By Loay Dirar
It’s the beginning of your working week and you found out a very urgent email sent by one of your primary stakeholders pointing out several critical issues that remain unresolved or pending. Your excuses aren’t bringing the issues back on track, and he/she suggests a “status telephone call.”
You know what that means in terms of his personality. After taking a deep breath and a big cup of coffee, you start thinking about your response to tackle this issue, which will surely indicate how the rest of your week will look like. In order to take full responsibility and control to resolve this issue you need to take an immediate action by applying one or all of these steps:
1. Act fast:
Make sure you follow up within an hour of receiving his email. Don’t waste time trying to formulate a 400-word e-mail addressing his issues. Try immediately to reach your mobile. Or better yet, put in a Skype call. Your physical presence always reflects a better and warm reaction about your dedication to the issues and the stakeholder.
2. Don’t walk in with solutions:
Upon first contact, you need to stay calm. No matter how many status reports or issue resolution emails you submit, sometimes stakeholders simply need to be heard. Be prepared to sit you’re notebook in hand and lips closed, carefully try to listen to his needs and complains. Once you’ve identify it all, reply with questions geared toward understanding his/her expectations. Don’t fall back on broad statements such as, “I understand your concern and we will work to resolve these technical issues.” Instead, consider asking probing questions like, “How do these technical issues affect your upcoming product launch?”
Being interested to listen to his/her concerns shows you’re committed to identifying and tackling the root of the issue and not just its symptoms. Although a stakeholder may pressure you for an answer, avoid committing to or offering a solution before understanding all the facts and constraints. Simply agree to follow up and respond within a very short time period.
3. Identify issues that can be resolved immediately:
In some cases, your stakeholders will throw off 145 issues they deem “critical” to business continuity—all of which need to be addressed immediately. In reality, only select the highest priority issues and you’ll be exceeding his expectations.
4. Define a follow-up schedule and commit to it:
Plan on giving your primary stakeholder regular status updates on the issues until they’ve all been addressed. The frequency of the updates depends on the severity of the issue at hand. If it affects business continuity or project success, you need to be update him in a daily basis (or even more frequently). Keep in mind that there’s a fine line between demonstrating you’re a go-getter and pestering your primary stakeholder with useless details. Stick with clear, concise updates to the high-priority issues and avoid the less valued ones.