The Difference Between Average And Great Consultants - Keeping Stakeholders Engaged
The Difference Between Average And Great Consultants - Keeping Stakeholders Engaged
What do top consultancies tend to do really, really, well compared to solo consultants?They typically do a great job of keeping all of their stakeholders engaged.
How To Go From An Average Consultant To A Great Consultant
What I Know Today vs. When I Began
In the early days of my consulting career, I’d create a set of deliverables for a client, wish them well, and then move on to the next client.
When I checked back in several months later, I sometimes discovered they hadn’t yet implemented the deliverables I had created for them.
This never made sense to me. But I didn’t dwell too heavily upon it. I had done what I had been paid to do and the client was happy with the deliverables. Whether they used them or not was entirely up to them.
This became a problem when future clients would ask;
So show us some examples of your past work
Then around 2012, I worked on a project which involved a larger consultancy and got to see their processes. I discovered something which shocked me. They devoted the majority of their time on the project to stakeholder engagement. This wasn’t even specified in the contract.
They knew that stakeholder engagement was the key which unlocked everything else. If you don’t engage stakeholders and keep them engaged, the odds of the project succeeding drop precipitously.
What Happens When Stakeholders Aren’t Engaged
Engage them now or hit objections later
Shepherding a project through a large organisation is a little like shepherding a difficult act of legislation through congress.
If you don’t effectively bring the right people along on the journey with you, and navigate and adapt the project to their needs and concerns, it’s not going to succeed.
It doesn’t matter if the most senior person approves the project or your deliverables, if the people beneath them don’t support it there are a myriad of ways they can undermine it.
Stakeholders can simply stonewall it, go slow on it, or put only the most minimal effort into it. They can constantly undermine it in conversations with others or never make it a priority in the work they do.
A lack of stakeholder engagement can also lead to misunderstandings, unidentified resistance, and missed opportunities.
My error in the first few years of consulting was to do what I had been hired to do and only that. I didn’t realise at the time that every consultant is also engaged in change management.
Identifying Stakeholders
Work with your primary contact to build a list of stakeholders
Right at the beginning of the project, you should collaborate with your main stakeholder to build a list of stakeholders who need to be engaged.
Here’s a typical tracking sheet we use:
Be careful here to include anyone with an interest in or influence over the project. Think creatively too. Often stakeholders who are not directly connected to the project need to be engaged because they have a high level of indirect influence within the organisation.
We worked with one client where a major stakeholder was completely unrelated to the project but had been at the organisation for 20+ years and everyone knew he had the ear of the entire executive team.
Three Quick Lessons
Once you’ve completed this process, you can ask your primary contact to make introductions on your behalf and have an initial call with each of them. Three quick lessons here.
Get a warm introduction. One of my first clients was BAE Systems. I remember being advised to contact everyone on a list of names about a project we were working on. I did precisely that and it caused confusion. After all ‘who was this guy messaging us to gather sensitive information about our organisation?’
Do this quickly. One of the primary sources of delays in any project is engaging all the stakeholders who need to be engaged for the project to succeed. So make sure you engage with your key stakeholders early because it always takes longer to schedule all the calls you need.
Prep in advance. Before each call, do your background research and make sure you’re only asking good questions. If you want to quickly build a good relationship with a stakeholder, don’t try to foist a personal connection on them, but simply treat their time with respect and ask good questions.
Stakeholder Engagement
Interviews are fact-finding missions, engagement is an ongoing process
The next step is usually to interview each stakeholder to gather the information you need.
An interview is a simple fact-finding mission.
You have questions and you need stakeholders to help provide you with a missing piece of the puzzle. The number of people you interview is often different from the number of people you proactively engage throughout the project lifecycle.
Follow-up on each interview with updates
A couple of days after each interview follow up with a quick note of thanks and highlight how their contributions have helped the project. Try to be specific so they can see exactly how they have contributed to the success of the project. Ask a follow-up question if. you can.
This helps increase the sense of ownership over the project and the likelihood of them supporting the project in the future. Too often stakeholders are interviewed and then left in the dark about whether that interview was of any value. If there are any follow-up notes from the interview, then make sure you follow up and provide the update.
List Key Values And Concerns
It’s key in the interview process that you make a note of any key goals or concerns stakeholders have.
This is why taking great notes is critical.
Once you have completed the interviews, you should have a big list of issues like this.
This list includes another dozen or so names but it gives you an idea of what the process might look like. Now you can put together your stakeholder engagement plan plan.
The Stakeholder Engagement Process
How To Bring Stakeholders Along On The Journey
In your interviews, it’s important to get a read on where people fall on the interest/influence matrix you see below.
As you conduct the interviews, you should be able to identify their level of interest and decide where on this matrix they lie. This will highlight how you will need to engage them through the process.
Engage. Proactively solicit their opinions and address their concerns before creating the deliverables. Ensure their viewpoints are reflected in what you create. Some typical steps here include:
Create a working group which meets regularly to solicit input on the status of the project, deliverables in development, and more.
Set up regular calls with each stakeholder in this group to get additional feedback and thoughts.
Proactively address concerns they raised in the initial interviews and check they’re happy with the solution proposed.
Set up workshops to run through important issues and bring about alignment between these stakeholders.
Keep Satisfied. Check they are happy with the deliverables before publication. But don’t over-communicate. These people often just need to check it aligns with what they want. This typically includes.
Direct email communication highlights the latest status of the project and current timeline. This should also check if they have any concerns that you can address.
Give them the ability to give feedback on deliverables when a draft is complete before publication.
Keep Informed. Send regular updates to this group, highlight how they have helped you create the deliverable, and keep them in the loop with progress. This might include:
Creating a mailing list with a bi-weekly or monthly update on the status of the project. This should highlight what they can expect next and the current timelines.
Share any deliverables which have been approved by the above groups prior to full publication.
Monitor. Keep an open line of communication from these stakeholders which suggests discontent you can address.
Don’t Deliver Dead Deliverables
While you may still get paid if you create the deliverables without the process, it’s not a good feeling if the client doesn’t use them. It also means you can’t point to the success of past projects to highlight future success.
The key distinguishing feature which separates projects which succeed from those that fail is the ability to bring about widespread support for the project. This means keeping stakeholders involved throughout the journey.
None of the methods outlined above are complex to undertake, but they are time-consuming. This means that time needs to be factored into the pricing of your project.
Good luck.
Richard, this is a very insightful post. 💡
And it's true that MBB firms invest disproportionate time into client engagement. The more senior they are, the more important it becomes. Consults will be assessed on their 'client management' skills, and they cannot grow with gaps in that.
Yes! Nice post. Most of our engagements include a stakeholder analysis (usually using the same 2x2 matrix you have). It's also useful as a framework for key client contact/s: to help them visualise the stakeholder management exercise they have. Have you used it this way also?