(upbeat music)
- Hey, thanks for joining me for a coffee.
So I wanna talk about stakeholders today.
If you're not familiar with that term,
I've totally got you.
Stakeholders, they're essentially the folks
that you work with on projects
who are the project owners or key decision makers.
If you're working at a consulting agency,
you probably call them clients.
If you work in an organization
on internal projects with an internal team,
you probably call them your coworkers or managers
or even just your boss, right?
So I've worked with tons of stakeholders in my career
on tons of projects,
and I have to say, sometimes it's easy and fun,
other times it requires a lot more work and handholding.
The one thing I'll tell you about stakeholders is,
they're not trained in their roles.
I mean, think about it.
No one ever teaches you how to be a good client
or how to be a stakeholder.
I mean, I can take that even further and say
they might not even know what it means to be a stakeholder.
So you know what that means?
That means it's your job
to identify your project's stakeholders,
to understand their motivations and intentions
for the project,
and even to educate them on how your project will run,
and how you'll need their participation or partnership.
It sounds like a lot of pressure,
and I know that dealing with stakeholders
who are more senior or are more important can feel daunting,
but honestly, I've always loved stakeholder management
because getting to know the people
who will make decisions on your project
can be fun and insightful.
But also, it's pretty important work.
You know why?
It's because these are the people
who can decide to not make decisions and be difficult
or even disengage from your project
and completely derail all of your progress.
Honestly, the worst is when a new stakeholder
comes in out of nowhere
and makes a sweeping decision or a comment
that affects your budget and timeline.
We call that the swoop and poop,
because that stakeholder swoops in out of nowhere
and just poops all over the hard work that you've done.
And guess who has to clean it up? You.
So hearing all of this, you're probably laughing,
hopefully, you're laughing,
but you're also probably understanding
why it's important to engage with your stakeholders early on
and really to make sure everyone on your stakeholder team
is present and accounted for.
So if you're working with a client organization,
chances are that you have no idea who the top brass are
or even how to get in touch with them,
but you wanna make sure
you're accounting for them in your process
because you don't want that swoop and poop to happen.
So are they concerned about your project?
If they aren't, are they comfortable with someone else
on the stakeholder team calling the shots?
Get answers to those questions
by working with your client or project sponsor
to help you determine how the decision-making process
will impact your project overall.
So whether you're working with a client or an internal team
mapping out their hierarchy and involvement level
on the project will help you to make decisions
on what you deliver and how those deliverables
will be circulated through the organization.
So I should also mention this.
The size of the client organization
and the number of approval layers will affect any plan
and how things like feedback, reviews
or even meetings can play out.
Of course, not all organizations will be the same size,
but the roles in the organization
definitely tend to stay similar.
You might work with a really small team,
but consider asking about the hierarchy in the organization,
just based on the number of iterations
you expect on deliverables.
You know, I actually developed a short little exercise
to help with this.
I created it on the fly in a situation, on a project,
because I was in a meeting with a brand new client team,
and when I asked, "Who is your project owner?"
You know, who is the decision maker.
They told me that they would all share responsibility
because they were a flat organization.
Meaning there is no hierarchy.
It was all kumbaya.
♪ Kumbaya ♪
- Wait, I know it.
♪ Kumbaya ♪
Wait. Oh yeah, I got it.
♪ Kumbaya ♪
This is it.
- My response is no, no.
I immediately stopped and I told them that,
you know, we need to be 100% sure
that we're truly clear on what that means,
and how the feedback and decision-making process
would actually work on the project.
Because that's the type of thing
that tends to put projects over scope and over timeline.
You see, I've got enough experience to know that
when you don't have this type of thing sorted out,
you'll deal with politics and decision
and probably a little bit of drama,
and I've got no time for that.
So I went to a whiteboard
and created five columns on the board.
Each column represented a type of stakeholder.
The project owner or core group,
the primary stakeholders,
the secondary stakeholders,
the management level stakeholders,
and then the executive stakeholders.
These are groupings that can represent
different levels of stakeholders on a project
from the largest to the smallest organizations
that you work with.
So I just knew that there was someone else,
someone who is not in that room
who had some level of investment in the project.
So I asked them to bear with me.
I was gonna go through each stakeholder type
and explain the profile,
and it was going to be their job
to identify people who fit those profiles.
If there weren't folks in every category,
hey, no problem, at least we discussed them.
So here are the categories.
First, is the project owner or core group.
These are the people who are responsible
for the day-to-day success of the project.
They came up with the idea
and likely the budget for the project,
they wrote the proposal or the brief for the project,
they found the right team to work with,
and they'll hold most of the answers about the project.
Your point of contact sits on this team
and is responsible for making sure things go well
on their side of the project.
These are the people in the room in this instance
so it was pretty easy for me.
Then I break it down further.
First, with what I call the primary stakeholders.
These are the people who are most connected
to the goals of your project,
they're invested in what you're doing
and definitely took part in sponsoring the project.
One of these people, or even their supervisor,
may sit on the core team.
In this case, which was a digital marketing project,
this was the marketing team in that organization.
Then they're the secondary stakeholders.
This team may not have written the goals for the project
but they'll be a part of making sure it's a success.
Or maybe they have some sort of responsibility
for the project.
On many digital marketing projects,
this might be an IT team or even a development team.
Then you get into the hierarchy
by identifying the management level stakeholders.
These people aren't the doers
but they are the decision-makers,
possibly the people who oversee
the primary and secondary teams,
or even the people who oversee a whole division
in the organization you're working with.
These people tend to be very connected
to the vision of your organization
and how the project can succeed.
So you wanna understand their goals
and set their expectations for the project
and definitely keep them as close as possible.
Then going further up the ladder up to the top,
you have to consider the executive stakeholders.
These people pay the bills,
they make all the important decisions
and they can completely deny your project
if they feel out of the loop.
So do your due diligence and get to know who they are,
what their motivations are,
and their plans to be involved at points of your project.
These people could be C level
or executive level people within organizations,
they might be on a board of trustees,
directors or something similar.
This means they're not in the day-to-day of the company,
but they oversee it.
You'll wanna think through ways to engage them for sure.
All right, so I talked through those levels, right?
And magically, this team of five people
was able to identify all of the people
who would be involved at every level of the project
from all possible corners of the organization.
So we filled every column with at least five names,
and we were able to discuss how those folks
would be involved and when on the project.
I knew it, I knew there would be more people
to consider in this project.
And I knew that flat didn't really mean flat.
I knew it was gonna make design reviews and final approvals,
and honestly, just like every step of the project,
a little bit slower and a little bit more difficult.
But that was okay, I was fine with that.
I'd much rather know about those folks
now at the beginning of the project,
than when we're 75% of the way through,
because at least when you know things are going to be slower
you can plan for it and set expectations about it.
But one more thing, you also need to know this.
You have to be aware the sneaky stakeholder.
Always be sure to ask one more time
if there's someone you haven't met
or should have considered.
You wanna uncover unknown stakeholders
who may be hiding behind the boardroom doors,
just waiting to step in at any moment.
These people can be deans in colleges,
remote board members, executives who travel a lot,
the boss's spouse or anyone else
who may not seem obvious to you.
Everyone has an opinion,
and it's your job to make sure that they're heard
at the right times on your projects.
So go into it, just realizing that these are the people
who want the best for the project.
Now I'm talking about just any stakeholder, right?
But if you or someone doesn't tell them how to engage,
then they'll probably destroy your timeline, your budget,
and your teams are out.
And let's be honest, nobody really wants to do that,
it just kind of happens.
So be clear about the benefits
of getting to know your stakeholder team
and about communicating important project information
to them at the appropriate times,
and you'll definitely have
a more enjoyable project experience.
All right, that's all I have for today.
Happy stakeholder fishing.
I'll see you on the next episode
where I'm going to talk about stakeholder interviews
and how you can get some more project information
by doing just a little bit more stakeholder fishing.
Don't forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel
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when we release new episodes.
And in the meantime, why don't you check out
my weekly live classes over at teamgantt.com/classes.
I'd love for you to join me
for one of those free live sessions, have a good one.
(upbeat music)