Captain’s log, stardate 20211228
Fellow list member Sebastian Wolf replied to a recent Ditcherville comic with a question about how to define a “primary stakeholder” (shared with permission):
Hi Jonathan.
I love your content.
One question concerning your last Ditcherville story.
How do you define a “primary stakeholder”?
- Is she the budget decision maker?
- Is she the decision maker who signs off the deliverables?
- Is she the “head of” whatever the department is?
The background of my question: We often deal with middlemen who are part of a pyramid organization.
They are only project-managers, often have no decision making power, but are assigned to the job of bringing in vendors and quotes.
How do you deal with those people?
You can’t just tell them to bugger off because you want to speak to their manager, can you?
Best regards and keep up the good work,
Sebastian
Great question, Sebastian!
Here are my thoughts:
But I haven’t answered your first question, which was this:
How do you define a “primary stakeholder”?
The “primary stakeholder” is the person who will ultimately say whether or not the money the company gave you was well spent.
It’s the person to whom you are trying to deliver customer satisfaction, which is why it’s so important to talk to them up front.
If you don’t have a good understanding of what will satisfy them, how could you possibly be confident about your odds of success?
Yours,
—J