In my experience, teams focus far too much on the tools, technologies and methodologies. There is less attention paid to the people—the “stakeholders”—that actually benefit from (or feel the pain associated with) whatever change is being implemented. Project teams talk about how stakeholders need to be “educated” and “brought on a journey” but fail to acknowledge that some stakeholders will probably never agree with some changes. This failure to properly acknowledge the stakeholder landscape's complexity means that change projects inadvertently end up ignoring it. However, pretending that the complexity doesn’t exist tends to lead to bad outcomes. Change projects stall, fail, or engage in ‘success theatre’ (where all the boxes are ticked: on time, on scope, but with zero benefits).

Put simply: If we’re not conducting projects to benefit at least some groups of people, then why are we doing them in the first place? And if a project benefits one group of people to the detriment of others, shouldn’t we be honest and empathetic about that?

Projects are a human endeavor
Successfully implementing change involves understanding and engaging with a wide range of stakeholder perspectives. When important stakeholder groups are inadvertently missed or misunderstood, change initiatives become tricky and might even stall entirely.

Analyze the stakeholder landscape
In complex organizational environments, understanding and analyzing the stakeholder landscape can be difficult. It requires us to navigate organizational politics whilst also understanding different stakeholders might want different outcomes from the change initiative.

Useful materials
This course provides practical tools and techniques to help understand and balance these seemingly disparate stakeholder views.

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