Achieving a Successful Engagement
"It
takes courage to be creative; just as soon as you have a new idea you
are in a minority of one"
E
Paul Torrance
Keywords: Communication management, stakeholders, communication planning.
Achieving a Successful Engagement [P060]
Identifying, mapping and prioritising a project’s stakeholder
community is only the beginning. Projects will only be
considered successful when their key stakeholders acknowledge they are
a success. This requires the project team to effectively
engage with each of its key stakeholders to understand and manage their
expectations and then deliver to project to meet or exceed the
‘managed expectations’.
Stakeholder expectations are never ‘fixed’;
effective communication can help change perceptions and expectations to
make them realistic and achievable. Conversely, ineffective
communications can create the perception of failure in the mind of a
stakeholder even when the project is ‘on time, on budget and
delivering the specified scope’.
This paper will identify appropriate strategies and mechanisms to help
project managers and team engage effectively and ethically with their
key stakeholders to help create a successful project outcome including:
- Identifying and mapping the ‘important’
stakeholders
- Communications theory
- Influence networks
- Measuring ‘supportiveness’ and
‘receptiveness’
- Identifying the current and optimum levels for each
- Planning the communications strategy
- Using the right messages and messengers
- Implementing the communications strategy
- Measuring its effectiveness.
Author: Dr. Lynda Bourne
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