Managing stakeholder expectations to drive business initiatives

Be it a global organization or an early age startup, there are multiple projects & initiatives that are being run on an ongoing basis. These initiatives may range from driving cost efficiencies to exploring new business opportunities. But, one thing that is common to every such initiative that organizations undertake is the variety of stakeholders involved with it. Stakeholders tend to be those individuals in an organization who have specific interest in a particular initiative either because they are somehow connected to it, interested in it, or are affected by the outcomes of it. My current role provides me with this valuable experience of managing stakeholders & their expectations.

During this short course of time that I have spent in my current role, I have managed to interact with a wide variety of stakeholders that includes my counterparts in foreign markets, account executives, technical & solutions team back in India. With the involvement of so many individuals, first of all, it is extremely important to understand the role each stakeholder involved with a particular initiative. This is a critical step to understand their motives for being part of the process so that you are well aware of their expectations right from the start.

Once we have the knowledge about the who’s who of the setup, it is really important to understand how the presence or absence of a particular stakeholder can affect your successful & smooth execution of the initiative. This helps in better planning of the key milestones & is critical in mapping the right stakeholder with each part of the execution process. Even though a particular stakeholder might not be responsible for all the part of the job, it is imperative to align the right stakeholders at the right point in time based on your initial understanding of who’s who as this would help address the project dependencies in real-time.

Managing the expectations of every stakeholder may sometimes become a challenging task. In such a case, taking a calm & measured approach towards addressing the roadblocks will go a long way to serve your project well. Also, managing your expectations with each stakeholder is equally important because it fosters better collaboration & builds productive work relationships that might even help you in the future.

Thus, building trust & rapport between yourself & the stakeholders makes it extremely easy to work even under uncertain situations as you collectively try to work your way out of such situations. To conclude, with clear communications, planning & rapport building your stakeholders can become your most valuable asset & help enable successful completion of your initiative.