APM ChPP - Competence 7. Stakeholder management and communication management

[Music] Hello and welcome to another Palau Project Training podcast with Paul neighbour and Carmen and John Hello Carmen. Hello. Hello John. Hello. Hello. So it is competent seven of the chartered project professional stakeholders, engagement and communications management. There's a lot of ads and these criteria, isn't there? And this and that and the other. Yeah. So this is going to be quite one you're going to have to draft quite carefully what do you think? Yeah I think unfortunately they've chosen to underline a lot of the ads and not some of them and the implication being is the ads are emphasised. We've talked about it before but none PB1.1 determines stakeholder interests and levels of influence. So if you imagine most people have done a stakeholder analysis they're familiar with a stakeholder analysis process. This is not just the first part of that it's the first two. So you're going you're determining stakeholder interests. So you work out first we've got work out of the stakeholders are right so that's kind of not even asked for here but determine stakeholder interests whose involved and how may they be involved should they wish to exact their influence. So it's like the first part of a stakeholder analysis process and arguably you can't do the second bit without doing the first bit and you can't do the first bit without identifying your own first place. So that's the first one determine stakeholder interests and levels of influence in for a project. What are they going to say? What are they actually going to write? I carried out a workshop where I led a team who defined the various stakeholders. I then made sure that they were mapped onto a stakeholder grid where I've mapped their influence and interest. For example I considered the clock of works to be the most important person. Oh you should get chartered. Oh you've already got it. Oh yes. So yeah. So let's do 1.2 then producer comms plan, communications plan and undertake effective stakeholder engagement based upon it. Yes. So you will use the output from that analysis. You identify who your stakeholders are. You have evaluate the level of influence on that project. That is going to determine what is going to be your communication strategy. So you will produce a communications plan that is in tune or in line with with the needs of those stakeholders because what you ultimately want is to keep them engaged on your project. Okay so I think John could write that one quite easily. Monitor the effectiveness of the communications plan and stakeholder engagement activities. What's the difference between those two then? The effectiveness of comms plan and stakeholder engagement activities. Well I mean you can write a plan and it doesn't work and that has a consequence from the stakeholder engagement activity. Okay so you you could say I'm right so I wrote a plan we did some stuff. We got some feedback from the stakeholders which was obviously meant that the plan was wrong so we changed the plan. Okay so it's a bit kind of iterative around the analysis really but yeah. And then we got adjusted the comms plan and responded to any changing stakeholder engagement needs. So it's a quite good narrative isn't it? You monitor the effectiveness, you seek feedback, it didn't work and then you adjust it so you respond to changing stakeholder needs. Their needs may change from different reasons they may change because they simply change role or maybe because the role or the influence also changes as the project evolves. You know some stakeholders may be more keen at the later stages of the project when we are close to transition into operation. Some stakeholders may be more engaged or need more engagement at the earlier parts of the project so again their needs may change for various reasons. There is an implied thing in 1.4 there's adjusted comms plan that you sort of do have to adjust it you know because if you got it right at the beginning you wouldn't have to adjust it so yeah. But then 1.5 employed relevant communication methods and media to meet and the end is underlined here to meet the stakeholder requirements and expectations so what's the use of a method in a media? Well I think I don't think that they are very different to be honest media is fairly obvious video written podcast podcast well yeah I mean I think they're sort of touching on things like social media and websites and I don't think that they that never necessarily be that discriminating between those two actually. So I mean a method is formal or informal you know face-to-face meeting that sort of thing whereas media might be you know I chose to write a newsletter or I chose to write a podcast or create a website or something like that. So a method is the means of communication. And so the media is the means of communication. That's right and the method is how you deliver that communication. And I think also you know determining what communication the way in which communication is to be received. So you know are you doing one to many or many to one are you are people going to react to emotional logical arguments what kind of individuals are they? So your methods will change. If you if you try to convince a finance director that a project is a really good idea you're not going to go oh it's really good we've got to do it because it's blue you're going to do it go say well we're going to do it because you're going to make loads of money. So your method of communication just varies subtly but I'm not I personally don't believe there's going to be a huge discrimination between methods and media. So you think it's the relevant communications called flight together? Yeah. And it's important to meet stakeholder needs an expectation. All right two left disseminate clear and timely and relevant so clear time and relevant information to stakeholders. So again different different sources of information. Sometimes we need to communicate information one way because we need to keep people up to date. Sometimes we need a two way communication because we are seeking for some form of advice or input. So in any case irrespective it has to be clear it needs to be at the right time where you know people could still react to that communication and it has to be relevant you're not going to communicate the same way if you're talking to steering group as if you're talking to one of the subject matter experts about a particular technical topic. I think overall it's about adapting the information and making it relevant and making it at the right time. Is this more about sort of hinting towards progress reporting and cost reporting and that sort of stuff? I think it'll be rather than the one above which is more about I think so yeah clear accurate and timely yeah. I mean it begs the question you know why would you send it irrelevant information? Yeah the size is between 1.5 and 1.6 obtain and respond to feedback from stakeholders which may have an impact on the project. So you need an example of way you've had feedback from a stakeholder that you have solicited and responded to. Yeah and if your stakeholders aren't yeah it's strange to think of a project where you didn't get any feedback from a stakeholder. It was quite good that they got rid of in the version one a lot of these would have had on a project or in a project or for a project on the end of them and they got rid of a lot of those but this is like it may have an impact on a project. Yeah I mean I think that's just noise yeah I mean who's to say what's an impact? Well it's a project management qualification everything is to do with the project and why do you need to spell it out but so I think and it happens at the top one as well influence for a project but um 1.7 is yeah it's obtained and responded to feedback so what does that mean? Feedback means wins were public meeting and they were all banging the tables and shouting at me as I thought about it is something different or you know we did a customer survey and got very bad response around x or you know. Stakeholders are in in turn land external people aren't they? Yeah so could that be a team member or work package manager? No I think I think in this context it's over at stake or there's more there's more external to the project. I mean we'll talk about the project manager and program manager being stake holders. I think clients maybe clients and program managers may be users maybe but probably not the team I don't think that's it you don't you wonder what a communication plan I say you're going to communicate with the team I don't think. Great that one doesn't seem too tricky except for the hands. I think yeah can I just add on there I think if you split this down the middle we're instead of looking at that individually there's a piece in here about right the communication plan and there's a piece in here about dealing with stakeholder engagement and you can't split it like that you can't cherry pick which bits you want to do but if you treated it like you know here's a paragraph on how I create the communication plan and here's a paragraph on how I dealt with stakeholder engagement I think that would be another way of dealing with that. I mean the assessors are going to have to be a bit more intuitive in how they read it. But for me, the more I look at this, the more I think it's. this is this is a communication planning and how I updated the plan and then this is what the effect of that plan had on my stakeholder engagement and how that matured over time. So I can see how to whether or not you could do that in 250 words or not. So the first three are very much around the operation and creation of a comms plan and the last three are about sort of broader stakeholder. We know I think with a top four you could talk about how you created a communication plan in let's say 125 words for argument sake and then you could talk about how that how the stakeholder engagement evolved over time in the other 125 words so rather than split it laterally you split it horizontally. And in this case they are well linked because there is clear connection between the two is not like other competencies we look before like a risk and issue is more differentiation where is here you could easily build the narrative how did you analyze the stakeholders and use that to create your plan. Once you had your communication plan how did you maintain it how did you respond to feedback. So they link quite nicely together whichever choice of the criteria you want to try to hit. Yeah I'm coming you remind me there because you've got the study guide open there so you've got a little bit of a description on each of these in the study guide haven't you? Yes I do. You can buy a study guide you can buy a self study course if you're a group we're more than happy to come and do CHPP coaching for you and if you need more support and advice do get in touch parallelpojecttraining.com so we hope you've enjoyed the podcast and we'll speak to you also.