When things go wrong people often tend towards their more habitual, instinctive or reactionary responses. Troubled projects can bring out many reactions in stakeholders, ranging from the mild and inadequate to the wildly over-reactive. Such projects do not become troubled overnight, and often part of their challenge lies within the way in which these troubles have been responded to thus far.
Knowing how to respond to a troubled project begins long before things become disastrous. Even if we cannot easily see the signs of a failing project, sometimes we can see the responses to them which hint at the darker issues underneath. Understanding the types of responses, and how to handle them, can help us maintain a realistic and relative response to a troubled project at each stage.
Entering a recovery phase for a project is an all-in decision that will reshape almost everything about the project and how stakeholders interact with it. The decision can be momentous, and the preparation for making it must be thorough, balanced and accurate. A decision to recover based on a flawed analysis can be even more damaging than the original project may have been.
Stakeholders in any project are always going to be a key factor in determining its success. In a troubled project some stakeholders may have become more agitated and expressive, others are tuning out, whilst some may be actively working against it. In a troubled project the stakeholder situation is usually more dynamic, dramatic and challenging.
A project leader will need to go beyond the normal tools for stakeholder management as there is likely to be more to deal with and at higher levels of intensity. Even if the project’s trouble is not due to the stakeholders, the usual methods of managing them are likely stretched thin or already broken. Something more might need to be done for a successful recovery phase.

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