Managing Stakeholders - Part II

This is a continuation from Stakeholders: Part I. We’ll continue to dive into the different types of difficult stakeholders and how to manage them because there’s just too many profiles to fit in one post. 

The Slack-er 

Not to be confused with someone who slacks off, this stakeholder requests projects outside of process, usually over Slack (or Teams or wherever you instant message). Why this matters: things get lost in Slack, and Slack is purposely a place to be brief. Chances are, you need more information to start the project. 

What to do:

• Write back and say thanks for the background and context on this new upcoming project and ask (politely) that they fill out a brief/change order/ticket so that you can adhere to proper process.
• Say that you’d be happy to get a brief or ticket started for them based on the information and ask that they kindly fill in the holes that you don’t know.
• Many times they’re looking for confirmation that your team can take on the project. Say, “hey David, based on what you’ve told me here, I think our team would be able to accommodate the project. So let’s kick this off via our formal procedure and we can get this in process asap.” Use syntax like the above; don’t ask.
• If they keep trying to skirt the process, justify the need to keep all project workflows consistent for tracking, task assignment, and/or leadership visibility. Reiterate that staying in process actually gives greater assurance that the project will be completed on time versus trying to Macgyver it offline. Tip: if they go through extra effort to avoid process, there’s a good chance the project isn’t sanctioned.

The Work-Puller

This stakeholder gives you projects and then after the first or second round of work, pulls the work from you and gives it to an outside (or another) agency. Work-pullers are also sometimes guilty of parallel-pathing and will have an agency work on the same project as your team, essentially putting you in head-to-head competition (sometimes unknowingly).

What to do: 

• Try to understand why the work is being pulled. Is your team not turning around work fast enough? Is the breadth or volume of work not up to snuff? Once you know what it is, you can address it.
• Level set on expectations. Your stakeholder might have something specific in mind that they’re not seeing reflected in the work. This most often happens when you’re working with something extremely subjective like an illustration or art style. Ask for clarification of style or direction, and request that they send examples of what they’re looking for. It might be a miscommunication or, if it’s a mismatch of skillset, then the work will always be off the mark.
• Sometimes, you need to let work go. If your stakeholder becomes a serial work-puller, it might be best to cut them loose and have them regularly work with an outside agency. It frankly might not be worth the spin, added resources and wasted effort. Evaluate for your specific situation. 

The Literalist 

This stakeholder is, as you guessed it, extremely literal when it comes to evaluating creative work. The Literalist doesn’t understand creative concepts and definitely can’t make the mental jump from concept to execution. They can only see what’s in front of their nose.

What to do: 

• Do not let them review the work on their own. Set a meeting and take them through the work live. You don’t want them to go down a mental path without being able to guide them back your way.
• Provide context at the start of meetings. “We’re here today to review creative concepts for Project X. You’re going to see FPO photography for which we’re planning a photo shoot next week.”
• Reiterate, reiterate, reiterate. Tell them it’s going to look different. Tell them this isn’t the final. Tell them you’re going to shoot/draw/create it so it won’t be this exact photo/illustration/graphic. Say it more than once and say it in different ways. 

The Doesn’t-Understand-Creative 

This last stakeholder is probably one of the toughest ones to deal with because they don’t understand the creative process nor the effort and skill that goes into the work. They’re the ones who ask you to rotate a 2D image to a different angle (doh!), or don’t understand why you need a brief (double doh!). Alternatively, sometimes they ask you for something incredibly low lift that you can do by yourself with your working knowledge of design software because they don’t know what goes into it.

What to do: 

• Respectfully detail out the process, including justification and timelines. “Hey David, typically for a project like this, the team will create sketches prior to spending more detailed time on design. This allows us to immediately identify directions that aren’t working as well as identify those that we want to invest more time in exploring. So you’ll see sketches in the next few days, and then the first round of design will come the following week.” 
• Don’t commit. If you don’t know if a request can be accommodated, don’t say that it can. Tell your stakeholder that you’ll check with the team and get back to them.
• Pull in a creative heavyweight. Plain and simple, sometimes a stakeholder doesn’t want to hear from the project manager about the creative development process (it happens). Pull in your Creative Director as your SME (subject matter expert). 
• Sometimes project information is hard to come by with this type of stakeholder because they don’t know they need to provide it, they don’t know how to articulate it, and they don’t know why it’s important. You burn hours trying to get information, delaying the project start date, only to be held to the same timeline. As a last resort, I recommend doing a minimal first round of work with the information you have. Once the stakeholder sees your interpretation of what they’ve asked for, they’ll better be able to articulate a course-correction.
• On the other end of the spectrum, and for those projects that you or the team can do in a matter of minutes, I recommend holding onto the work at least for a day before sending it over. Since these stakeholders don’t understand timelines, turning something around in an hour will only continue to skew their expectations.

Long story even longer, stakeholders can be tough. At the end of the day, it’s a relationship that you’re in daily so it’s wise to invest your time toward a respectful, working partnership. 

Don’t see yours here? Shoot me a submission and we’ll add it to the list!