How to Keep Stakeholders Engaged

A project manager generally has a dual mandate: to deliver a project, program or initiative, while simultaneously keeping their stakeholder community engaged and satisfied.

Often, success of the project isn’t enough to please their demanding stakeholder base. It’s not just what the project manager does; how they do it is equally important. Because of this, engaging with stakeholders—and keeping them engaged—has become a critical measure of success. In fact (and paradoxically), it is even possible to have a happy and satisfied stakeholder base even with a disappointing project outcome. It’s that important.

Stakeholders encompass a wide range of people, groups, organizations, companies and community segments that are either impacted by—or have an impact on—project direction, outcome and decisions. Stakeholders include customers, team members, vendors, political representatives, executives and regulators, as well as simply parties who are interested in the outcome for any reason.

When we talk about stakeholder engagement, we mean building and keeping relationships to understand and act on their perspectives, addressing their concerns, and incorporating their input into the direction and goals of the project. Using RACI terminology (responsible, accountable, consulted and informed), stakeholders live in the “C” and …