Early on in my career, I had a call from the post-room manager. She was confused – and angry. Bags and bags of extra mail had arrived, and she didn’t have the staff in to sort it. She had heard that it might be something to do with me. It was.
I was happy that my project to insource a service had completed as expected. All the redirections were working – including the post. The only problem was that the post-room staff had never been on my radar. I’d never considered the impact on them. And the impact was pretty big.
That was my first ‘real life’ lesson about the importance of stakeholder engagement.
You can hear more from Elizabeth today during her Think Differently webinar
You may also be interested in
- Engaging stakeholders on projects: How to harness people power
- Engaging stakeholders (APM Learning Module 🔒)
- How inclusive is your stakeholder engagement?

Posted by Elizabeth Harrin on 22nd Sep 2020
About the Author
Elizabeth Harrin is director of Otobos Consultants, a project communications consultancy, and a Fellow of APM, as well as an award-winning blogger behind GirlsGuideToPM.com. Her new book, Engaging stakeholders on projects: How to harness people power, is published by APM.
Image: Artist/Shuttertock.com