I’m not a project manager, but I’ve managed hundreds of projects, both as an in-house marketer and for clients. Most projects involve many stakeholders, with different priorities, time demands, working styles and motivation, so it’s no surprise that they’re often what brings the most complexity to the delivery of projects. Here are my top tips on herding those cats to get the best possible outcomes:
- Prioritise stakeholders: The key question here is not so much who are the stakeholders, as much as who are the stakeholders without which this project can’t move forward and be completed. You can’t please all of the people all of the time so it’s important to pinpoint and prioritise the key stakeholders – not everyone is the bride at a wedding.
- Understand what each stakeholder needs from the project: This tip is the secret sauce that makes many of our programmes so successful. Take the time to understand what each of your key stakeholders needs from the project and you’ll be able to motivate them so much more effectively and also ensure that you measure the project outcomes against what they actually care about. How does the project’s success affect your stakeholder’s success?
- Align the stakeholders behind a common goal: Get this goal agreed early on and it can become a useful touchstone to bring people back to if they wander off the path. This is especially important with longer projects, say 6 months+ where scope-drift is often inevitable as plans and priorities shift. Whilst it’s important to be responsive to change, if you’ve got your common goal agreed, you can gently remind and refocus if and when stakeholders stray.
- Don’t treat everyone the same way: Any advice on managing stakeholders will emphasise communication but it’s not as simple as just keeping everyone in the loop. If you blanket-email everyone with the same information you’re unlikely to get the results you want. That C-level exec you need sign-off from isnt going to read a mass email and you might have more luck working through their EA. Tailor communication to your key stakeholders, make sure everything stakeholders need to take action is accessible and be conscious of everyone’s time demands – there’s little point nagging a super-pressured sales person about case studies at the end of quarter.
- Define roles and responsibilities clearly: Another useful thing to hammer out early is who will be responsible for what, so expectations are clearly set. Anyone who has worked in a large organisation will have had experience of sign-off creep, where the sign-off group slowly expands as the deadline approaches, pushing out timescales as new stakeholders must be brought up to speed. Again a gentle reminder/refocus on the agreed roles and reps can sometimes nip this in the bud.
Sometimes managing projects with multiple stakeholders can feel like a dark art, but by using some emotional intelligence, taking time to get to know your key stakeholders and ensuring their needs are met, you can make that project magic happen.
