Building Relationships with Key Stakeholders

There are people outside of the project team who are core participants during the definition and planning stages, but who are often fringe players during the execution stage. These stakeholders include the project's end customers, other project managers, functional management, and executive management. While we may strive for a fully integrated and project-based organization where the project manager and team are bestowed with substantial decision-making authority, in most cases, this just isn't reality. In these situations, critical decisions will have to be signed off by the appropriate stakeholders. It is not enough to merely keep these people "in the loop". You will need to have a previously established relationship to facilitate the difficult decision making that needs to happen in the heat of the moment. Presenting the facts is definitely a project management duty, but having preestablished credibility and trust will go much further than just facts when trying to a get approval for an urgent and critical action. When you go to an executive with a crucial recommendation you want to hear her say, "Listen, Anne, it doesn't seem like we have the time to revisit all the facts. I trust your judgment; just make it happen". That's also an incredible morale and energy booster!

Agile Strategy

Find time to spend with key stakeholders when the project is going smoothly, so that when a crisis hits you will have already built a solid relationship in which you are trusted to make the correct decisions under fire.

Building a relationship of professional trust requires work and time. By work, I mean that it's not just fluff and shooting the breeze. You need to initiate professional discussions on substantial topics so that you can demonstrate your ability to identify, analyze, and present the most valuable nuggets of information to that particular stakeholder. By time, I mean that you simply cannot rush your relationship-building duties; you must plan for them. An executive has time for only those nuggets of information that are truly valuable, and these may come along once a month or less. Your task is to consistently pick up these nuggets before their value wanes, while filtering out the junk. The key is to spend time early on with your stakeholders so they can describe to you, as precisely as possible, what their particular nuggets looks like. One last point: If you're not finding any nuggets, be patient. If you get overanxious and try to use junk information to build your relationship, you'll more than likely lose credibility faster than if you did nothing at all.

Agile Strategy

Build credibility with stakeholders by working with them to learn how to recognize their critical few (gold) nuggets. Then, patiently and consistently, extract the real nuggets for them while filtering out the junk.