I have been coaching a CEO whose company has a poor record of delivering products and projects to their customers’ satisfaction.
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It isn’t critical – yet – but in the current market, there are lots of competitors who are cutting prices and making big promises. His unhappy customers have options. Although they like my client as a person, friendship isn’t a compelling reason to do business with him.
My client runs a professional project management company and has the PM processes down to a science, yet they are failing their clients … they are failing at stakeholder management.
What happened?
They mapped out where their stakeholders were. They consider the influence & power each potential stakeholder had. They developed customized strategies for each stakeholder. Nevertheless, nd despite all that, they still fail.
Simply put, they forgot that following proven project methodology does not deliver success; people do.
All of those ‘stakeholders’ are people, and you can’t manage people like little boxes with cute little communications plans. The people who are your stakeholders all have egos, emotions, career aspirations and family problems.
A recent Harvard Business Review article reported that people account for 80% of the factors that contribute to a project’s failure. Their analysis indicated that the average Project Manager had competency in three times as many “technical” topics as “people” topics.
Think about that for a moment: 80% of the causes of project failure rely on the competencies of your Project Managers who are worst at!
Here are six things you need to do to change those odds:
- Get to know your Stakeholders – develop a comprehensive understanding of who they are, what they care about, what their stated and unstated drivers are, and how they relate to your success.
- Engage your Stakeholders as early as possible – It is a very natural human response … no one wants to be surprised by the change. Egos get fired up when they are excluded until they are expected to get on board.
- Listen with both ears open – Listen to what the person is saying and watch for those non-verbal clues. Sometimes they are only telling you what they think you want to hear; sometimes they nod in agreement, but their language is otherwise.
Click here to read about how silence can improve conversations
- Stop communicating with your stakeholders – talk to them. Communication is a tool, but speak with your stakeholders like human beings.
- Use policies and processes as a carrot and not a stick – doing something because of rules or history is dumb. Work with people to find out what they need out of this project, and piggyback on that to create win-wins
- Create communities – Gather people who care about your project’s success and work together to achieve everyone’s success.