What is 'Engaging Stakeholders'?
I've created this lens as a place delegates on our Engaging Your Project Stakeholders 1-day Workshop can go to for fresh ideas, further resources, or to dig deeper into the subject.
Engaging Yours Project Stakeholders (EYPS) was primarily 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 my personal views on stakeholder engagement
Here's a nice comment from a recent delegate on EYPS:"A productive a well-structured day - 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
Patrick Mayfield
Lessons of a Learning Leader
This is my primary blog. One of the main themes I write about is Stakeholder Engagement.
Fetching RSS feed... please stand byAssorted Videos Illustrating Stakeholder Engagement
... the good, the bad and the ugly
curated content from YouTube
by 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)
Explore related pages
Baby Signs - Powerful Language- Tiny fingers - Tiny gestures These are the tools your baby has to express her ne...
Mind Mapping Can Be Used By Adults for Educational Purposes- A mind map is a tool that aids in the thinking process by representing thoughts...
GodLight- "GodLight" will have fresh, new, and inspirational content every...
Dealing with Difficult People ...- Transactional Analysis (TA) is a study of the interactions between us humans. It...
Presenting with Power- Presenting with impact, in a compelling way is such a key skill - for leaders an...
Shaping Change- This lens pulls together resources about Shaping Change in organisations. 'Chang...
