You’ve been handed a $850K project with a 6-month timeline. 😱😱😱
The catch? It’s a merger integration.
Two companies that don’t like each other. ⚔️
A retiring CIO who’s checked out.
A new CIO who wants everything done yesterday.
A CFO watching every penny. 💰
A beloved sales director who’s been burned by Salesforce before and won’t trust you.
Oh, and you haven’t even done discovery yet, but the contract is already signed. 😵 (oof if you know me, you know how I feel about this!!)
Do you:
A) Run 🏃🏻♂️➡️
B) Cry 😭
C) Actually figure out how to make this work 🛠️
If you picked C, you need to know #StakeholderManagement like your career depends on it.
Because it does.
This is what we worked through in today’s #ZenClub session.
We dugged (dug?) into the messy, political, impossible reality 💩😷 of consulting where technical skills alone won’t save you.
We spent 90 minutes mapping power dynamics, analysing human behavior, identifying status threats, and building influence strategies.
We practiced the exact questions that turn resistant stakeholders into reluctant allies.
Want to see what this actually looks like?
I’ve posted the complete training notes (yes, all 16,000+ words) 👇🏻 – just make sure you set comment filter to “Most Recent” as LInkedIn hides stuff with outgoing URLs.
You’ll see:
🍩 The actual case study we dissected
🍩 Word-for-word dialogue from our analysis
🍩 The frameworks we use to map stakeholders
🍩 Strategic approaches for each personality type
🍩 Teaching moments on why people resist (and how to move them)
🍩 Real examples from the group’s experiences
𝗧𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗶𝘀 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁 #𝗭𝗲𝗻𝗖𝗹𝘂𝗯 𝗶𝘀 𝗮𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁:
Developing the human skills that AI can’t replicate.
The ability to navigate politics, build unlikely alliances, ask the right questions, understand what people really mean, and make impossible projects work.
We meet (almost) every Friday.
And we alternate between technical deep-dives and consulting skills
We practice in a no-shame environment.
We build both competence and community.
The recordings, transcripts, and comprehensive notes like these are all archived so you never miss content even if you can’t make a session live.
If you’re a Salesforce professional who wants to future-proof your career with skills that matter when everyone has AI tools – this is for you.
𝗥𝗲𝗮𝗱𝘆 𝘁𝗼 𝗷𝗼𝗶𝗻 𝘂𝘀?
Comment below or DM me.
Next Friday Piyusha Pilania covering Tableau basics. The Friday after, we return to finish this stakeholder case study (there are 3 more parts and they get even messier).
P.S. – Shout out to Barrie Robertson for the “just deliver, don’t promise” wisdom, and to everyone who showed up ready to wrestle with hard problems.
This is how we get better. 💪🏻
