It’s not you, it’s me. Stakeholder management realities we must acknowledge.

Remember that time you had a client that nearly made you apocalyptic? You know, the one who offered vague project goals, endlessly changed their mind, and provided input after the deadline. Or, the time when your project team wound up with “too many cooks in the kitchen?”

If you’ve worked as a project manager, you’ve undoubtedly encountered at least one of these scenarios.

How did this happen?

I found myself asking this question repeatedly, especially when I worked in Account Service at marketing/advertising agencies.

I’d be assigned a client, review the original business development RFP and pitch, be provided a core project team based on anticipated scope, then host a kickoff/discovery meeting. Everything would kick off “by the book,” then BAM! Confusion, frustration, and misaligned expectations. In my experience, this usually occurs during the Execution phase when it comes time to actually produce the deliverables, but it can happen anytime (and multiple times) throughout a project.

Before you meet your team at the water cooler to kvetch about your nightmare client, take a breath.

I’ve found that many times when I instinctively wanted to blame my client for project dysfunction, it was something I could have managed more closely, lessened the severity of, or perhaps even…