Friday, August 25, 2006

Get buy-in from the stakeholders

I used to laugh at that expression (along with 'conceptualizing strategic initiatives' and 'leveraging robust assets') but I have lately become convinced of its truth.

You're dealing with the person you think is the go-to person for a project, only to discover after you've gotten into it that some other person you didn't know about –– who maybe isn't even directly connected –– doesn't like what you've done.

And it matters.

Years ago, in my previous life, I worked long and hard on a project that was scuttled by my boss's boss's wife. I didn't get it then, but she was a stakeholder. Maybe she shouldn't have been, but she was, and a more savvy person than me would have seen that.

Now I deal with it all the time. When the chain of command is fuzzy, the list of stakeholders is likely to grow.

And everything is about human relations, human needs and psychology. By "everything," I mean everything, whether you're talking about building a skyscraper, writing a screenplay or running for office.

So identify the stakeholders, and get that buy-in.

Then you can leverage those robust assets.

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