Manage Your Stakeholders, Manage Your Life

Treat the people who are most important to you as key stakeholders

Everyone reading this is a capable, smart, and skilled project manager, proud of managing the key stakeholders in each project with professionalism and finesse. Do you bring this same care to managing the stakeholders in your personal life? Can you imagine how much smoother things would be if you did? Who are the important stakeholders in the project called “life”?

It’s easy to become hypersensitive to how miscommunication and familial strife can affect our day-to-day life. But when we boil it down, it’s all about stakeholder mismanagement. Below are some of the most common pitfalls we must learn to avoid when managing stakeholders, in either our personal or professional lives.

Incorrectly identifying who your stakeholders are. You are planning a dinner with friends. You have a good idea of what your friends like and what they don’t, and have catered the menu with consideration for even your most allergy-ridden acquaintance. Your friends show up with their children, and the fun begins—but no one told you that 6-year-old Pesky Pete was the world’s pickiest eater ever. As his temper tantrum begins to take over the room, your embarrassed friends politely excuse themselves and leave the party.

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Comments

Escape to Victory

The 1981 John Huston's movie may be known to some of the Readers: that's the intended meaning of my message, which seems to me quite close to yours, "dear Michelle". I beg your pardon, I belong to the Beatles' Generation. If I am not wrong, I feel I read between your lines a basic Rule, that was very fashionable a few decades ago, that is, DE-REGULATION. There is all evidence that we have gone "a bridge too far" in pretending to rule even how to treat people, ourselves, too. But we pretend to be creative, therefore spontaneous, to build our market and profit of it: how would you match creativity, spontaneity to ruled relationship with people? We have to be CAREful with words: "CARING for stakeholders, for one's life, for people"would probably convey your message more effectively. Thank you.