My Toughest Stakeholder Doesn't Have a LinkedIn Account

Confession: I've managed stakeholders across countries, departments and time zones. Senior leaders. Finance. IT. Whole teams who needed the same thing, by yesterday, in three different formats.

None of them come close to my toughest stakeholder.

Let me introduce her properly. PM-style.

Stakeholder profile

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  Role Project sponsor, product owner, end user and head of quality control. All at once.

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  Influence Extremely high.

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  Interest Extremely high. Especially in ice-cream.

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  Preferred communication channel Volume.

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  Working hours Before sunrise until whenever she decides.

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  LinkedIn account None. Yet.

Yes. I'm talking about my toddler.

Nobody hands you a project charter when you become a parent. But if they did, it would say: Scope: everything. Timeline: forever. Budget: ice-cream.

And honestly? It's the best PM training I've ever had.

Six lessons from a very small project sponsor

I swapped the cups. Approved. For about thirty seconds. Then a new request came in: back to the blue one.

And just when I thought the scope was frozen: a new feature request. A straw. For the milk. Urgent. Business-critical. Never mentioned in any earlier requirement session. Scope creep, toddler edition.

At work, change requests are (usually) quieter. But they come just as reliably. And our first instinct is often the same: a small sigh and a quiet "but we agreed…"

Here's the thing: change isn't failure. It's new information. The stakeholder learned something, and now you have too.

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  Have a simple change process. Not a twelve-page form. Just: what's the change, what does it cost, and who decides?

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  Make the impact visible. "Yes, we can, and it moves the date by a week" is a much better answer than a silent yes.

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  Don't take it personally. The blue cup was perfect. It just wasn't what was needed anymore.

These days, I keep both cups within reach.

None of these were in the plan. All of them were, in hindsight, completely predictable.

Projects work exactly the same way. The plan isn't the problem. The plan without a buffer is. We estimate the work we can see and forget the shoe nobody knew was missing.

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  Add a buffer on purpose. Not hidden, not apologetic. A visible line in the plan called "things we can't see yet."

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  Learn from last time. If leaving the house took twenty-five minutes yesterday, it won't take five today. Use your history, not your optimism.

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  Watch the hand-offs. Delays rarely sit in the big tasks. They hide in the moments between them. Like finding the other shoe.

Our new estimate for leaving the house is thirty minutes. We're on time more often. Not always. But more often.

Back to the drawing board. New options. New review round. Same result. (Getting dressed in the Netherlands in autumn: a project with one very strict non-functional requirement called the weather.)

Here's what our mornings taught me about stakeholders. Offering options is a great start, but it's not a guarantee. Sometimes nobody likes any of them, and someone proposes their own. And sometimes their option C doesn't fit the constraints.

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  Share the constraints before the options. "It's cold outside, so we need something warm" lands better than two sweaters with no explanation. At least sometimes.

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  Listen for the real need behind option C. Maybe it's not about that outfit at all. Maybe she just wants to be the one who chooses. Find an option that meets the need and the constraint.

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  Expect a few iterations. Getting to yes is a process, not a single meeting. Leave time for it.

Still no guarantee. But we usually make it out the door. Eventually.

With a toddler, you learn fast that you can't win every discussion. And you don't need to. If you fight about everything, you're exhausted by 8 a.m., and the car seat conversation still has to happen.

Projects are the same. When every requirement is "critical," nothing is.

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  Name your non-negotiables early. Quality, safety, the key deadline. Say them out loud at the start, so nobody is surprised later.

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  Be generous with the rest. The colour of a button? The order of the slides? Let it go. It buys goodwill for the things that matter.

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  Stay friendly when you hold the line. A firm "no" works much better with a warm face. At home and at work.

Not every hill is worth a tantrum. For either party.

It turns out that's not just toddler communication. That's good communication.

At work, we often do the opposite. We write the long email, build the ten-slide deck, explain every detail. And then wonder why the key message didn't land.

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  Lead with the point. What do people need to know or do? Put it in the first sentence, not on the last slide.

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  One message at a time. Three important points in one update usually means zero remembered.

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  Repeat what matters. Saying something once isn't communicating, it's announcing. Important messages need to be heard more than once.

Nobody has ever complained that an update was too easy to understand. Not at home, and not at work.

Toddler life is full of tiny milestones, and every one of them gets celebrated. Not because they're big, but because celebrating them is what makes the next one happen.

At work, we tend to save celebrations for the big go-live. Months of effort, one cake at the end. Maybe.

But long projects run on energy, and energy runs on progress people can see.

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  Mark the small steps. A signed-off design, a solved blocker, a successful test. Say it out loud in the team meeting.

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  Make it specific. "Great work, everyone" is nice. "Thanks for fixing that interface in two days" is better.

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  Keep it light. No big event needed. A message, a shout-out, a coffee. The parade around the kitchen is optional.

(Regular readers know I have strong feelings about this one.)

The retrospective

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  What went well Everyone is fed, dressed and mostly matching.

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  What could be better The cup selection process. Needs earlier stakeholder input.

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  Action item Buy more yellow cups.

Patience is a skill, not a trait

People talk about patience as if you either have it or you don't. I don't believe that anymore.

Patience is a skill. You practise it in the meeting where the requirements change for the third time. You practise it at the breakfast table when the yellow cup is suddenly wrong too.

The best project managers I know aren't the ones who never get surprised. They're the ones who expect surprises, smile, and adjust the plan.

Toddlers just make sure we never run out of practice.

So, I'm curious: who is the toughest "stakeholder" in your life outside work? A toddler, a teenager, a cat with opinions? I'd love to hear it in the comments.

One cup at a time. Milestone by milestone. — NJ