Using Stakeholder Management for Personal Productivity Gain – YES!

My project manager friends had differing reactions to my personal use of stakeholder management. One had an ‘aha!’ moment: “Of course I could have used it this way!” Another found applying a business practice personally unconventional.

My philosophy: use what works.

I was a smart 20-year-old hitting the pavement with a college degree and less-than-stellar social skills. I wandered around at work for two years, clueless about how to gain traction.

When I came across this method at 22, I immediately understood its value. I’ve been using it ever since. Assimilated. Success unlocked. Repeated, and success unlocked many times over.

This process, which in a business context involves understanding and managing the expectations of key stakeholders, is definitely one of the reasons why. It gives you highly relevant information — a blueprint on how to interact with the people around you in ways they will value — while also being efficient and not socially taxing.

One of the most effective uses for me in my early 20s was with my mom. Yes, I used stakeholder management with my own family.

My mom had high expectations that I would call her at least once daily. This was a difficult routine to maintain, and I needed to understand what the real requirements were so that I could negotiate a reasonable expectation – something I could consistently meet.

I turned one of our calls into a stakeholder interview.

My goal in these interviews is to make the stakeholder feel important, and to tell them I seek to fully understand what is important to them. And then, I listen.

I was surprised at what was important to my mom. She was calling me back on multiple days because I was sharing information about what I valued. Frankly, she just didn’t care about some of those things. She only wanted to hear about three topics.

Once I prioritized those three things, the calls reduced to one per day and then to a few per week. It became manageable for me, and she felt fully informed about what mattered to her.

I thought perhaps a real-life example might help folks understand why I am selling a workbook and template on how to leverage the methodology more broadly than its original intent. Not all of us are cut out to intuitively feel out someone’s expectations, and this writer is much better at understanding a client’s expectations than a close family member’s.

A method like stakeholder management gives you an objective framework that you can apply as needed. I have a couple of scenarios about how stakeholder interviews can help you collect this important information to be more successful in communicating, more visible with your peers and leadership, and more confident in paving your way forward at work.

Introductory pricing for the Stakeholder Management Action Plan (workbook + template + support) continues for a limited time. A new version of the template, in Miro, is coming soon also and will be free to everyone who has purchased the workbook.