Driving stakeholders to change

Rick Maurer commented on my previous post around the importance of building trust with stakeholders (also see Rick's great blog Change Management News).

Building trust is key to any human relationship. The stakeholders in a change programme will all be worrying about different things, if they're worrying at all, and will probably have different perceptions of what is actually due to happen, what status the change programme is at, and whether the desired outcome will ever be achieved. They need to see who is helping them through the change, giving them certainty and comfort, and it is important therefore that change and project people spend time and effort building trust through the human relationships.

In the real world people will be less worried about the interesting new system that you are developing that will save the company £xm, they will be worried about what it means for them. Our job is to act as the trustworthy 'oracle' or at least ensure that the senior stakeholders trust us and are trusted by those affected.

There are of course many things that one might do to build that trust, that extends well beyond the 'social' relationships. Here's a few suggestions - the importance of these will depend upon the stakeholder individual or group, where they are in their acceptance of the change etc;

• Always do what you say you will do;
• Be seen to deliver;
• World class project management of risks, issues etc
• Plan everything, with detailed stakeholder analyses, communications plans etc
• Communicate (in all its forms)