Any content designer who has worked with academics will tell you that these are among the most challenging stakeholders you will ever meet. Their priorities and objectives are often very different to yours - and their academic training teaches them to challenge other people’s ideas. Sometimes pretty brutally.
I worked with academics for 25 years - and have the scars to prove it. But having led a content team through successful digital transformation projects, I also know that managing stakeholders is one of my key strengths. And it’s a skill that took me a lot of time and practice to develop.
Imagine my surprise, therefore, when - on my second day as a team lead in a government department - I was confronted by a passionate content designer, who vehemently disagreed with a proposal that one of our stakeholder departments was making.
She told me that, as I was the new team lead, it was my job to say a firm no to them. She demanded that I tell them that ‘we’ would decide what was best for ‘our’ users.
Of course, I didn’t do that.
Because I knew exactly what would happen to our relationship with our stakeholders if I took this tone with them (and it wouldn’t be good).
But I realised I didn’t know enough about how my new team managed stakeholders. When I investigated, I learned that the model I had inherited was one where challenging conversations were escalated to my level, and I was expected to lead on all negotiations - with all of our 22 stakeholder departments.
Not only did that make me a single point of failure, but it meant that my team wasn’t getting valuable stakeholder management experience. And this would not just impact on their ability to perform as good content designers, but their chances of further promotion.
What I did
So I changed the model.
Working closely with my delivery manager, I introduced a new model whereby every member of my team joined stakeholder ‘subteams’, each of which was responsible for building and holding the formal relationship with one of our 22 stakeholder departments.
I set these subteams the following challenges:
Find the best way to build trust with your department.
Become the named point of contact for all initial queries for your department.
Reduce escalations.
Be prepared to feed into planning meetings to help us determine what projects are coming our way.
I wasn’t sure how the team would respond. But imagine my thrill when the team embraced the opportunity:
All of these subteams reached out to their department counterparts and set up a regular meeting / conversation cadence that worked for them (not less than once a month).
Each subteam set up a structure that worked for them (for example, a lead relationship manager and a note-taker) with roles taken on by different people to promote learning and practice.
The subteams decided how to address questions and issues - and they asked for support only when they had considered issues put in front of them.
The result?
The introduction of this new model of stakeholder management resulted in the following:
Our department stakeholders had named contacts to address queries / issues to, and they had faith that their concerns would be addressed.
Regular contact resulted in better insights on work priorities and challenges. With these insights, we were able to set up biweekly planning meetings and tracking sheets to plan our future workstream.
But that wasn’t all that happened.
Through regular practice, team members visibly gained confidence in their ability to manage stakeholder relationships, and actively sought opportunities to build on the experience.
The team initiated cross-team sessions to share learnings and consider the best approaches to deal with problems, and they actively learned from each other.
Escalations to my level dropped. And when I was asked to step in, it was for issues that genuinely needed my attention.
If you’re a content designer, stakeholder management will be one of the most important - and toughest - challenges you need to undertake. But it's a skill. And you can learn it - with practice. So look for opportunities to observe people who are good at it - offer to be their note-taker. Or ask someone senior if you can shadow them at key meetings.
Figure out what works for you. But do it.
Be a better content designer
I want to help you be a better content designer. These blogs are based on my more-than-20-years of experience as a digital content specialist. I'm aiming to publish a series of blogs sharing some of my learnings and reflecting on my experience - and I hope you find this helpful.
Do you have a question you want me to answer - either through these blogs or in person? Get in touch!
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