Play Now: This episode is sponsored by The Agile PrepCast. Get your PMP PDUs: Dr. David Hillson and Cornelius Fichtner This interview with Dr. David Hillson was recorded at the 2016 PMI Global Congress in San Diego, California. We discuss his paper and presentation My Stakeholders are my biggest risk -- help!. Here are two passages from the paper: Abstract: Stakeholders can pose a real risk to our projects—at least some of them can—and project managers and their teams need to be aware of this and take steps to control risks to their project that arise from risky stakeholders. As with all risks, stakeholders present both positive as well as negative risks, and we need robust ways of identifying which stakeholders offer opportunities, and where potential threats might lie. This paper presents a structured way of identifying risky stakeholders based on a best-practice stakeholder analysis model (The Stakeholder Cube). It explains how risky stakeholders might influence a project based on their power, interest, and attitude. Finally, the paper shows how applied emotional literacy can be proactively used to influence risky stakeholders in order to optimize the outcome for the project. Conclusion: A risk is any uncertainty that could affect achievement of project objectives. Some of the biggest risks in projects arise from stakeholders, and project managers and their teams need to be aware of these risks and manage them proactively. As with all risks, there are both positive and negative stakeholders, and it is important to identify which stakeholders offer opportunities, and where potential threats might lie—and then act appropriately. David is retiring and this was his last active participation at a PMI Global Congress in North America. He plans on continuing to attending the EMEA congresses and he has offered to be available for interviews over Skype in the future. PDU Tip This interview is 26 minutes long. This means that you can "legally" only claim 0.25 PDUs for listening to it. However... if you first listen to the interview and then also read the white paper on which it is based, then you can go ahead and claim 0.50 PMP PDUs! Click to download the white paper Episode Transcript Below are the first few pages of the transcript. The complete transcript is available to Premium subscribers only. Podcast Introduction Cornelius Fichtner:   Welcome everybody to The Project Management Podcast™ at www.pm-podcast.com. We are coming to you live from the sunny southern California town of San Diego where we are attending the 2016 PMI® Global Congress and when I say sunny, I mean sunny because we are sitting outside overlooking the beach and with me is Dr. David Hillson, the Risk Doctor. Podcast Interview Cornelius:   Hello David. Good morning! David Hillson:   Hello Cornelius. What a lovely place for an interview. Cornelius:    It is. Yes. David:  Better than some we’ve done. Cornelius:  Absolutely. We’ve done a couple in the hallways. We’ve done one in the exhibitor hall and now we’re outside here in the sun. This is great. It’s getting better and better every year David:    I think so. Cornelius:   David, you are going to be talking about risk, as you are at most PMI congresses, but before we go into your risk presentation we have to mention that you are the co-chair of the upcoming PMBOK 6. David:   That’s right. It’s been a major expedition for me. A commitment of over two and a half years. We started in August 2014. I’m the vice-chair to the wonderful Cyndi Dionisio, who I know you’ve also interviewed.  Cornelius:  Yes. David:   And the good news is that we submitted the final manuscript to PMI Publications on the 15th of September just about ten days ago, two days earlier than our original schedule that we made in August 2014, despite a one month de