Achieving Success through Stakeholder Management

We manage projects. We manage time. We manage budgets. We manage clients. Usually with great care and attention.

But do we manage the stakeholders around us with the same care? We should. It took me some time to figure this out.

Stakeholder management is one of the most critical soft skills we can cultivate over our careers. In fact, it can make or break our ability to succeed. If we ignore it, we risk dangerous blind spots, mistaken assumptions, and missed opportunities relative to the people who surround us at work.

I started my career as an engineer and progressed to product leadership and business transformation executive roles. Along the way, I‘ve learned countless lessons (some funny, some obvious, some just downright painful) about the importance of stakeholder management and why it needs ongoing attention. In fact, as teams become more remote and more distributed, stakeholder management becomes even more important to our ability to navigate the human dynamics at play in our work.

A few lookouts to consider:

Each stakeholder has different styles, needs, pressures, and motivations. They approach problems differently and they have different value drivers and affinities. The more willing and able you are to put yourself in their shoes, the more you’ll understand them. Just as mediators are trained to listen for the spoken and unspoken motives and needs of opposing parties, it’s critical to pay attention to both obvious and hidden signals our stakeholders may be sending. These vast differences seem to be amplified in more matrixed organizations. In those microcosms, we encounter people with very diverse emotional and intellectual inclinations. I’ve seen engineers and scientists working with people with backgrounds in political science, business English, and education majors. Observe these differences and use this information to curate interactions with the people around you.

Stakeholder management isn’t about understanding people so you can manipulate them. 
Or cater to them in an unnatural way. It’s about being aware and practical so you can communicate with them more effectively and create mutual understanding that leads to authentic win-win situations. I’ve come to think of it as getting two people on to the same currency exchange system.

See people for who they are without judging or dismissing them. Time teaches us that we won’t like, gel with, or agree with every stakeholder around us. While some may be cherished and trusted thought partners, others may be your average professional nightmare. They may overlook facts, may be overly emotional, may be power-hungry, or may not always make decisions with the good of the company in mind. While we may not agree  with them and may be tempted to judge or dismiss them as having no influence on your project or your career, resist! Resist the temptation to ignore them, dismiss them or be overly defensive in your interactions with them. The more you can step back and understand people for who they are, the better equipped you’ll be to manage your relationship with them.

Remember everyone has their own agenda. We’re dealing with humans after all, right?

Most of the time workplace agendas tend to come down to career aspirations or concerns about their status in the organization, or other emotion-driven and ego-driven impulses. The sooner you can figure out someone’s agenda, the better off you’ll be.

Part of successful stakeholder management is knowing how to say “no” or “maybe.” Sometimes stakeholders will ask something of us we don’t agree with, we simply can’t fulfill, or we can’t treat as a priority at that moment in time. If you must say something other than “yes,” be transparent and be prepared with clear rationale…ideally framed in a way that appeals to their unique style and world view. By being clear and honest about your stance, you have a prime opportunity to build trust. If you’re not sure how to respond, ask yourself a few questions such as these:

●      Does the request advance your own goals?

●      Does it align with KPIs used to measure your performance and/or your team’s performance?

●      Is the request something that fits into a prioritized roadmap or initiative?

The “how” of stakeholder management

One useful technique involves a fairly simple mapping exercise.

First think at the organizational level. Put stakeholders in different buckets and group them by most critical. Then consider how they relate to you (manager, peer, direct report, dotted-line approver, advocate, subject matter expert, etc.). Everyone in your company can be a stakeholder, but there are some general personas that will be more relevant to you, such as the CEO of your company, your peers, delegates, frequent business partners (such as marketing, IT, or finance), etc. You can decide which exact dimensions to include in your map. Some I use and encourage my teams to include in their own mapping:

●      Relevance to you

●      Their goals/agendas/motivators (obvious and hidden, as best you can determine)

●      Their pain points

●      How you can help them

●      Actions you can take to cultivate the relationship (focus especially on ways to build genuine trust)

Then think about your stakeholders through the lens of key projects or initiatives.

At the project level, it can be very helpful to create a classic RACI matrix that lets you classify the stakeholders in your project for each aspect of the project as Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed. This might seem like “administrivia”, but there’s a reason RACI grids have been around forever. If nothing else, they can help you see the people inside and outside your projects in a new light. (When you map this out, don’t forget to consider any function critical to the success or failure of your project, including those who might advocate for or against it, such as Marketing, Product Development, Customer Account Management, Strategy, etc.)

To go a step further and actively engage select stakeholders, you can take a page from disciplines such as design thinking. Consider conducting sessions such as design workshops. That gives them a voice and a stake in the product or initiative early on and can increase your odds of success. You’ll need to manage the session(s) carefully and make sure participants understand if they’re getting a vote in the effort, or just a voice.

There are countless ways you can approach stakeholder management.

Regardless of which techniques work best for you, the important point is to give it deep and ongoing attention. Consider blocking time for it regularly. Revise your approach as you go. If you lead a team, make the topic of stakeholder management a routine part of your staff meetings and 1-1s.

When done right, stakeholder management can make an enormous difference in the success of your projects and your ability to create alignment when it matters most. It can even make the difference in whether you’re happy or miserable in your job.

And a final word of advice: communication is critical. Your ability to communicate with your stakeholders in a way that’s authentic to you and resonates with them is at least 50% of your job once you start climbing the ladder. And no matter where we are in our careers, it’s a skill– really, an art form–we can always be honing.