Two of the major challenges and issues we normally face in projects are inadequate stakeholder engagement and insufficient effective communication as there could be hundreds of communication channels and many different stakeholders. As portfolio, program, and project managers, we spend most of our time communicating but a one man show on such projects doesn’t work well. There should be a defined and very well detailed communication plan with clear direction for delegation of tasks as it pertains to communication with various stakeholders
Over the years, I’ve witnessed many take stakeholder identification, analysis, engagement and communication lightly, and guess what was the end result?
- Frustration of stakeholders
- Delays in approvals
- Wrong flow of information
- Decrease in buy-in and key stakeholders support
- Low morale across the team
- Delays in schedules
- Significant re-work
- Loss of clients/ business
Proper stakeholder engagement and effective communication can go a long way and contribute big time towards the success of the project. It is the golden card that every management professional should hold on to and use wisely and as needed. Again, it is stakeholder “engagement”, not stakeholder “management”. Stakeholders don’t like to be managed but they appreciate being engaged and this is often another trap that many fall into as they spend time managing
stakeholders rather than engaging them.
Stakeholder engagement is about two important things: Effective communication and transparency. Both communication and transparency go hand in hand. The more you communicate efficiently and effectively in a very transparent way, the more you will gain the stakeholders’ trust and buy-in and to be clear, communicating and stakeholder engagement is not only about “verbal communication”. There are many ways you can communicate and engage stakeholders
through-out the project:
- Brainstorming sessions
- Review meetings
- Solution assessment
- Problem solving
- Decision making
- Periodic audits
- Walkthroughs
- Project health checks
But hey, hold on! While it is important to engage stakeholders and communicate with them, make sure you make those decisions and plan for them objectively based on a proper analysis of their attitude, power, and interest. For example, you communicate and approach a stakeholder who is resistant to the project but has high power and interest differently than a stakeholder who is resistant but has low power and interest. If you engage with stakeholders arbitrarily and do not make informed decision then you are wasting your time, their time and most probably causing harm to the project more than having a good impact on it.
Personally, I find planning for stakeholder engagement and their communication as being one of the most important tasks at the outset of the project, during the project and even after the project closure to maintain future relationships. I’ve seen projects that are very well planned for time, budget, risk and quality but have poor communication and stakeholder engagement levels and the end result was that those projects either failed or barely survived.
You as a management professional should use your soft skills to ensure you bring people together, consult with them, achieve consensus among them, resolve conflict between them, and above all make them feel valued and that their opinion matters.
About the author: Rami Kaibni B.Eng. , PfMP®, PMP®, CBAP®, PMI-ACP®, GPM-b™ , is IAPM’s Senior Official for Vancouver, Canada and Amman, Jordan. He is a Career Coach, Agile Trainer and a certified Senior Portfolio and Project Management Professional holding a bachelor’s degree in Structural Engineering and has over 15 years of professional experience in Professional Development / Career Coaching, Portfolio / Program / Project Management, Construction Management, and Business Development.
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Good teams communicate with stakeholders regularly, but the best teams communicate with stakeholders proactively. They also extract insights to continually improve their strategies and shorten the path to social acceptance.
Why is it important to communicate with stakeholders?
Depending on the type of project you’re working on, you may need to communicate with stakeholders to comply with regulations or international standards. Beyond that, engaging with your stakeholders can provide operational and strategic value. It can help you to:
- Manage stakeholders’ expectations to mitigate social risks (e.g., frustration, pushback)
- Establish and maintain social license to operate (SLO)
- Understand and address your stakeholders’ needs and concerns
- Balance stakeholder and company interests
- Demonstrate transparency to show that you are acting in good faith, and
- Meet requirements such as the Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) standard
Determine your engagement strategies
Once you have identified your stakeholders, analyzing and mapping them will help you create effective engagement strategies. Stakeholders can be classified in many ways:
- By group (community, organization, club, etc.)
- By level of interest in the project
- By level of influence
- By expectations and/or requirements
Find out how stakeholder mapping can help you define the right communications strategy.
Some people will need to be kept in the loop continually, while others can be managed on a need-to-know basis. Before you begin to communicate with stakeholders, mapping can help you determine which strategies will be effective for each group and at each stage of the project.
To effectively manage stakeholder communications you need to track, extract, and report
Over the life of a project or business, communicating with stakeholders creates a vast amount of data. In time, it can become increasingly difficult to:
- Manage all stakeholder communication channels
- Document interactions to create corporate memory
- Extract meaning from communications to improve decision making
- Report (as needed) for compliance and due diligence
Wondering how you can easily extract meaning from stakeholder interactions and build polished reports for any stakeholder data
Tracking stakeholder communications
Once you begin to communicate with stakeholders, you’ll need an effective way to keep track of those communications. Documenting interactions in a single, central location will help you stay on top of this growing mountain of stakeholder communications.
If you are still working with outdated data collection tools like email box, spreadsheets, and SharePoint, you know just how cumbersome and inefficient this approach can be. This is especially true if you work with a large number of stakeholders, or if you have to meet specific reporting requirements (e.g., from a lender).
Here’s a quick test for all you stakeholder relationship professionals out there:
Pros and Cons of different engagement methods: communicating with stakeholders & tracking engagements
Letters |
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Phone calls |
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Text messages (SMS, Messenger, WhatsApp) |
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Emails |
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Online/social media |
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In-person meetings |
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Extracting meaning from stakeholder communications
Consider this scenario: A key stakeholder suddenly asks to meet with you face-to-face. You want to have an idea of what to expect – and what to say – before you walk through the door. To prepare for this meeting, you need to quickly review all previous communications with this person (including those you weren’t involved in) and assess any changes in their sentiment or influence.
How long this will take depends on how your organization manages stakeholder communications.
Pros and Cons of different engagement methods: extracting insights & reporting on activities
Paper |
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Spreadsheets |
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“Party Mix” approach (combination of Excel, Word, Outlook, Paper, Mobile, and shared folders) |
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Customer relationship management (CRM) software |
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Stakeholder relationship management (SRM) software |
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Manage your communications with stakeholders more efficiently using fit-for-purpose tools
As a stakeholder relationship professional, you know that simply managing these interactions can already be a handful. On top of that, you have to be sure you understand your organization’s relationship with different stakeholder groups so you can engage accordingly. And finally, you need to know how these relationships have changed over time to avoid missteps that could jeopardize a relationship. Sometimes it feels like there aren’t enough hours in the day! So how can you make sense of all this data and be sure that you’re extracting meaningful insights from your communications?
Modern, fit-for-purpose tools are specifically designed to minimize manual work. This greater efficiency lets you focus on engaging with people instead of spending your time sorting through spreadsheets. Better tools can help your organization engage more proactively, maintain better relationships with stakeholders, and put you on the fast track to social acceptance.
Here’s a quick look at how fit-for-purpose SRM software can save you valuable time and help you work more efficiently:
Dashboard to track your communications with stakeholders
Time to generate: 3 minutes
Time to generate: 3 minutes
Analytics to extract meaning from your communications
Time to generate: 3 minutes
If you’re tired of dealing with blind spots that put your stakeholder relationships at risk, contact us today! Our team has helped organizations from different industries all over the world improve their stakeholder engagement outcomes. Once you discover the powerful features of our user-friendly Borealis stakeholder management software, you will never want to use a spreadsheet to track stakeholder communications again!