Guessing is not a strategy: How to build decision velocity with AI and real-time data
June 10, 2026 | Live Webinar
Staking It All On You
Elizabeth is a freelance writer and project manager living and working in London. She runs The Otobos Group, a project communications consultancy specializing in project management.
As project managers, we spend a lot of time on stakeholder analysis and management, and well we should. We need to identify all the people who can help (or hinder) the project, work out their level of interest and influence, and find the best way to communicate to them. But one stakeholder often goes missing in this process: you!
For the most part, projects succeed or fail because of the people working on them. It’s people who set strategy, define organizational goals and come up with new ideas. The best project management methodology in the world won’t help you implement a project if people don’t care, won’t commit and abdicate responsibility.
We have all worked with people who are ‘difficult’ stakeholders — individuals who need coaxing and require all of your influencing skills to do what you need them to do. The best project managers are excellent at negotiating and persuading people. They can meet a stakeholder and almost instantly recognize his or her agenda. They understand organizational politics and know how to get to the decision makers. And they might map those key stakeholders on to a grid along with their current and desired state of interest and influence.
This is stakeholder analysis, a technique that helps identify all the relevant parties and map their interest and influence over the project. It&…
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