How do you engage senior stakeholders and gain management buy-in? In this post, the Lazy Leader provides you with some strategies.
This is the last part of a miniseries about stakeholder management, and addresses the last reason cited in 3 Reasons for Project Failure ― ineffective top management involvement and support. We show you how to engage stakeholders and gain management buy-in.
Management commitment is about motivating and leading by example. And, genuine management commitment is essential for every project ― if management do not support project management best practices openly and demonstrably, or they are not fully committed to the proposed business change, it is unlikely that their staff will take on that responsibility.
What’s more, management commitment is needed throughout the project ― the plan, do, check, act cycle. Simply providing the funds for implementing a change and sitting back expecting results is not enough.
However, the intended audience for this post is those who manage projects; I'll leave the perceived failings of senior management or the project executive for another post.
So, I will focus on those activities a project manager can do to gain buy-in from their management executives.
How to Engage Stakeholders
One of the most important responsibilities of the project manager is to manage stakeholders, the project team, and to motivate people.
