{"id":68,"date":"2017-06-06T11:45:00","date_gmt":"2017-06-06T10:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/i3works.bluetree.uk\/news\/?p=68"},"modified":"2019-12-08T21:18:42","modified_gmt":"2019-12-08T21:18:42","slug":"who-are-your-stakeholders-and-how-should-you-engage-with-them","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.i3works.co.uk\/news\/2017\/06\/who-are-your-stakeholders-and-how-should-you-engage-with-them\/","title":{"rendered":"Who are your stakeholders and how should you engage with them?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This blog looks into the importance of continued stakeholder engagement throughout the life cycle of your project or programme along with some good examples of how you can identify and engage effectively with each individual.
Author: Robert Orford Consultant with i3Works<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Stakeholder engagement is at the very core of what we do as project \nmanagers, without it much of what we do will fall apart because we all \nrecognise that no project can exist solely within the sphere of one \nindividual. We all have stakeholders, be that the project team, \nemployee\u2019s and CEO on a large scale corporate change programme or your \nfamily, neighbours and the landscaping firm during a complete \nlandscaping project in your back garden. While we all appreciate that we\n have stakeholders, we often find that someone isn\u2019t happy with the way \nthings are going or doesn\u2019t like the end result of the project. This can\n sometimes simply be explained by this person being difficult or \ngenerally negative but more often than not it\u2019s due to the fact we \nhaven\u2019t engaged with them properly. So how can we mitigate this risk?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ben Pincher of Oxford Major Programmes explains that the main \nobstacle we face with stakeholder engagement is consistency. Stakeholder\n engagement is mainly focused upon during the planning phase of a \nproject or programme; Ben argues that for stakeholder engagement to be \nsuccessful we need to continually and regularly assess each of our \nstakeholders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When trying to understand our stakeholders we often focus on \u2018what\u2019 \npeople are interested in and \u2018how\u2019 it impacts them whereas it\u2019s crucial \nto focus on the \u2018why\u2019. This can also be said for how you explain your \nproject to stakeholders, always try to focus on the \u2018why\u2019. If we look at\n these three types of dialogue as a series of circles we can see how \nbest to utilise them and get the best reaction from stakeholders. Let\u2019s \nuse Apple as an example in what\u2019s called the \u2018Golden Circle\u2019. This can \nbe seen in the picture for this blog post and is composed of:<\/p>\n\n\n\n