The Stakeholder of the Future

Andy Jordan is President of Roffensian Consulting S.A., a Roatan, Honduras-based management consulting firm with a comprehensive project management practice. Andy always appreciates feedback and discussion on the issues raised in his articles and can be reached at [email protected]. Andy's new book Risk Management for Project Driven Organizations is now available.

  Stakeholder Management  

It’s unusual to hear nice things said about stakeholders. They are usually criticized by all sides of a project, and frequently one stakeholder will delight in blaming another when things don’t go as they want.

So, in this month where ProjectManagement.com is looking at the future of project management, what should the future of stakeholders look like? How can we reimagine the role to be more respected and more valuable?

No 2 stakeholders are alike
Let’s start with a suggestion that may appear a bit radical: Let’s get rid of stakeholders.

Not the function, the label. It’s completely meaningless and doesn’t reflect the roles that are really at play in the project. Ask 10 different project managers to come up with a list of all the stakeholders, and you’ll likely get 10 different lists. There will be commonalities between them—sponsor and customer being obvious ones. Most lists will probably include the project team, but some won’t. Resource owners may or may not be included, and then there will be a mix of other functions—PMOs, line managers, end users, and so on.

All of these can legitimately be considered stakeholders, but they are all very different, with unique perspectives, priorities and concerns. One of the reasons that relationships with stakeholders can become strained is that project processes and…

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