Guessing is not a strategy: How to build decision velocity with AI and real-time data
June 10, 2026 | Live Webinar
Consensus Worker
Conflict resolution is part of a project manager’s job description. It can be tedious, time-consuming work, but it is often the only way to save a project. And done right, it can build relationships that are more important than any one problem solved. Here is a down-to-earth, six-step process for reaching decisions, if not complete consensus, among multiple stakeholders with different goals and perspectives.
You find yourself in a project meeting with dozens of people. Each person has a different perspective, different goals and different ways of expressing themselves. Some of them don’t like each other very much; they haven’t made up their mind about you. Your objective is to get these stakeholders to reach a consensus. If you don’t, you will have a failed project on your hands.
At times like this it’s all about politics, but you became a project manager to get things done, not to spend your time playing these games. In fact, if you are a project manager then you had better be ready to play the game. Unless you happen to be working on a project with a single, all-controlling sponsor, you are going to have to balance the needs of multiple stakeholders, and you will invest significant effort and resources to find this balance.
The good news is that while building consensus can be a slow and painful process, it can also be…
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That's the true spirit of Christmas; people being helped by people other than me. - Jerry Seinfeld |