Three Things Management Needs to Know About Stakeholders

They are an integral part of your business operations, and are part of every project you and your team manages; whether you want them to be there or not – stakeholders. Most stakeholders involved in ongoing projects or partnerships are clients, and maintaining their confidence to ensure the collaborative process continues is a major factor in carrying a project successfully.

Ask the Questions

1. Who are stakeholders?
   Stakeholders represent individuals, investors, governing bodies, industry groups and other external organisations in the wider community with various degrees of influence on a project or organization and its desired outcomes. Stakeholder management is a critical component to the successful delivery of projects and ensuring organisations remain sustainable and socially responsible. Failure to track and document issues, communications and commitments can result in stakeholder dissatisfaction and project failure.
2. What is stakeholder management?
   Often, the process of stakeholder management is seen as a form of risk management; a way to mitigate any potential risks of negative influences affecting your project that may come up as a result of trying to keep the parties involved happy and meeting their expectations.
3. How do you ensure good stakeholder relations?
   Good stakeholder management will not only clear the path of potential obstacles, but it will actively support effective progress and improve the quality of the end results. It is not simply a case of keeping stakeholders happy – it’s also about using their time, expertise and influence to help you reach your goals. To ensure good stakeholder relations, you have to view your stakeholders as inclusively part of the team, establish the common goal that you want to achieve, and work towards being on the same page throughout the project.

Engage
Knowing who your stakeholders are will help in knowing who you’re working with, which supports an engaging and creative environment. Engagement, in particular, is the key when collaborating to deliver a project where asking the right questions to gain insights and useful information is essential.

This involves having a proactive mindset and an encouraging approach to stakeholder relations as a measured aspect of project management.

After all, it’s important to identify what you want to achieve and make sure you stay on track; you wouldn’t want to find out later that everyone had a different idea of what was actually happening and have to start from square one.

Information sourced from Kahootz.