You never make it alone

You never make it alone: How to successfully engage your stakeholders and build an unstoppable project team was our 23 March 2017 event with Laurence Davidson from the Stakeholder Engagement Focus Group (SEFG), part of the People SIG.

Engaging stakeholders is vital as projects become more complex and fragmented. The presentation attracted a high turnout and took an interesting angle to help describe some of issues involved.
Using a reference to three pillars used by Aristotle, Laurence identified how Authority (Ethos), Emotions (Pathos) and Facts (Logos) could be addressed within our world of project management. Reassuring was a point that the actuality of 'real' project management required us to accept the need to manage residual fallout resulting from inevitable change that projects bring with them.

A brief workshop followed with a range of different 'issues' allocated to tables which enabled an exchange of ideas to take place, the views from each table shared to all those who attended. Ten top tips were presented by Laurence and these helped shape the final questions.

At the end of the talk, using the ‘lens’ of Kipling’s Six Honest Serving Men, the end of evening review indicated to Laurence and the delegates that the talk had addressed five of those six, while the questions from the floor were all focused on the one missing, 'How', an observation Laurence thought he would consider for future talks.

A thought provoking evening and each person who attended would be able to place into their own PM working context.

Roger Atkinson
Committee member