A Pocket Guide to Stakeholders' Engagement

Description

The first question I would ask if I were in your shoes would be "Why should I spend my time reading what this guy has to say?" The answer is quite simple - because it's always better to learn from someone else's mistakes rather than from your own. And while I'm now considered quite successful at dealing with complex stakeholder environments, it was not always the case - I did my fair share of mistakes in dealing with people involved in my projects, and learned from them. And hopefully, by reading what I discovered in the process you will be able to obtain the gain without feeling the pain. As many of you, I am what it's called an "accidental project manager". I started as a technical specialist, but rather soon I moved into team lead positions. To be effective I started to read about management and leadership, and I came across project management as a discipline - and I was hooked. In my early years as a project manager I could not understand why others are not performing as I am - especially that I never asked anyone else to do something that I wasn't doing already. Not being a natural skill for me, it took a lot of time and effort to develop my emotional quotient and be able to understand and connect with the emotional side of the people. Through work and conferences and social networking I realized how many others are struggling with the same issues as I did, and tried to help. As a member of the Core Team for the Fifth Edition of PMI's PMBOK� Guide I was one of the advocates of separating the Stakeholders Management as a distinct Knowledge Area from Communications. Now, project managers reading it have at least an idea that they should pay attention to stakeholders, as they do for scope, budget, schedule, risk, quality etc. Stakeholder Engagement is (arguably) the most underestimated area of project management - and yet so decisive for achieving project success. Effectively engaging stakeholders can make or break a project - more than any methodology, tools or techniques. Good stakeholder engagement results in: * Efficient communications, focused on project activities, with less time wasted in explanations. * Introduced changes have positive rather than negative impact on the project. * Support and ownership are high and lead to easier acceptance and increased usage of deliverables. For years I've been presenting at conferences my approach to obtaining appropriate stakeholders engagement in projects. That session evolved into a workshop, and finally in this book that I'm now sharing with you. Working with people is both difficult and extremely rewarding - as long as it is performed within ethical boundaries, for the benefit of the project and not for personal gain. You will need to know and use a wide variety of tools and methods to really understand what makes them tick, and a wide range of interpersonal skills to interact with them. The material includes a generic foundation, to make sure that key concepts are not missed, as well as my personal approach. Moreover, while primarily addressed to Project Managers, almost everything in this book is also applicable to any stakeholders for any type of endeavour - after all, they are people with interests that may or may not support your objectives and may or may not prevent you from obtaining them. I also included examples to highlight issues and demonstrate concepts - as always, any similarities with real people or organisations are absolutely unintentional. While highly unlikely for anyone to truly know the real-life scenario that inspired my example, the facts and situations presented are so common that most likely occurred even in your personal experience.

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