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Stakeholder Management - With Effectiveness Comes Efficiency

Guest post by: Martin Haworth

Article Overview: Managing stakeholders effectively can be time-consuming and yet it's a vital activity where you want success for your project. There are ways to make time work in your favor...

Stakeholder Management - With Effectiveness Comes Efficiency

Projects and activities, especially where there is change involved, will always have a raft of stakeholders who are interested. Some will positively support you for the outcomes you are seeking to achieve; often some more will be in favor, as long as their vested interests get their own wins too.

If you are very unlucky, or choose an area where there seem to be outright losers as your project progresses, you will have vehemently opposing stakeholders, who may require quite a bit of your attention.

Managing stakeholders can be very time-consuming, so it's vital to use whatever time you have effectively, especially when you are trying to fit such work to influence in with all the other workload that the project requires.

It's vital to do your homework. Armed with good intelligence regarding the various stakeholders involved, you will be able to ascertain who are the real activists who could potentially damage the progress and ultimate success of the project. you will also see those who are likely to be 'lost causes' and tailor your attention accordingly.

Once you know who are most likely to have the most influence - and especially those who, with a little attention can be brought round to support the project (it's always good to have more on your side!) - you will then be able to focus attention more on these groups, whilst spending less time with those stakeholders whose value is lower.

That's not to say you ignore some stakeholders completely, because lurking beneath that seemingly irrelevant exterior might be some value that's of use to you. It's just more practical to evaluate where you invest the most time and effort, focusing less on those who are unlikely to be of particular value.

To improve efficiency even more when you manage stakeholders, don't be frightened to delegate some of the work to others in your team.

They will have the skills, as well as different capacities to influence stakeholders, often in subtly different ways to you. You never know just who will have the key to unlock a jammed door, so try not to assume that your team are not fully able to do their bit.

We need to work with most of the stakeholders we have to make out projects work. We also need to be able to efficiently manage stakeholders as well, ensuring that we keep our eye on the ball to ensure the activities we are engaged in are productive and successful too.

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Article Tags: manage stakeholders, management development, stakeholder management, team development, time management



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