Upon starting any new project or role, within an organisation, one of the keys to success is stakeholder management. I spend more than 50 per cent of my time managing my stakeholders and
it pays off.
There are three elements to consider:
- Stakeholder mapping: identifying, understanding and categorising key individuals and the effect they could
have on your programme.
- Communications planning: sharing progress and direction at regular intervals in different ways, depending on audience.
- Implementation management: clearly defining your objectives, agreeing the programme plan and ensuring delivery with the use of regular reviews, robust action logs and risks registers.
From personal experience,
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found that taking time to engage all stakeholders appropriately at the start of the programme significantly helps with a smoother implementation. Understand who your stakeholders are, what motivates them and, most importantly, demonstrate back to them that you understand (but be careful not to come across as arrogant or pretentious). This will give you an excellent platform to gain credibility, identify your advocates and start to build some strategies to manage your potential blockers.
It’s important to keep stakeholders informed about progress, including the successes and challenges ahead. Different stakeholders will need differing information and need to receive it in varying formats. These can range from regular newsletters to detailed board presentations. Whatever they are, issue them regularly and consistently.
Finally, be clear about the programme objectives and the plan to achieve them, hold regular reviews to track weekly actions and major milestones, keep your risk register up to date, issue meeting agendas well in advance and action logs immediately afterward.
Here are my top 10 tips:
- Do what you’ll say you’ll do
- Understand others views and ideas
before sharing your own
- Complete a stakeholder map and
keep it up to date.
- Create a communications plan and
issue items on time
- Be clear about programme objectives
- Develop a plan, share it and gain buy-in
- Undertake regular reviews of actions
- Issue an action log after each meeting
- Take everybody with you on the journey
- Remember, procurement is an
enabling function.
☛ James Jaggard is head of group procurement for Element Six