A short guide to stakeholder buy-in

Most teams know this matters. Fewer have decided who owns it. Everything we would tell a client about stakeholder buy-in in the time it takes to drink a coffee.

Strategy work is mostly deciding what not to do, and writing it down so it stays decided. It is worth deciding this deliberately rather than inheriting whatever the last person set up.

What it costs to ignore

Late objections cost the most. There is a version of this that is over-engineered, and it is worth avoiding. The failure mode is not doing it wrong, it is doing it once and assuming it stays done.

The practical version

Involve the sceptics early rather than presenting to them. In practice this is a scheduling problem more than a technical one. Write the reasoning down alongside the decision, because the reasoning is what changes first.

Common failure modes

Frame decisions in their terms, not in design terms. That sounds obvious written down. It is still the thing most often skipped. The version that survives contact with a real deadline is the simple one.

The short version

Clear scope protects the client at least as much as it protects the agency. Three things worth confirming about stakeholder buy-in before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• Frame decisions in their terms, not in design terms — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

None of this needs a rewrite. Most of it is a morning's work once someone decides to do it.