Stakeholder Management

In week six, Kavitha Rao heard from a colleague, not from you, that the pilot had switched to a different AI provider for reading scanned invoices. Nobody had told her where the invoice data would now go. She paused the pilot for a security review, and a week vanished. The technical change was fine. The surprise was not.

The rule

Know who can fund, use, block or champion the work — and never surprise them.

At Harbourline, the people around the pilot fall into four groups:

• Fund: the sponsor. Meera Iyer, VP of Finance. She cares about outcomes, cost and risk, and wants a short weekly summary.
• Use: the users. Farhan and his five clerks. They care about their daily work, and may quietly worry that automation threatens their jobs. The tool succeeds or fails in their hands.
• Block: the gatekeepers. Kavitha for security, the TMS administrator, procurement. They rarely make a project go faster, but any of them can stop it. They need detail early.
• Champion: the advocate. Someone who speaks up for the work when you are not in the room. Farhan can become one if the tool makes his team's days better.

One person can sit in more than one group. For each person, decide what they need to know, how often, and in what form.

Never surprise them means bad news travels early, privately first, and with a plan. People forgive problems. They rarely forgive hearing about them second-hand.

The shortcut

Before any change, ask: "Who will hear about this, and should they hear it from me first?"

The trap is treating gatekeepers as an afterthought. A gatekeeper who learns about a change second-hand has every reason to stop it until they understand it.

Drills

Answer fast — trust the rule.

Remember

• Know who can fund, use, block or champion the work — and never surprise them.
• Shortcut: before any change, ask who will hear about it and whether they should hear it from you first.
• Trap: treating gatekeepers as an afterthought, and letting bad news arrive second-hand.