Colin Gautrey

Proactive Stakeholder Management

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A stakeholder is any individual, team or organisation which has an interest or stake in what you are doing. Thinking about the work you are involved in, who benefits from what you do? These are stakeholders who have a positive interest in what you are doing. The term stakeholder management refers to taking a proactive and strategic approach to making sure that these stakeholders are "bought in" to the benefit you can bring to them, and support you in achieving your objective. As part of the process, you also need to recognise that not everyone will benefit from what you are doing. These people are also stakeholders even though they hold a negative interest in what you Read More

How to Engage with Your Stakeholders

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The thinking you have done so far in the process is likely to be useless unless you get active. Careful preparation before you engage your stakeholders will increase the probability that you’ll achieve your goal. And this stage is all about preparation. It explores a wide range of different topics related to engaging with stakeholders. Each of these topics could justify a book in its own right, so what I have tried to do is keep it simple and brief. Where I think it useful, I have also referenced other books which can be found in the library. One of the temptations with the Stakeholder Influence Process is to fly into action as soon as you get the first big flash of inspiration. That may well yield the result you want, but please consider pausing just a moment longer to make a clear decision about how you wish to tackle each Read More

How to Engage with Your Critics

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The great thing about Critics (as we are using the word here) is that you have a good relationship. The only problem is that you don’t agree with each other – but at least you can talk about it. And this lies at the heart of the optimum way of engaging with your Critics – leveraging the relationship to negotiate agreement. From this you can see that they are not against you, they just disagree with what you are trying to do. Part of your preparation to engage could involve thinking about what sort of Critic they are. To help you work out your best approach, here are the main ones I’ve come across over Read More

How to Engage with Your Enemies

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In an earlier chapter, I mentioned that it is often not a good use of your time and energy to engage with Enemies. It does not mean to do nothing, but you probably need to err on the side of indirect action rather than engagement. The reason for this is the combination of a poor relationship and open disagreement.  When you’ve put someone in this box, remember that it is usually a provisional assessment and that the title Enemies is there to provoke your thinking, not label them as horrible people! That said, with anyone here you clearly have some big concerns; and if they are Read More

How to Engage with Your Players

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These are the stakeholders you are never quite sure about. They say one thing (usually they agree with you) and then do another. Their actions don’t quite back up their words. What you need to do is dig a little deeper into why they may be doing this, then you can decide on your best approach to engage with them. Incidentally, Players rank behind Advocates and Critics in terms of general priorities for your time and effort. Enemies usually come last in your task list. So, with one of your Players in mind, take a look at the different types of Player and see where they fit… Game Player: These are the office politicians. They enjoy the game and seem to think it is okay to Read More

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