Before aiming to engage and influence stakeholders, it’s crucial to seek to understand the people you will be working with and relying on throughout the phases of the project. Sharing information with stakeholders is important, but it is equally important to first gather information about your stakeholders.
Who are they?
Why do they need to know about this service?
What interest do they have in this?
How will you engage them and keep them informed?
When will you do this?
These are all important considerations for developing the stakeholder relationships needed to ensure the success of your service.
Investing time in building these relationships results in increased trust. And where there is trust, people work together more easily and effectively. Identifying and building stakeholder relationships can increase confidence across the entire project environment, minimise uncertainty, and speed problem solving and decision-making.
We recommend that you take a comprehensive approach to stakeholder engagement by identifying all the people and parties that will need to be made aware of the new service, before taking steps to actively engage and inform them.