Stakeholder expectations

Regardless of their level of power and interest, stakeholders demand some form of engagement from the project team.

Responsibility for this lies with the project manager, although, on larger projects, it may be delegated to engagement specialists or other team members.

Beyond providing stakeholders with a usable set of outputs, project teams have a responsibility to:

• Make every effort to understand stakeholder needs 
• Acknowledge and address those needs in a timely manner (even if they cannot be perfectly met) 
• Serve stakeholders professionally at all times, and 
• Keep their promises.

Fundamental to this is the project manager and team’s level of interpersonal skill. 

Those with a high level of interpersonal skill are empathetic in that they are willing and able to view things from the stakeholder’s perspective.

They treat others respectfully, understand and use effective body language, and build trust by reliably meeting their commitments.

Those are the same interpersonal skills necessary to develop and lead project teams, and we look at some of them in Module 3 on Project Delivery and Close.

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Engagement methods

Pre-populated, the power / interest matrix reveals a general ascendancy in score from the bottom left (very low power and interest) to the top right (very high power and interest).

The project team can use this scale to introduce thresholds whereby the level of engagement intensifies in line with stakeholder priority.

In our model, we extend the IAP2 framework to set our engagement thresholds as follows:

• Monitor (±1-2)
• Inform (±3-4)
• Consult (±5-9) 
• Involve (±10-12)
• Collaborate (±15-16)
• Empower (±20-25)

In other words (and continuing our previous example):

• We will empower a high-priority stakeholder (+20: our project team member)
• We will consult with a medium-priority stakeholder (+9: our supplier) 
• We will keep a low-priority stakeholder informed (+4: our concerned resident) 

Let’s explore that in more detail.

By definition, stakeholders with very low interest and very low power don’t particularly care about our project and couldn’t act if they wanted to.

As such, they only need to be monitored for changes in their attitude or behavior.

Monitoring involves identifying the media they engage with and staying abreast of it.

This might include regularly scanning newspapers, special interest publications, and web channels like blogs and discussion forums.

You can also set Google Alerts to notify you via email when topics of interest emerge or change.

In this instance, we are interested in the content and the commentary that attaches to it.

So what are we looking for? Guiding questions might be:

• Are new phases or changes in the project likely to stimulate a higher level of interest from these stakeholders?
• Will this interest motivate them to access and leverage someone with greater power over the project?

You see, just because a person has no power doesn’t mean they can’t access it elsewhere!

Monitoring impacted stakeholders is a passive activity that does not require any stakeholder input.

As such, it is a low-cost engagement strategy that can act as an early warning system for higher-need stakeholder issues.

Keeping stakeholders informed requires a commitment to providing balanced, objective, accurate, and consistent information to assist them in understanding the project, including any issues, alternatives, opportunities, or solutions.

Informative media is generated within the project and broadcast to stakeholders through a variety of channels, including:

• Press releases
• Newsletters, bulletins & circulars
• Advertisements
• Open days/events
• Social media and blogs

Importantly, your information should be tailored to the audience’s expectations.

More often than not, this can be reduced to an understanding (from the stakeholder’s perspective) of how this project will impact me and my interests.

In addition to general status updates, residents may want information on service interruptions, suppliers will want delivery access, and project team members will want to know how and when they are getting paid!

Although these communications are not in and of themselves an invitation to provide feedback, they can occasionally stimulate unexpected or unintended stakeholder interest.

Therefore, you should also continue to monitor (and, if necessary, action) this feedback.

Stakeholders in this spectrum with higher power tend to adopt a passive or business-as-usual attitude to the project, only exercising their power when provoked.

These exercises of power might manifest as unfavorable publicity, sanctions, or the withdrawal of services that the project depends on.

To that end, keeping these stakeholders satisfied may involve going beyond merely keeping them informed.

You may also need to consult them on the project to ensure their concerns and needs are consistently understood and addressed.

Unlike informing, consulting relies on seeking and collating feedback that is then used as input into decision-making.

Consulting stakeholders might include:

• Distributing surveys
• Running focus groups
• Inviting public comment (for example, on plans, models, or prototypes)
• Conducting interviews, or
• Hosting open or closed forums.

Stakeholders with lower power but higher interest should also be consulted to ensure their voices are heard and the issues, risks, and opportunities they identify are brought forward for consideration.

It is nonetheless important to note that it is possible to counter-intuitively provoke stakeholders by overwhelming them with demands for input.

Therefore, a more prudent approach may be to monitor, keep them informed, and provide consultation opportunities rather than requiring it.

The unstated expectation is that you, as the project manager, will make the decisions and not rely on them in this regard.

Some stakeholders offer expertise that is born of their high level of interest or experience in the field.

Certain suppliers, consultants, or contractors fit into this category, although this is not a definitive list.

Capitalizing on their knowledge means going beyond consultation to fully involve them in your project.

The difference is that whereas you use the outputs of consultation to inform your decisions, involvement implies a heavier reliance on the wisdom of the stakeholder.

Involving, for example, the marketing department or media team when designing a new product invites them to plug specific gaps in your project team’s knowledge.

One-on-one meetings, facilitated workshops, and reference groups are ideal vehicles for more fully involving this group.

Some stakeholders, like government officials, become involved because it is a requirement of their employment; others – especially those strongly interested – will continue to give freely of their time.

That said, at this point, you may have to start paying your stakeholders for their knowledge and time.

Stakeholders who have this level of power and interest generally expect to be able to influence the project and its outcomes.

Therefore, as well as engaging with stakeholders in ways we’ve already discussed, you may need to consider more directly collaborating with them.

Extending involvement, collaboration implies a willingness to let the collaborating partner or group arrive at an ideal course of action, even though the project team will exercise the final decision-making discretion.

Although a level of compromise may be necessary to achieve the desired outcomes, genuine collaboration is about finding an optimal solution that builds on the innovative ideas of the group.

However, successful collaboration demands a significant commitment of time and resources to be truly effective.

As such, it is best reserved for more ambiguous or intractable problems that need solving.

Keeping in mind the incremental cost of change, it is ideally undertaken in the early stages of a project’s life.

Full empowerment ultimately grants decision-making authority to the stakeholder, although as the level of power implied by the matrix suggests, it is a power they may already have!

That said, the project manager, in consultation with the sponsor, should clearly define and articulate the left and right limits of this privilege.

Senior stakeholders are usually empowered by invitation to the project’s governance group.

This group should be assigned terms of reference that set out the purpose, structure, and working arrangements of the committee.

Yet an important point to note is that although some stakeholders come with high or very high power as a default of their job title or status in life, the project manager can effectively grant this power to anyone.

For example, project team members are otherwise ordinary citizens empowered through their position descriptions.

Indeed, each engagement method discussed so far gradually empowers stakeholders by bringing them closer to the center of decision-making.

Therefore, you can use your discretion by choosing to involve someone when their ordinary intersection of power and interest does not demand it.

The channels by which you keep moderate power / low-interest stakeholders informed may also reach and engage very low-power stakeholders you would typically only monitor.