Great expectations: The stakeholder edition

 Managing stakeholder and community expectations is a critical aspect of any project. When we’re developing key messages as communicators, we agonise at great length over the words we use to ensure we are not over promising on project deliverables and under selling project impacts. It’s a fine line between being transparent but not alarming, and being realistic but positive about the benefits a project will have once completed.

Sometimes in our quest to placate stakeholders, particularly resident stakeholders, we suggest amends that fall outside the scope of a project or any requirement for remediation or mitigation. There are many reasons why project managers might do this, from managing reputational risk to compensating for project delays. Whatever the reason, it must be done very carefully. A flippant suggestion from a project manager about providing noise barriers, vegetation screening, or something “for free” will not be forgotten quickly. Stakeholders will cling to these suggestions as certainties that can come back to bite months or years later and cause budgets and timeframes to blow out.

And every project has stakeholders who think they’re entitled to some form of compensation from either construction or operational impacts. These can be valid and reasonable requests, such as respite or alternative accommodation for residents impacted by noisy night works or who are unable to access their property. But often these requests have no legal, health, environmental, social or economic basis beyond a stakeholder feeling that the impact is “unfair”.

We were once asked if we would be compensating a resident who had been accessing their back paddock by crossing an unfenced rail corridor to move their cattle and horses. While this had worked for them for the past five years, we were now about to fence and reactivate the rail corridor that was still gazetted as rail land. The resident did not have a lease or right of way to cross the corridor and had been doing so out of convenience. Certainly, we understood why they had been crossing an overgrown rail line that hadn’t seen a train movement in 20 years, but it didn’t entitle them to compensation because it was “unfair”. Fortunately, this stakeholder understood this.

But sometimes they don’t, and stakeholders end up threatening the project team that they will go to their local MP, the media, the Ombudsman … A Current Affair also seems to be a favourite. And, sometimes, the project team does fulfil unreasonable stakeholder requests as an act of good faith, to make good on a previous wrong, or to otherwise keep the peace. But it doesn’t mean the request was reasonable, required or that the stakeholder was entitled to it.

That’s why as communicators we try so hard from the outset to manage stakeholder expectations. Quality, upfront communication won’t make a project “fair”, but it will make it transparent and realistic for all involved.