Stakeholder Engagement: A Key to Project Success with David LongstaffSimon Buehring

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Here’s the full transcript of the webinar. Agile, RESILIA

00:00:00 Sevcan Yasa ®: I’m Sevcan, I’m the Marketing Executive for Knowledge Train. We have David with us today. So, David, thank you so much for joining. The webinar will be on stakeholder engagement, the webinar will be recorded, so you will all have access alongside the transcription, the audio, and the PDF version of the slides. It will be all on our website, you will receive an email from me when all of these have been published. David will give a presentation, and then right at the end, we’ll have a Q&A session. So, feel free to write your suggestions, your comments, anything you want David to mention in the chat, and we’ll go through them right at the end. So, David, over to you. , and the Swirl logo are registered trademarks of the PeopleCert group. Used under licence from PeopleCert. All rights reserved. AgilePM

00:00:42 David Longstaff ®: Thank you very much, Sevcan. I should have quickly checked with you. Interaction, can they make audio comments, or is it type chat?  and AgileBA

00:00:51 Sevcan Yasa ®: It’ll be type chats.  are registered trademarks of Agile Business Consortium Limited. All rights reserved. The APMG International AgilePM and Swirl Device logo, APMG International AgileBA and Swirl Device Logo, APMG International Change Management and APMG International Better Business Cases and Swirl Device logo are trademarks of The APM Group Limited, used under permission of The APM Group Limited. All rights reserved. Better Business Cases™ is a trademark of Her Majesty’s Treasury. All rights reserved. DevOps Foundation

00:00:52 David Longstaff ®: That’s absolutely fine. Good, no problem at all because there will be plenty of opportunity for engagement. This is an interactive session today on the topic of stakeholder engagement. Now, why is it important? Well, this slide here just shows one or two of the background research that was carried out. Most of this is by PMI, which is the sort of American equivalent to APM here in the UK. I think it stacks up very well and is incredibly accurate, just in terms of if you are in the project management industry, you are needed because you’ll see, bottom left, there a requirement for 25 million new project managers is the estimate by 2030. So, clock is ticking, more are required. Some of the facts that just highlight the importance of stakeholder engagement, 65% of projects are deemed to have an element of failure in them, either over 50% was due to being over budget, 74% time, schedule being late, 52% of them by scope creep. 1.6 trillion pounds per year wasted through poor project management practices, top right there. PMI did a survey on thousands of their members and asked them, What do you think are the key skills required that really make a difference in a project? And they came up with what was referred to as power skills. Now here, in the UK, if you’re based in the UK, we might know that as being soft skills, power skills. 72% of projects met their goals when they really focused on these power skills. Now, what do we mean by power skills? Well, a lot of them are stakeholder-based. So interpersonal skills, what we may refer to as soft skills, communication, empathy, relationship building, these are all topics very relevant to project success. And you’ll see as well, bottom middle there, out of all of the key elements that were critical to project success, stakeholder engagement made up for 1/3 of that.  is a registered mark of the DevOps Institute. “PMI”, “PMBOK

00:03:16 David Longstaff ®: So, a key factor in the project management principles. Just one other screen around why project stakeholder management is important. This is the syllabus from the PMQ, that APM and run, the Association of Project Managers, PMQ, the Project Management Qualification, a five-day course. You’ll see stakeholders, and communication is one of the key topics. However, it almost has an impact on pretty much every other chapter. There’s 24 chapters covered in the PMQ, and there’s hardly a chapter in there that I’m displaying on the screen that actually doesn’t have a relevance to stakeholder management. So, if there’s any skill to really focus on and to develop its stakeholder management, stakeholder engagement, and communication management. Now here’s what we’re going to cover during the rest of this session. So, this session’s around about sort of 45 minutes or so, and then we’ve got an opportunity for questions at the end. So first of all, we’ll do an exercise where I’ll get you to consider one of your projects, and we’ll do some identification analysis and coming up with a strategy to work with our stakeholders. And we’ll use some material that APM provide, very similar to other countries, PMI have a very similar structure as well. And then for the rest of the session, you’ll see I’ve listed 10 areas. Now these 10 areas are covered on APM’s website. If you do search in your web browser for 10 principles of stakeholder engagement, and if you limit the site to APM, it will take you to a section where they take you through these 10 areas or 10 skills, 10 principles in a little bit more depth.  Guide”, “PMP” and “CAPM” are registered marks of Project Management Institute, Inc. Knowledge Train Scrum Essentials™, Business Learning Library (BLL)™, Business Analysis Learning Library (BALL)™, Agile Learning Library (ALL)™, IT Learning Library (ITLL)™, and Compliance Learning Library (CLL)™ are trademarks of Knowledge Train Limited. All rights reserved.

00:05:15 David Longstaff Knowledge Train Ltd is an Introducer Appointed Representative of NewDay Cards Ltd for the Newpay finance product provided by NewDay Ltd. NewDay Cards Ltd acts as a credit broker, not a lender. We will introduce you exclusively to Newpay finance products provided by NewDay Limited under this Introducer Appointed Representative arrangement. Finance available from other lenders is not covered by this arrangement. NewDay Ltd and Newday Cards Ltd are authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (ref nos 690292 and 682417 respectively).: But we’ll cover them briefly in this sort of 45-minute session. We’ll have an opportunity to ask questions at the end, and then I’ll hand back over to Sevcan with some next steps for you. So, let’s start by just having initially a look at identification analysis and strategy. So first of all, just a quick definition. What do we mean by stakeholders? Well, stakeholders are incredibly broad as a group. You might think of some key stakeholders, but actually a stakeholder is anyone, individual or not just an individual but a group, an organisation, an institution, who have an interest or a role in the project. And in the definition that APM give you, they also take it broader. They say it might not be just the project, it could be the programme, or it might be even higher than that at portfolio level. So, it’s these individuals or groups who either have an interest in or a role in, or look at that last part of the sentence, or are impacted by your project. Wow, that is a much wider group than we might typically imagine. So, when we do stakeholder identification, it’s probably going to be a lot broader than we initially think. Now, just a little note, I should make this early on. The term stakeholder, I realise, the history of that word and even the etymology of it can have negative connotations. There are some links, it is true to colonialism. However, I think just at least it’s probably a well-recognised international term that we use. So, for the purpose of today’s course, we will still refer to stakeholders. So how do you identify them? Well, what I would probably recommend is don’t try and do it on your own. 

00:07:14 David Longstaff  : Now, in today’s exercise, you are going to be doing this on your own, because this is an individual exercise. However, I would recommend in real terms, very early on in the project. So, if you are used to project management, this would be in the concept phase, right at the start, get together some key people. Now, the project sponsor is mentioned there. Your project sponsor is, of course, one of your key stakeholders. Also, other team members who are already in place early on, and you could carry out a few formats for identifying all your stakeholders. You could brainstorm; you could carry out workshops where you would brainstorm. So that’s kind of linked, if stakeholders don’t have time to attend a big all-encompassing meeting, you might want to carry out some interviews with them one-to-one and have discussions and see if you can gather other stakeholders and who might be involved, who might be impacted by your upcoming project. You can also look back at previous projects that you’ve delivered and then look at what we call lessons learned. So, these are all techniques for identifying stakeholders. Now here’s the exercise I’m going to get you to do. If you want to just grab a plain piece of paper, or you can do this in a Word document or some other note-taking solution, doesn’t really matter what. I want you to think about a current project that you’re involved with. If it’s one that you’re just starting, might be even better still, or if you can’t think of one that you’re just starting, maybe think back a little bit, you could think to a recent project. 

00:08:58 David Longstaff  : Do you know, in some ways, this even works just as well for home life? So, you could also think of a personal project that you’ve been involved with. If you can’t think of any, then could I ask you just, how about I give you a scenario to consider? Imagine you’re the project manager for a housing construction project in a major town. So, I’m going to go quiet now for a moment. Can I just get you to identify as many stakeholder individuals, groups, or organisations that you can come up with. You don’t have to share this, but if you want to, just identify as many as you can come up with, write them down on paper or whatever note-taking app you’re using. And this would typically normally be done as a collaborative workshop or brainstorming session.  

00:10:39 David Longstaff Search: I’ll give you a couple of minutes for this exercise.  I may witter on in the background. It’s purely just so that you know you’re still connected, and I’m still connected. If you are happy to share and there’s nothing confidential, then feel free to share in the chat box which project that you chose. Feel free to anonymise it if it’s a little bit more sensitive. And if you’re happy to share, you could maybe even pop into the chat box some of the types of stakeholders. You don’t need to put in individual names and organisations, but you could kind of broaden it out a little if you want; that is all optional. By the way, I don’t want you to share any confidential information, of course. 

00:11:51 David Longstaff  : So, it was a little bit tricky for me to know just how long to give you, because the reality is this would probably take, but it could be an hour’s workshop. I mean, this is an exercise you would come back to multiple times throughout your project, because you may identify new stakeholders in the definition stage, if you’re used to project management terminology. You’ll come across more stakeholders throughout deployment, still more in the transition phase, and then on into the extended life cycle, such as in the adoptions phase, the benefits management phase. And frankly, even if you’re using an agile project management methodology, you’ll come up with more stakeholders still, even in the evolutionary development phases, the transition phases, the even early on in the pre-project feasibility foundations, there’s all sorts of different terminology, but almost every stage of project life cycles, you’ll identify new stakeholders. Okay, if you want to share and you’re happy to share, feel free to type into the chat box. But no need, I don’t. Okay, excellent, so we just had a quick look. Is that right? So, Paula, NPD project refreshing an established and very successful product. Stakeholders are so, the team, you’re absolutely right, Paula. I don’t know anything about your project, but do not underestimate that your team members are clearly going to be involved. They’ll have a role, but they will also be impacted, and that links to some of your other comments, Paula, their colleagues and managers, the customers, our group who own the CO. And then everyone else in the business has a stake or an interest in the success of this product’s evolution. Nice points. Thank you, Paula. 

00:13:59 David Longstaff  : If anybody else wants to share, feel free to do so, but it sounds like you’ve already identified that in your project, almost everybody in the organisation is, and you’ll probably come up with, depending on the nature of your project, plenty of external groups as well. Some may be more impacted; some may be less impacted, but this is the very first part of stakeholder engagement. It’s identifying who they are and actually not limiting this list. There is sometimes a bit of a tendency to identify some key stakeholders early on, and then we sort of miss out others. So, it’s good to almost, it doesn’t matter how crazy the ideas are that come, let people in a brainstorming session feel comfortable at throwing in groups and individuals as well, that you may not automatically think of. So, I’ll just give you a moment longer; you’ve got some obvious ones. Do you also have some perhaps less obvious stakeholders? You’ve got to go back and think about these ones. Quick look at the second comment, an event, organisation, some big conference. The delegates are obviously stakeholders, excellent, thank you for that help. Speakers definitely are, yes. Suppliers, facilities, staff, catering. My goodness, these are wide groups, aren’t they? Thank you for that help. It’s much broader than we might initially think, and first part of this is just get them down. Now, at this stage, we haven’t done any analysis of them. All we’ve done is listed them, identified who they are. Let’s move on, so we also need to understand what’s their interest and relationship to the project, it won’t be the same for everyone. So, for some people or some groups, they may be particularly interested in the finance side of the project. 

00:16:06 David Longstaff  : What’s it going to cost? It might be that they’re more interested in health and safety aspects of your project in the top middle box there. It could be some sustainability factors that they’re really interested in, environmental issues. It could be even kind of very much on an individual level, a local level, it could be things like traffic and congestion. How is this project going to affect that? Amenities? What about schools? Are there going to be schools that will support this project? Medical facilities? What about shops? So now this is probably particularly in the example I gave regarding the housing construction, but this is just as relevant to other types of projects as well. So, can I just again, I’ll stop for a moment. Can you just next to all the various groups that you’ve listed and individuals that you’ve listed, just kind of identify what’s their sort of particular interest in the project? It won’t all be the same. 

00:17:51 David Longstaff  : Okay, and now I’m going to bring up a matrix that’s designed to help you further carry out an analysis. So, the early analysis was just to analyse what’s their area of interest but another element that is covered by APM’s material, and indeed PMIs, if this is pretty global, is understanding a stakeholder’s both level of interest and level of influence or power. So, you’ll see on this kind of typical two by two matrix, we’ve got those who have low interest in the project, low power. And down in the bottom left box, top right orange box, you’ve got high power and high interest, and then variations within there. Actually, we can just mirror that, because we might say, well, how about their attitude towards the project? We’ve got those who are very much for the project, but actually, if you were just to kind of replicate it, you might have just the same boxes for those who are against the project. And again, they will have a degree of power and influence and a degree of interest in your project. So, if I was to put just some terminology around these levels, you’ll see we’ve got backers and blockers. So right-hand side are all backers, the left-hand side are all blockers. We’ve got their power level, so highly influential in the top boxes. And then in the lower boxes, we’ve got those who are what are referred to as insignificant. I don’t want to kind of diminish their role, but that’s how they are mapped in APMs and PMIs and most matrices for stakeholder engagement and analysis. We’ve also got then their interest level mentioned in the middle option, which is whether they’re active, highly active, or whether they are actually quite passive towards this. Now, if you just think about some of your stakeholders, you might think about your project sponsor. 

00:20:08 David Longstaff Request a quote: So where would you want your project sponsor to be? Well, clearly up in that top right box. You want your project sponsor to be for your project, obviously, but you also want them to have a high degree of interest and a high degree of power or influence. You could ask, How influential does your project sponsor need to be? The answer tends to be high enough, but there is a balance because if they are too senior in the organisation, what you may find is that they lose activity. In other words, they’re not that interested because they’re being pulled in so many other directions. One factor around an effective sponsor is making sure that they have enough time to commit to your project. So, project sponsor, you want them to be very active, highly influential, and we’ll talk about why that’s a benefit a little bit later on. But yes, you want your project sponsor to be up there in the top right. You can also plot your other stakeholders. So, for example, if this were the housing construction project, or actually, frankly, Alpa, I know from my background in, I did have a role not too long ago in managing a major annual conference that the health and safety executive may well have quite an important part to play. Now, where would they appear on this stakeholder matrix? Are they that interested in whether your project actually succeeds or fails? Not particularly. So, you might find them slightly towards the middle of that vertical red line, but how influential are they? Incredibly. They can close your project down in minutes if you have a major failing in health and safety, and this can be all sorts of projects. So that’s just a couple of examples. I’m wondering if I can now just get you to go back to your exercise, and I’ll go quiet again for a few minutes while you do this. Can I get you to map out the stakeholders for your project? Just pop them into those boxes. 

00:23:26 David Longstaff  : And just while you’re doing that, yes, thank you, Sevcan. Please feel free to write your questions in the chat box at any time. Sevcan will kind of keep an eye on the questions, but also, I’d be interested in any of your comments, questions or observations. If you haven’t got any observation doing this type of exercise, is this something that you regularly do as part of your project initiation? Is it something that works well initially in the project? But perhaps drops off a little bit later on, often-what people find is that they do a really good initial exercise when they’re starting the project, but sometimes this can fall away. Still, others haven’t considered using this model. So, I’ll be interested in your observations about doing stakeholder, not only identification, but also analysis. 

00:24:44 David Longstaff  : Diane, yeah, great comment. Thank you. It’s true, we tend to see this as a two by two, whereas actually it is mirrored. Thank you, Diane. And Paula, first time doing this, realising I’m concerned that some might fall into influential active blockers. Wondering if you can move people into new sections with management. Paula, it’s a wonderful point that you’re making there, and the answer is, yes, to an extent or rather, I would probably suggest we can help them to an extent move into a different box. I don’t know what you feel, but I think managing stakeholders sounds like it’s been like being able to move pawns on a chessboard, and it’s not that easy. If I will comment on that in just a little moment, but yes, there are things that you can do to help, and actually, that’s the purpose of this session today. Thank you, Paula, a great point, and I as well. 

00:25:46 David Longstaff  : So that’s the first part of this, and now we move into APM’s 10 principles of stakeholder engagement. Now, in most cases, all I’m going to do is bring up just a single sort of slide, which is a kind of just a summary of what you’ll find if you go to their website, and we’ll just expand a little bit on it. But the first one, communicate, I just want to just take that a little bit further by going back to our chart, and this links in nicely to Paula’s point. So, you could overlay these eight boxes with some additional terminology. In other words, how do you deal with a particular group that may be in one of these boxes? Now, up at the top left and top right, where we’ve got people who are highly interested and have a high degree of influence, you’ll want regular engagement with these, intensive engagement. In the top middle boxes, so where they have less interest, you might simply need to keep these satisfied. In the bottom boxes there, you’ll want to keep them informed if they are highly interested but of low influence. And if they’re not terribly interested, so quite passive and don’t have a huge, and they are insignificant as opposed to influential, you might simply need to monitor these. So those are the terms that are used, you’ll see very slightly different terms between high power, high interest for, as opposed to those against, regular engagement versus intensive engagement. So, can I just ask you here, how would you translate some of these boxes into actual, practical actions? What would you do on a day-to-day basis? What would you do for each of these boxes or any of them, if you wish to comment? 

00:28:15 David Longstaff Manage Consent: Oh, Paula, great point. Thank you. So, identify what project success means to them. It’s like we’re a double act here, Paula, because actually that’s covered in one of APM’s 10 principles of stakeholder engagement. So yeah, excellent point, thank you for that, Paula. Any other comments what you might do or how might this actually translate on the ground? So, you may find that a quick look at Thor’s comment, intensive engagement might be workshops. Yeah, thank you, regular might be stand-ups, keep informed might be regular briefings or central updates. Yeah, these are great comments. So, keep informed may not take as much effort, but there is probably more stakeholders at that level. So, what you find is that there’s almost a pyramid here that there are less people involved at the, sorry, there are more people involved who have lower power, and therefore you may be able to simply use things like a newsletter, something that you could use just to send out occasionally, keep them up to date, so that they still feel that they are part of this. But the regular intensive engagement, those highly powerful, highly for or against, then you may well need to take a very different approach. I think Thor gives some good examples, workshops, you might hold briefings, it might be town hall meetings. So, a chance for the community to engage so much more intensive. And there’s a comment coming up a bit about who might be involved from your side to help with that. 

00:30:13 David Longstaff To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behavior or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.: So yeah, great points, thank you, Thor, Helen, tailored communications, absolutely. So, it takes a lot more effort, doesn’t it, Helen, at that top level. But the time that you’re saving from the lower levels can be used then for time that you can invest in those upper levels. Papy, nice point, thank you as well around. So, by the way, I do hope I’m pronouncing everyone’s names correctly. Please let me know if I get it wrong. So, building a project communication plan. Yeah, definitely, thank you. Monitoring, you may not need to do much more than just keep an eye on these. Now, a good point that was kind of raised earlier by, who was it? Was it Diane, I think, or no, it was Paula. People can move from one box to another. Sadly, they can go in the wrong direction from your perspective as a project professional because you could find that someone who was really for your project, and they are highly influential, and they’re very active, might start to lose trust in the project, lose interest, and they drop further left. Wouldn’t it be sad if they even ended up in the against box, but there are things that you can do with good management that helps to move them from potentially the left-hand side into that right-hand side. So, this is not an exercise that you just do at the beginning; it’s something you need to do regularly and often. So, let’s look at the other 9 elements of the stakeholder engagement principles. The second one is consult both early and often. So, this is so key because often at the early stages, stakeholders are not exactly clear on what your project is about. They’re not sure on the purpose, the scope, what’s involved, what risks there might be. So, if you can enter into regular consultation, so don’t just do it at the start, do it right the way through, then this can be particularly helpful. And this is the comment that we make about particularly those who are highly influential, highly active and against your project. The very bottom option there is you might want to get your sponsor involved in helping reaching these senior stakeholders. Now, that could be both those who are towards the ‘for’, but maybe not fully ‘for’ yet. Then again, use your project sponsor. So, get the right people involved, don’t take it all on yourself, use the whole team, pick the right person within the team to carry out that consultation. And just a little, I mean, this is probably what you might refer to as common sense. I may put it as being advanced common sense, but don’t start the process using email unless you already have a good working relationship with them. So, I’ll just pause for a moment. Can you just quickly look through your list of stakeholders and just identify people in your team and sphere who might be able to help you communicate with those specific individuals and groups that you’ve identified as stakeholders. 

00:34:04 David Longstaff Functional