Is Your Project Running Late? Check your stakeholders.
Photo by Daniele Franchi on Unsplash
It’s a little known fact that the one of the top causes of delays to projects is stakeholder engagement.
You read that right. It’s not budget, it’s not lack of planning, it’s straight-up people.
If you’re like most of my clients, you’ve seen project after project hit delays. Despite careful planning. Despite making sure all budget was requested and accounted for. One thing you might have missed: engaging the right stakeholders on your project.
Although I will be the first person to caution you against following the Project Management Institute blindly down any path, I do think they nail the definition of a stakeholder. They include in their definition not only that stakeholders are people who are or may be impacted by a project, but people who perceive themselves to be impacted by a project (A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide). Project Management Institute, 2017. APA, 7th ed. Project Management Institute).
That line about perception is key. Why? Because it forces you to widen the pool of people you consider to be a stakeholder.
Too often, we limit ourselves to thinking that the only stakeholders in a project are those with direct involvement and budgetary control over a project. So, we narrow the scope of our stakeholders and focus on meeting and working only with them.
However, in reality, we are missing anyone who perceives themselves to be impacted by the project. And what happens when these people find out about the project, and the meetings that they weren’t included in? At best, they ask a lot of questions. At worst, they throw a fit and stop progress until they can be sufficiently brought on board.
Another way of saying this: They cause delays. Any time you have to spend bringing along a stakeholder who should’ve been included from the beginning is a delay brought about by failed stakeholder engagement.
Avoiding these types of delays is not necessarily easy. It’s never easy to include more people in a project. However, it doesn’t have to be arduous.
Engagement for stakeholders who perceive themselves affected by a project can be as simple as inviting them to a kickoff meeting and copying them on status reports or executive updates. It could also look like an occasional phone call to “read them in” on what’s going on with the project.
As counter-intuitive as it sounds, you will ultimately save time by including all of your stakeholders up front. And if you want help in figuring out how best to do this for your upcoming projects, I’d love to chat.
WHAT DO YOU THINK?
Have stakeholders been the cause of delays for your projects in the past? What strategies have you used to successfully engage with them?