Stakeholder Communications: Are You Talking to the Right Person?

You can have perfect updates and still fail because the wrong people heard them. Communication is a routing problem before it is a formatting one.

Problem: signal sent, decision absent

• Updates go to audiences who cannot approve scope, spend, or trade-offs.
• Decision-makers hear filtered summaries and think all is well.
• Teams drown in copy-all culture, so urgency dies.

Solution: route by authority

1. Authority map: List who can approve spend, scope, staffing, and vendor changes. If you do not know, your emails are spray-and-pray.
2. Message kits: Three versions of every update—sponsor (outcomes and money), delivery lead (risk and blockers), vendor (obligations and dates). Same facts, different verbs.
3. Escalation cadence: Weekly if stable, daily if red. Escalate to the person who can change the outcome, not the person who will sympathize.

Smart conclusions

• Remove people from threads when they have no decision to make; you gain speed and attention.
• If an update cannot state the decision required, do not send it.
• The right recipient turns communication into action; the rest is noise.