Getting to know your stakeholders

- When communicating to large audiences it's sometimes necessary to make assumptions. If your assumptions are off, you risk being dismissed. Effective communication should be a two-way street. To ensure the messaging resonates, invest the time to get to know your stakeholders. This is the key difference between communicating at them and communicating with them. You can get to know your stakeholders by conducting surveys, interviews or workshops with each group to get insight on what's important to them and what their pain points are. The better you understand your stakeholders, the more effective you'll be at targeting your communications to maximize buy in. Let's focus on workshops as the method of getting to know our stakeholders. If your project timeline allows, this is the most effective method because it provides a platform for stakeholders to be heard. Not only by the project team, but by their peers. So, let's focus on some items to consider when designing a stakeholder workshop. First, set expectations of a safe space and encourage participation at all levels. If your organization has a strong culture of hierarchy where employees defer to leadership, use sticky notes and flip chart paper so everyone can participate. Then, in discussion format ask these strategic questions to get key information. What are the benefits of the transformation? What are the barriers to a successful transformation? What are some truths about the organizational culture that we should know? And, what will happen if we don't transform? Ask each question in turn and provide an opportunity for discussion. While this isn't intended to be a venting session stakeholders appreciate the opportunity to acknowledge challenges. You'll need to find a balance as you facilitate the session to ensure the conversation remains productive. Each question will lead to important insights. When preparing communications for each stakeholder group you can refer to your notes so you don't have to make assumptions. Let's say that you learned from HR recruiting that too often new hires don't have security access or laptops ready on their first day. This limits the effectiveness of the first few days of onboarding. When you conduct the workshop for IT you learn that they don't receive notification of a new hire until 24 hours before their start date. This isn't enough time to prepare for a new hire's IT needs. Now, when you communicate a change in the onboarding process to both groups, you can specifically address these pain points as you discuss the benefits of the change. Instead of feeling the burden of adopting a different way of onboarding new hires both groups will recognize that the change helps resolve a pain point they identified. As much as possible, it's important that your stakeholders feel part of the change. When the communication effort is two-way stakeholders are more likely to become partners who champion the change. During implementation these are the very folks who become your change agents to help ensure the success of the transformation.