Stakeholder engagement

According to NUPP (Nearly Universal Principles of Projects), everything we do should have a purpose. So, what’s the purpose of engaging stakeholders?

There are multiple purposes:

• We want to know all the requirements before it’s too late. (Think of the shelter story).
• We want to protect our own goals/reputation/lives/etc. (Think of the thousands of angry buyers in the previous example.)
• We want to benefit from their support.
• Etc.

Some stakeholders have a positive attitude toward the project, which is great, but we still need to be careful and keep it that way. Some have a negative attitude that we may want to change if it’s worth the effort.

Once, we were working on an organizational change program and I heard that one of the executives in the company was against us. I was new there and didn’t know much about the people, but I was told that the person objecting to our work was always negative and that we should pay no head. I simply couldn’t ignore it, though! I asked him for a meeting. At the beginning of the meeting, I told him that we were creating a list of everything that could go wrong with the project, but that I wasn’t sure if we’d thought about every risk, and I was wondering whether he could give us more ideas.

He told me about everything he thought could go wrong. I took notes without explaining to him why it wouldn’t be so, and every once in a while I asked him to elaborate on a few points. At the end, I thanked him and went away.

A few days later, I went back and told him that we’ve worked on a few responses to the list of risks, and I’d like to know his opinion about the effectiveness of those. This time, everything switched, and he was giving me various ideas on how to mitigate various risks.

His input was useful to the program, but on top of that, he gradually became a champion of our program, and because of his organizational power, he could bring more resources to the program and help with our success.