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Engaging Stakeholders

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What is 'Engaging Stakeholders'?

I've created this lens as a place where delegates on the pearcemayfield Engaging Your Project Stakeholders Workshop can go to for fresh ideas, further resources, or to dig deeper into the subject.

The Engaging Yours Project Stakeholders (EYPS) Workshop was originally developed for project managers and people leading any kind of change for the better. Recognising stakeholders, and how to engage them effectively, is a much-neglected area of project management theory and practice. The UK's Association for Project Management (APM) estimates that 90% of a project manager's time is spent in some form of communication or other.

So why are people so bad at it?

Somewhere between designing and delivering stuff on the one hand, and realising benefits from it on the other, is the vital work of engaging the hearts and minds of everyone involved in a project and its outcome.

So enjoy this lens and let me know what you think and how I might improve it.

Thanks for visiting.

Some of personal views on stakeholder engagement

Here's a nice comment from a recent delegate on EYPS:
"A productive a well-structured [course] - the information was carefully tailored to my personal workflow needs and we were encouraged to identify real changes in the way we engage project stakeholders." (Thanks, Tim, for that.)

Here are some basic propositions:

1. It's 'stakeholder engagement', not 'stakeholder management' as it's commonly called. You might manage people who report to you; you influence and engage with people elsewhere.

2. Leaders get 'stakeholder engagement'; those who only think in management terms see this whole subject at best as a necessary overhead.

3. Engagement is two-way; it's not merely disseminating information. Some of the most effective stakeholder engagement is a dialogue with interested parties.

4. When it comes to communicating with a group of people, there is a greater risk of under-communicating, than over-communicating. That is, groups generally need important messages (e.g. Vision) communicated over a period for them to get it t the extent they can repeat it back at will.

Some useful links on Stakeholder Engagement

pearcemayfield - helping you succeed through programmes and projects
Engaging Your Project Stakeholders (EYPS) 1-day course, out of which this lens was conceived.
Outlook For Change Blog
A useful blog about organisational change included on my own blogroll.
My LinkedIn Public Profile
Patrick Mayfield's professional profile on LinkedIn.
Train-To-Perform: Half a toolbox !
An interesting blog post by a friend and former colleague, Tony Watts. He writes: "There is a new breed of project manager out there. Traditionally the project manager delivered the outputs or products of a project and handed them over to a business change manager who had to embed them ..."
Anticlue: Ways to Improve Communication
A useful article from the Anticlue Blog.
Stakeholder Management & Planning - Planning how to win your stakeholders' support
From the MindTools site (which links to some other useful resources) this fleshes out what might be involved in the Planning step of the Engagement process.
My Recommended Books on Change Management
Some recommended titles on Change Management.
Power Presenting
Presentation is such a key skill - for leaders and for anyone wanting to move on in their careers.I've created this lens to assemble together resources and material from different places that I have found helpful. I hope you do too.Let me have your views in the guest book at the end o
Conducting Successful Interviews With Project Stakeholders :: UXmatters
Stakeholder Circle - Manage the right stakeholders
The Stakeholder Circle will enhance the management of a project's stakeholder community to the benefit of the stakeholders and the project
When a great project is just not enough
An article I wrote on the value chain that must follow on from a project.
My bookmarks tagged with "stakeholderengagement" on del.icio.us

Some of my recommended resources on Amazon

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Patrick Mayfield

Lessons of a Learning Leader

This is my primary blog. One of the main themes I write about is Stakeholder Engagement.
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Patrick_Mayfield

Hello. I am the founding Director of pearcemayfield, a UK-based training and development company. The company specialises in supporting companies in t... more »

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