Gaining the Confidence of your Stakeholders - Learn to keep a secret.

As BA's, we hear things said in jest, in the heat of the moment, in confidence, and even more so in times of change. If you are known to

blab secrets, your game is over before it begins. Here are my tips for gaining the confidence of your stakeholders:

1.      Who are you? 

Ensure an email has been sent to the stakeholder list by the sponsor explaining who you are, and why you are on the project. You will often be drafting this email yourself, and the sponsor will in turn send it. Then, know you are about to be Googled. What will people find? Hopefully, only positive things, lol but at least, nothing embarassing.

 2. Book a meeting with the stakeholder. Here it is vitally important to get this right.  

 ? Book the meeting for a 1-to-1, behind closed doors. Never interview two or more people at the same time. They will not be as candid as you need, as they may be afraid to talk in front of the other person.

? Book the person for 15 minutes, the room for an hour. People will seldom decline a 15-minute meeting. Your stakeholder can figure out in a few split seconds whether they will trust you or not. If they do, the meeting will last longer than 15 minutes. In addition, because you were smart enough to book the room for an hour, no one will be knocking on the door to get in. 

 ? Start by sharing something personal about yourself, who you are, how you came to be there, how what they say will not be shared unless they give you permission.

? Do not record or take detailed notes during the meeting. There is nothing scarier than watching every word you say being written down on paper. People will stop talking to give you time to catch up, or stop talking altogether. It is important to have eye contact in order to gain acceptance. There is plenty of time to write your notes after the meeting.

? Set the context of the meeting—state what information you are seeking, why you are seeking it, and that whatever they tell you is in confidence. Be sure to state that, eyeball-to-eyeball.

? Before the meeting ends, tidy up your papers, and do what I call the Colombo affect: “Is there anything you wish to tell me, that you do not want on record?” You will hear an earful, hopefully, at this point. You will have to make your own judgment call about what to do with the information, with permission of course from the speaker.  

 For example, I was performing a sponsor review meeting after a project was finished. I brought along a colleague with me, let’s call him Tankiso. I had my set of questions to ask, and after they had been answered, I put away my notes, and asked the sponsor if there was anything they wished to tell me that they did NOT want in the report. Oh my! I heard all about the relationship with the project manager. The PM had done a good job on the project, but the sponsor had some concerns of a personal nature with the PM. He then went on in detail about his concerns. Hmm … as a neutral party, and business analysts are neutral, I asked the sponsor if he would like me to pass on that information privately to the PM. He said sure, as long as the PM didn’t know where it came from.  My colleague, Tankiso, thought we should tell our boss. Needless to say, I told Tankiso how inappropriate this was, and never invited Tankiso along to another meeting.

3. There are times when it pays to mind your own beeswax. There was a time I needed to investigate the processes for a department. This was a department which had implemented new procedures throughout the organization, and they were not well accepted, at all. My role was to hold meetings to try to find out the root cause of the problem. By the way, Fishbone’s and the 5 Why’s are wonderful for this type of work.  For expediency, these meetings were in groups of 8-to-10 people. 

I co-facilitated this session with another BA, so one of us could ask questions using an overhead projector and laptop while the other scribed. Before we even began, we said that whatever was stated in this room would remain in this room, and asked all participants to honor this request. We then began to type up what was said. As the content appeared on the screen, the participants had a chance to correct the notes as they were typed, and they knew we were recording the facts as they were stated. This saved having to send files around later for review. The final report, after interviews with over 200 people, carried candid feedback allowing an honest opportunity for process corrections. The end result after the Fishbone exercise? Because we were known to keep a secret, we were able to determine that the root cause was a bottleneck caused by decision making. The rules for the decision making were then automated by a few system changes. 

Morale of the Story : Gain the confidence of your stakeholders, even if it means keeping a secret.