Your Stakeholders Have No Clue What They Want. Here's What to Do.

This is Part 1 of a 3-part series on stakeholder management.

In this post we diagnose the stakeholder communication problems. Next: the framework to fix them.

You're trapped in a conference room that reeks of desperation, burnt coffee, and the collective incompetence of five overpaid executives who couldn't organize a one-person parade. These people, who somehow convinced someone to give them decision-making authority, are staring at you with the vacant expression of lobotomized goldfish.

"We need something... digital," one finally mumbles, as if they've just discovered fire.

"Yes! But also traditional," adds another, nodding with the confidence of someone who's never had an original thought.

"Can we make it pop more?" bleats a third, making jazz hands like they're summoning creativity they never possessed.

You've entered the Stakeholder Twilight Zone, where logic goes to die, project requirements are treated as mild suggestions, and your will to live evaporates faster than your project budget.

Here's how to extract actual requirements from people who communicate exclusively in corporate gibberish and change their minds more often than they change their underwear.

Why Your Stakeholders Don't Know What They Want

They Think in Solutions, Not Problems

Your stakeholders have already decided they need "an app" or "AI integration" or "blockchain functionality" without understanding what problem they're trying to solve. They've confused a solution with a strategy, a tactic with a goal, and a buzzword with a business plan.

They're starting with "we need a mobile app" instead of "our customers can't access our service when they're not at their desk." They want to build something cool, not something useful.

This is where effective stakeholder management and requirements gathering become critical.

They've Never Had to Define Success

Your stakeholders have never been forced to articulate what success actually looks like in measurable terms. They know they want "more engagement" or "better user experience" but can't explain what those things mean or how you'd know if you achieved them.

Success to them is a feeling, not a metric. They'll know it when they see it, which means they'll never know it when they see it.

They Confuse Activity with Strategy

Your stakeholders think being busy equals being strategic. They want to "leverage digital transformation" and "optimize the customer journey" because these phrases sound impressive in meetings, not because they've identified specific problems these initiatives would solve.

They're optimizing for buzzword compliance, not business outcomes. This is why requirements gathering requires cutting through the corporate speak.

They're Afraid of Making Wrong Decisions

Rather than risk being wrong about specifics, they stay vague about everything. "Make it more premium" lets them avoid defining what premium means. "Improve the user experience" avoids specifying which users or which experiences.

Vagueness feels safer than clarity because you can't be wrong about something you never really said.

The 5 Circles of Stakeholder Hell

Circle 1: The Contradiction Factory

Your stakeholders want it fast, cheap, and perfect, apparently having skipped elementary school lessons about trade-offs. They want cutting-edge innovation that's exactly like their competitor's five-year-old solution. They want simplicity with the complexity of NASA mission control.

You're not building a product. You're expected to violate the fundamental laws of physics while they critique your "lack of vision."

Circle 2: The Moving Target Shooting Gallery

Just when you've wrestled their fever dream into something resembling a plan, BAM! They've had an "epiphany" during their yoga retreat. The blue widget must be red because Karen from marketing had a dream about her childhood bicycle.

You're three weeks from launch? Perfect timing for a complete conceptual overhaul! This is why stakeholder management requires change control processes.

Circle 3: The Buzzword Blitzkrieg

These people communicate exclusively in corporate gibberish that sounds like a LinkedIn influencer having a stroke while reading a blockchain whitepaper. They want to "leverage synergistic paradigm shifts to disrupt the omnichannel customer journey with AI-powered solutions that scale exponentially."

You need Google Translate for Corporate Nonsense. Effective requirements gathering means translating this garbage into actual specifications.

Circle 4: The Approval Paralysis

Every decision requires approval from seventeen different people, none of whom actually understand what they're approving. By the time you get consensus, the original problem has evolved, the market has changed, and your competitor has already shipped the solution.

Circle 5: The Scope Creep Avalanche

"This is great, but while we're at it, can we also..." becomes the most expensive phrase in your vocabulary. Every conversation generates five new requirements, three additional features, and seventeen "quick questions" that each require a week of research.

You've identified the problem - your stakeholders are trapped in buzzword purgatory and can't articulate what they actually need. But knowing why they're confused doesn't solve your project.

Understanding stakeholder management problems is just the first step. The real challenge is extracting actionable requirements from confused stakeholders while maintaining your sanity and project timeline.

Next: Part 2: The 5-Step Framework for Extracting Real Requirements from Confused Stakeholders, plus the stakeholder communication techniques that turn confusion into clarity.