Communicating With Stakeholders and Learning Where Influence Really Happens - Part 2 of 3

Talking to the Right People (and Not Just Sending Emails)

Do you want to be effective, or efficient?

This second theme that has emerged from the hospital work is around communication and influence. Not communication in terms of “Did I send enough updates?” but more, “Did I talk with the right people, in the right way, early enough?”

Looking back, I can say I did a lot of communicating. I talked with people on the hospital side here on the ship. I talked with people back at headquarters. I kept our operations team in the loop. I kept the project manager up to date. I shared what we were doing, what we’d improved, and what the results looked like.

Even so, there were still key people who did not have the level of visibility or relationship they needed if this was going to move from a local proof of concept into something longer-term. That gap only really became clear to me later.

One More Level Up

One of my lessons is that there is usually “one more level up” I haven’t connected with yet. The people who get copied on emails are not always the same people who feel ownership, or who remember you and your project when broader planning happens.

Mistakes were made. Sending emails or messages is not the same thing as building a working relationship. In many cases, the content could have been shared asynchronously, but the connection and trust needed for buy-in would have required at least one or two real meetings. I didn’t push for those enough early on. 

You Can’t Talk People Into Caring

I tried to make the value clear. I showed examples of time saved and errors caught. I explained what this could unlock for the hospital if we kept going. But if someone is stretched thin, has other priorities, or doesn’t really know you, they may not have the capacity or the context to engage. Some of this is basic, some of this is cultural, and some of this is the English used.

If I rewind this, a few things I’d do differently:

• Involve more onshore teams earlier and more deliberately
• Ask others to make introductions to people I didn’t know
• Build more relationships before diving into solutions
• Accept that you just can't convince everyone

Even with all of that, I’m still grateful for what we were able to accomplish. The Pre Op team’s workload became  lighter. Their days became a bit more manageable. The changes mattered, even if the higher-level communication wasn’t perfect.

So this second story serves mostly as a note to myself: communication isn’t only about clarity and frequency. It’s about connection. It’s about whether the people who need to be involved actually feel connected to you and understand the work in context. That’s something I’ll pay more attention to going forward.