization that is public (or directly impacts the public) will have many of these types of stakeholders, making management of those interests much more important.
What is a Stakeholder in Project Management?
Stakeholders play a much more potent role in a project setting (with a finite budget and timeframe) than in an organization.
A company is run with many different interests in mind. Those involved want it to last, progress, and achieve goal after goal. Longevity is of great importance, and budgets are much less finite. The operational costs of most corporations dwarf what they allot to their projects. It’s like comparing the size of the sun to Earth.
In a project setting, most—if not all—of the conditions are different. Generally, the constraints are much tighter, and every move is watched under a microscope. It’s hard to watch any multi-department cooperation at all, let alone closely.
Project stakeholders have put money, time, and effort in with a very clear objective for getting it out. Team members are there for a paycheck. Management is, too, but they also need to fit their operations into a bigger picture. Investors want to see the project completed and making them their investment back.
When you get right down to it, nothing about their role is quite the same.
What is Stakeholder Management?
Due to both the sensitivity and power of the “stakeholder” position, it is in a project manager’s interest to do what they do best… manage it.
Stakeholder management is roughly defined as a method for organizing, managing, and improving the project manager’s relationship with stakeholders. It’s a formal term that doesn’t really capture the full picture of this process because it’s about engaging with anyone who may be impacted by the project. Some other words that align with stakeholder management include mentoring, influencing, and communicating with stakeholders.
A stakeholder’s expectations (what the project should be, include, or consist of) can be a powerful force. So, by closely monitoring stakeholder needs and expectations, you can keep everyone as involved and satisfied as possible. You could argue that the act of stakeholder management is a balancing act of planning engagements and meetings with stakeholders while implementing tasks to do so. You’ll know you have a good process down when you are able to do the following.
- Coordinate interactions with each type of stakeholder
- Understand the status and quality of your relationships with each one
The driving force behind stakeholder management is either a strategic goal (minimizing threats to the project’s security and outcome) or a legal goal (preventing lawsuits).
When you step back and think about it, the concept of stakeholder management makes sense. If a stakeholder has a stake in a project, they will be affected by it, which means they’ll likely have an interest influencing in it. If they stand to benefit, they’ll support and promote the effort. If they stand to lose, they’ll look to block or damage it. In most cases, “damage” means placing the project in a bad light and making it seem like a bad investment.
Clients tend to be the ones who care for stakeholders, which means they have to balance a variety of requirements, filter/sort that mess, and hand it to the project manager. And when you’ve not heard from the client for a while, it’s because they are off fighting stakeholders for something that can vaguely be called a compromise.
Why is Stakeholder Management Important?
When you have a lot of input from multiple sources, you need to organize, structure, and follow it all, or else things get lost. And when this kind of input gets lost, someone sends you a nasty email about how they don’t like being ignored. Nasty emails usually come from stakeholders who are one inconvenience away from blocking the project.
So, you need to keep all that information straight, or else your project will suffer.
Stakeholder management is extremely useful in helping you develop and maintain relationships with those who are affected by your project. It also helps to
- Reduce risks and improve risk management
- Align multiple business goals
- Mitigate or eliminate delays
- Increase clarity around roles
- Increase stakeholder support
- Decrease the project’s cost and maximize value
- Enhance stakeholder engagement
- Improve project outcomes
- Boost communication
- Increase stakeholder buy-in
Projects fail when stakeholder interests and needs are ignored. If buy-in isn’t nurtured, it will not happen. You will get tons of support when you can understand and meet stakeholder needs—even if that just means hearing them out. Stakeholder management keeps stakeholders happy, keeps things running smoothly, and drastically reduces issues.
When used correctly, stakeholder management can also
- Help avoid and resolve conflicts between stakeholders
- Secure buy-in
- Bolster project support
- Manage and improve communication with stakeholders
- Manage expectations of all involved parties
- Monitor stakeholder engagement
Simply put, this process helps you keep track of what you said, who you said it to, and when you said it, and it helps remind you of when you need to reach out again.
How To Manage Stakeholders
As with most practices in project management, you need to air on the side of prevention and preparation rather than waiting until it’s time for a reaction. This means you need a plan. A stakeholder’s influence is most potent at the beginning of the project. Plans can easily be changed, and most stakeholders know this. They give a little push here, a shove there, and then the outcome suddenly looks a lot better for them. Sadly, due to the intensity of their interest, they don’t see how that could be bad for others—they may not even care.
There can be a huge cost to changing the direction of the project, especially when things have gotten moving. Once “construction” starts, it’s much harder to make changes.
So, to best manage project outcomes, you’ll need to do the following.
- Understand the parts of a stakeholder management plan
- Create and develop a stakeholder management plan
- Use that plan
We cannot stress the importance of this practice enough. It can be extremely useful, but only if you let it.
Stakeholder Management—The Process
Like every process in project management, there is a specific order of events that seems to do the best job.
1. Identification
Knowing who you are working with, who you could be working against, and where all of these people are coming from is very helpful. The sooner you know these things, the better, which means you should begin this process as soon as the “plans” for the project are cemented. When documents are signed, hands have been shaken, and you have some idea of what you are working on for the next few weeks, months, or years (depending on the scope of the project).
2. Prioritization
Later in this guide, we discuss “Stakeholder Mapping,” which is an extremely helpful method for prioritizing all these people and interests. You work to understand who possesses what combination of power over the project and interest in the outcome, which can look like any of the following.
- High Power, High Interest
- High Power, Low Interest
- Low Power, High Interest
- Low Power, Low Interest
Depending on where a stakeholder sits will define how and how much you engage with them.
3. Assess Needs and Interests
Knowing who someone is and where they come from is relevant to stakeholder management, but you also have to know what people want from this project. You’ll need to take the time to understand what each party wants—particularly those with high power—and how your intended outcome of the project will affect them. We recommend taking a very honest angle here. Come out in the open and say, “What do you want out of this project?” Take note of their answer. If the result they hope for is unlikely, you can tell them that.
Pro Tip: If that exact outcome is impossible, be honest and then work to find a compromise. Your effort during that interaction will show them that they are not being dismissed or ignored—which is crucial in stakeholder management.
4. Define Motives
Even if you give honesty, you aren’t always going to get it back. So, use the information you have gathered thus far and attempt to accurately define what they want. If you predict a stakeholder as a threat, you’ll need to clearly comprehend what they want to achieve.
5. Develop Your Plan Stakeholder Engagement Plan
You need all of the pieces to complete the puzzle. By taking the time to work through all of the above steps, you give yourself the best footing possible. We are trying to prevent you from doing all this work, making a plan, and then leaving it to collect dust somewhere. We’d much rather you make the best, most accurate plan possible and reap all of the benefits of this practice.
We discuss how to create your stakeholder management and engagement plan in detail below.
Parts of a Stakeholder Management Plan
A good stakeholder management plan covers all of the following
- The influence of each individual stakeholder or group
- The interest level
- The details surrounding the project manager’s communication with stakeholders, including the frequency, channel, and type of information shared
To ensure all the above details are correct, we encourage you to fully participate in both the stakeholder analysis and mapping. The terms are closely related but have distinctions. A stakeholder analysis, according to the Project Management Institute (PMI), is a process used to understand the stakeholder environment that the project lives in. It also prioritizes the use of a project manager’s resources, such as time and energy.
On the other hand, stakeholder mapping is used to describe the process of assigning values that represent the priority they hold and strategies for meeting each type’s requirements. It’s a visual representation. After you work through the entire planning process, you move into a stage called “active management,” which is an ongoing cycle of managing each type of stakeholder’s needs and expectations to protect the project.
Project management itself is a process that can be broken down into hundreds (if not thousands) of individual tasks. Stakeholder management isn’t that different. Each can be broken down into many steps, but that is what this method looks like on a basic level.
The parts of stakeholder management include
- Stakeholder Analysis
- Stakeholder Mapping
- Active Stakeholder Management
Each part is explained in great detail below.
Stakeholder Analysis
As we mentioned before, a stakeholder analysis is all about understanding the stakeholder environment surrounding your project and helping you, as the project manager, figure out the best use of your resources.
A huge part of this step, after identifying stakeholders and deciding their level of power and interest, you have to label them as positive or negative. Will they help this project succeed or attempt to limit its success?
A couple of other things you’ll need to evaluate include
- The stakeholder’s needs (requirements of the project)
- The stakeholder’s preferences (regarding processes, plans, and outcomes)
- Their relationships with other stakeholders
- How you’ll approach each stakeholder or stakeholder group
This part is really about being honest about who is going to help your efforts and who is going to try and deter them. It’s also about understanding how to mitigate those issues as much as possible.
Stakeholder Mapping—Don’t Dismiss This
As a crucial but often ignored aspect of stakeholder management, stakeholder mapping is the process of creating a visual representation of your stakeholder environment. It helps you clearly prioritize each stakeholder and shape your strategies for each category. Mapping is considered an extension of analysis and is like a ranking system based on each stakeholder’s influence, impact, and interest.
When you map out your stakeholders, you are given an easy and accurate scale for planning how you’ll engage with each one. You might have multiple companies, groups, or individuals relying on your project, so this is a great strategy to keep all of their different considerations organized.
Another advantage mapping gives you is seeing how they are all connected. A tip for stakeholder mapping we always recommend is placing each stakeholder in one of four quadrants, each labeled the following.
- High power, high interest
- High power, low interest
- Low power, high interest
- Low power, low interest
The quadrant placement should look like this.
| High Power, Low Interest | High Power, High Interest |
| Low Power, Low Interest | Low Power, High Interest |
The vertical scale above would represent power. The horizontal scale above would represent interest. To add to the visual assistance, those who are later determined to be positive or negative stakeholders can be color-coded to display that difference.
Active Management
This looks exactly how it sounds. This is the part where you execute all of those plans you made. You try to place positive stakeholders in positions of power and take negative ones out of those positions (at least, you lessen their reach). You keep the necessary ones satisfied and ensure everyone gets information as dictated by their position.
Additionally, you should work to keep external stakeholders in the loop as much as possible. They are simultaneously the most ignored and the most helpful when it comes to drumming up outside support for the project—so don’t ignore them.
We recommend getting involved with a wide group of internal stakeholders as early as possible. Early action is exceedingly helpful in keeping your relationships with stakeholders positive.
So, bring everyone in and include them in a briefing. Make sure all of the following happens.
- Present initial designs, goals, and hopes for the project.
- Let everyone give their opinion and take note of each one while considering them seriously.
- Allow everyone a moment to express what they need from the project.
- Allow everyone a chance to explain the risks, complexities, and limitations of the project from their perspective.
- Learn about what each party thinks of the project.
You can make it clear that not everyone will get what they want (even you as project manager) and that you will do your best to ensure everyone receives the best possible outcome. And you’ll find that everyone will be more cooperative when they 1) understand the “why” behind decisions and 2) were a part of those decisions.
How to Create a Stakeholder Management Plan
Stakeholder management, similar to risk management, is best used as a preventative tool. Preparation is key and is accomplished by nurturing relationships with stakeholders before there is an issue. That’s why we find each stage to be vital—specifically, those that live towards the beginning of the project.
In our experience, the best way to create a stakeholder management plan is in this order.
- Identify Stakeholders & Plan Accordingly
- Document
- Create Stakeholder Engagement Plan
- Active Management or Stick to The Plan
The bigger your project is, the more necessary a stakeholder management plan is. You cannot keep such a large variety of people, needs, and preferences straight without one.
1. Identify Stakeholders & Plan Accordingly
As previously discussed, you need to know who you are working with and what they get from the project. You should identify what information you’ll need, such as
- Name
- Phone number
- Position
- Their needs, preferences, and preferred priorities
- Social network (What other stakeholders are they connected to?)
- Demographic data (external or internal)
Other characteristics you should attempt to identify include the “3 I’s” or the influence, interest, and impact they can have on the project. An important feature of stakeholders you to identify is their expectations. In other words, you need to know the following.
- What do they expect from the project?
- What do they think should be included in the scope of the project?
- Is there a gap between their expectations and the previously agreed-upon scope?
- How will that gap be managed?
- What information do they want?
- How regularly do they want that information shared with them, and through what channel?
- What financial interest do they have in the outcome of the project? Can it be identified as positive or negative?
- What social or emotional interest do they have in the outcome? Can it be identified as positive or negative?
- What is their current opinion of the organization and the project? Is that opinion based on reliable information?
Next, you’ll define both the power and interest of each stakeholder or stakeholder group to complete the mapping process. (The stakeholder mapping method is explained under the section titled “Parts of a Stakeholder Management Plan.”)
2. Document Everything
We placed this step here because of its importance. It might seem like common sense, but we have all done it.
You need to make sure that you have a clear system for documenting and displaying the information you collect. That might be a spreadsheet, a specialized stakeholder management system, or a section of your notebook. The notebook isn’t that helpful, but there must be something.
Documenting their role in the project’s environment and their impact can help you complete the next task, labeling them as positive or negative stakeholders.
A negative stakeholder is someone who does not benefit from the project’s completion and will leverage their power to drastically change or eliminate the scope of the project. They can also be someone who simply doesn’t support the project.
A positive stakeholder is someone who will benefit from the construction of the product, project, or outcome. They support it and want it to happen, so they could use their sway to help see it completed.
3. Create Stakeholder Management Engagement Plan
A good stakeholder management plan is comprehensive, accurate, and based on facts—not feelings. A stakeholder engagement plan is one aspect of the overall management of stakeholders and focuses on how exactly you are going to maintain communication with each party.
It’s going to be based on the following
- Their projected impact on the project (positive or negative)
- Where they are positioned (internal vs external)
- Their overall standing (High power, high interest; high power, low interest; low power, high interest; low power, low interest)
You’ll need to develop a communication plan, which includes
- The type of communication (or channel) used to reach each group of stakeholders
- The type of information being shared with that stakeholder (progress updates, potential risks, risk management information, etc.)
- How frequently that channel will be used
- A predetermined place for information either shared or received to be stored
- A description of the final deliverables (project outcomes) they expect
- The owner of each task
Before making that communication plan, you should answer each of the following
- What method of communication is preferred by each stakeholder? What is their second most preferred method?
- Who is in a position where they need to be consulted regularly?
- What other engagement opportunities will occur? (Events you can invite them to)
- Are there any other opportunities for collaboration? If so, what are they?
This section might be completely devoid of information for some stakeholders, but for others, these extra details will be so helpful.
4. Stick to the Plan
This step relates back to our discussion on “active management.” This is where you put your plan to the test and let it help see you through. Any plan will help you, but an accurate, thorough, and meticulous plan will enable your project to thrive. We recommend that your most utilized step in creating your stakeholder management plan is developing an extremely specific plan for communicating with stakeholders.
During the mapping stage, you’ll have visually placed certain types and groups of stakeholders in categories (High power, high interest; high power, low interest; low power, high interest; low power, low interest.)
Below we explain in detail how we recommend you handle each category.
You’ll find that this later part of stakeholder management is filled with a lot of grievance management. One strategy we recommend to make this “grievance” process as easy on you as possible is to provide a fair, clear process to everyone. Not only will it be less of a headache, but it will also show everyone involved that everyone is getting heard (even if that means they aren’t always getting what they want). It also encourages stakeholders to trust you and your systems.
High Power, High Interest
When you identify that a stakeholder has a high level of power and interest, you then need to identify whether or not they were positive or negative.
If their bearing on the project is positive, you’ll need to look after their interests and needs. They are important to the project’s safety, and you’ll need to ensure they know that. You cannot ignore them. We have a tendency to only address the squeaky wheels, but that cannot be the case here.
In addition, you need to prioritize the following actions.
- Consult with them and involve them in decisions (previous to decisions being made)
- Keep track of their needs
- Make sure they know they are important
- Embolden and empower their support
- Enable them to lobby using that support
- Meet with them regularly
- Nurture the relationship
Yet, if they are a “negative” stakeholder, the situation turns on its head. Instead, you need to
- Try to nurture the relationship and increase support
- Bargain and attempt a compromise
- Determine what they deem important and attempt to gain their favor
- Help minimize the negative impact of the project on their interests
- Put the necessary amount of effort into dealing with threats they pose
- Leverage positive stakeholders to try and change their perspective
- Limit their power (only if necessary)
- Show them what you are doing and explain why you are doing it
When it comes to high-powered negative stakeholders, they can be really dangerous to the project, so you must find ways to sway them. At the very least, you should attempt to relax their disdain. Sometimes resistance to projects can be caused by a lack of information or poorly sourced/incorrect information.
Also, if you understand what is important to them, you can help them achieve it, effectively minimizing their case against the project.
High Power, Low Interest
These types of stakeholders are dangerous. Any change in their level of interest can drastically change their impact on the project, which means you need to treat them similarly to how you treat those mentioned above.
Remain aware of their position and opinion at all times, especially during the planning of your project. We recommend that you keep a close eye on negative changes to the project that could push their opinion of the project into cynical territory.
Also, try to understand what is important to them. Maybe look into why their interest is low. Be proactive about communicating changes to them because it’s possible that other types of negative stakeholders will go to them to block momentum.
High Interest, Low Power
When this class of stakeholders is also positive, they can be incredible allies. You should treat them with care and provide them with information as often as possible. In addition, you should do the following.
- Maintain communications
- Get their opinions and input on matters
- Involve them in project-based events as much as possible
- Send regular updates
- Invite them to semi-related events
But if they are negative, you must be careful not to dismiss them on account of their low power. First, that position could change, and then you’ll have lost your opportunity to make this relationship positive or, at the very least, neutral.
Stakeholder management is all about keeping careful track of the needs of those impacted by your project. It’s also about balancing your resources. Negative stakeholders with low power cannot take your time—and some will try to with all their calls and mile-long emails. Be careful with these ones.
Low Power, Low Interest
We recommend that you keep everyone in the loop to some extent. Ignoring anyone, even the little guys, is not in your best interest. Ensure that this type of stakeholder is regularly updated and has access to current information and updates. All in all, we encourage you to be good to them.
5 Stakeholder Management Skills You Need in Project Management
We often discuss the importance of these skills in project management—and you could argue whether or not they are actually skills, but that doesn’t dismiss how necessary they are for effective stakeholder management.
1. Communication
Keeping open lines of communication open with all these different groups is imperative. Not only will they have a lot to give you, but there is also a ton you have to give them. Moreover, you need to ensure that you communicate clear messages that can’t be misinterpreted. This isn’t always preventable, but if you work to keep things honest, open, and simple, you’ll find it’s much harder for people to play telephone because the truth of the situation is so well known.
2. Organization
Most of a project manager’s role comes down to organizing, sorting, and tracking information; stakeholder management is no different. We recommend that you take measures during each phase of your project—and before it even starts—to be sure you know where everything is. Spreadsheets are your friend. The technology solutions out there are incredible, so do yourself (and your team) a favor and use them.
3. Planning
Solid planning is how you prevent and minimize issues with negative stakeholders. It might even be the way you change them to positive ones. That being said, planning can help every aspect of your life, especially your relationships with stakeholders. Ahead of time, you can make accurate, calculated, and considerate decisions that take all necessary points into view. Then you can make plans that help support those decisions and meet your goals.
Without planning, you risk weighing yourself down with the sheer weight of all that mental labor. You’ll have to wake up each day and immediately start putting out fires. You’ll have no peace. You’ll constantly have to fight off the fear of not doing enough and impulses that pull you in a direction that has nothing to do with your goals or vision.
Take meal planning, for example. When you plan ahead of time what you are going to make for dinner, you never have to stare into the fridge and weigh the usefulness of every item you have. You never waste time in the grocery store thinking about what you should get. All those decisions have been made, you just have to execute them. Please plan things out. You will save a tremendous amount of time, energy, and even money.
4. Maintaining
Once your relationships have been created, you must step back into their view and maintain them. You have to check up on them and evaluate whether or not their position has changed. You have to feel for changes in their needs and expectations. So many project managers forget to do this and pay for it down the road.
This could be an extension of the point on planning because you can plan maintenance of these relationships and connections into your days, weeks, and months. You get a little alert, send an email or make a call, and check that off your list. It might feel insignificant, but this does incredible things for stakeholder management.
5. Balance
Depending on the scale of your project, there will be many people you have to check in with at all different times about all kinds of subjects. So, we recommend that you practice the skill of balance.
Only check and respond to emails at certain intervals because you can easily find yourself spending all your time replying and never acting. You can even let your colleagues know that you only check emails from 1 pm to 2 pm each day, so if they need something clarified or handled before the end of the day, they need to meet that deadline.
You can also be honest and tell them that it’s for the sake of the project. We also recommend using technology to your advantage, so at the beginning of your email-checking timeframe, you can skim each one and label them as “urgent,” “semi-urgent,” and “can wait.” Prioritizing input before you even think about digging into the issues can be very effective.
13 Tips For Stakeholder Engagement & Management
While this guide has been packed full of tips for effective stakeholder management, there are a few points we want to highlight.
1. Define the purpose of the project.
You will have people that fight against the mere existence of your project, which means you might find yourself fighting for it. If you know, in precise detail, what this project is doing, who it’s going to help, what need it’s going to fill, etc., you’ll have a much easier time explaining that information to others.
2. Define every role and responsibility.
The performance of each team member is closely monitored by those in supervising or management roles. That often starts by having a clear description of what each person is doing and what tasks they own. You also need to do that for stakeholders. At some point, especially as the project manager, you’ll be placed in a position where you have to chase after someone because they have something you need. When you have previously clarified what each stakeholder brings to the table, you’ll severely reduce the number of wild geese you have to chase.
3. Use mass emails.
Again, we can’t say this enough. There is every kind of technological solution out there now. If you have to share a progress update with multiple people, you can start an email that says “Hi everyone!” and call, then call whoever you need to. The point is to take advantage of any channel that allows you regular communication. Conference calls, collective meetings, mass sent emails. There should be individual ways of communicating with each party, but don’t forget to use the available tools!
4. Be transparent.
You might have heard the phrase “honesty is the best policy,” and it really rings true here. When you allow people to see the vision and their place in it, you give them a chance to support it. No one likes to work towards something they don’t even get to see. A sense of purpose, understanding, and collaboration to achieve something bigger is incredibly helpful.
With that in mind, let your stakeholders know what the vision looks like. Tell them every “why” instead of blocking them out for fear of misunderstanding or overreaching. Explain the need behind every request and how that fits into the bigger picture. Doing any of these will be helpful, but doing all of them will go a very long way.
5. Choose the right software.
This applies to anything. Take recommendations from colleagues and those who’ve been doing this for a while. Read what people have to say about the software you use to balance the project and everyone who is a part of it.
Look for ways to keep the layout clean and simple. Look for duplicates in data. Look for customization options. And be sure that it has solutions for mass data sharing.
6. Be flexible.
Of course, there will be changes. The only constant you can truly rely on is change. That being said, don’t let it deter you.
7. Test your understanding of stakeholders continuously.
Immediately start developing your understanding of stakeholders; don’t let it go stagnant. Take every opportunity to update and improve this understanding.
8. Share your stakeholder lists.
Shared information is how misunderstandings are nipped in the bud. Then, everyone will have access to updated details regarding the project. It can be improved by multiple people, which will continue to improve it.
The only issue is that you need to be careful with sharing private information (names, emails, phone numbers) with different parties.
9. Right info right from the start
Collaborate with management (and some positive stakeholders) to collect a list of details you’ll need from each stakeholder. Especially on larger projects, you might create a system for collecting all necessary information in one go while balancing convenience. You don’t want the form to be bothersome to stakeholders, or they will ignore it (or leave parts blank).
One trick for making the form as concise as possible is to hand out the form that covers the basics and then schedule a follow-up meeting that gives you the opportunity to further develop your understanding of them, their position, etc.
10. Be aware of compliance.
Ultimately, stakeholder management requires an extensive collection of data, which means you’ll need to be aware of data storage and protection. Each year there is more and more legislation detailing requirements for privacy and personal data usage. You’ll need to be sure that your team is complying with any relevant legislation.
11. Keep spreadsheets with all information on each stakeholder or stakeholder group.
You’ll need to look through that data from time to time, as well as change how it’s sorted to compare different positions. Spreadsheets are a great help and an effective way to store or back up stakeholder information.
12. Seek feedback.
The best way to improve is to be open to learning new methods and strategies for managing your project—that attitude applies to stakeholder management, too. Keep an open mind with this one. Constructive criticism is not the same as disliking or disparaging your work, and it can be very helpful if you let it.
13. Base your evaluations on reality, not feelings.
So much of each project functions on feelings. People feel driven to protect their interests. People are afraid to lose their jobs. People feel a part of something bigger than themselves. But when you are completing your assessments of each stakeholder, it doesn’t matter how nice they are, if their interests conflict with the project’s well-being, that needs to be noted.
Go The Extra Mile, You’ll Be Glad You Did
Stakeholders can make or break your project. It’s just the way it works. So, to ensure better outcomes, you need to be proactive.
A lot of this process is basically an instruction on how to go above and beyond for your stakeholders so that they feel able to show up for you. Any project is a complicated business. Your team, management, stakeholders, and contractors (third parties) have to work in this organized yet chaotic dance to complete the agreed-upon objective.
Everyone has their own interests and needs, which can impact the construction, but not everyone is on the ground being a part of that. So, as the project manager, you need to make sure they feel part of it. E open-minded, inclusive, and collaborative because you never know what kind of problems you’ll have down the road and which unexpected stakeholder is the one to get you out of it.
Let New Ideas Find You
Here at A.McBeth, Inc., we know it’s better to pop our thinking caps open, receive new ideas, and use them on occasion than act like we know everything. Project management is pretty uncomfortable with that attitude, which is why we are offering up new (and old) ideas all month long, so sign up to be notified the next time one pops up. You won’t want to miss it!
