Winning
Support for Your Projects
"Stakeholder management is
critical to the success of every project in every organization I have ever
worked with. By engaging the right people in the right way in your project, you
can make a big difference to its success... and to your career."
As you become more successful in
your career, the actions you take and the projects you run will affect more and
more people. The more people you affect, the more likely it is that your
actions will impact people who have power and influence over your projects.
These people could be strong supporters of your work – or they could block it.
Stakeholder Management is an
important discipline that successful people use to win support from others. It helps them ensure that their
projects succeed where others fail.
Stakeholder
Analysis is the technique used to identify the key people who have to be won
over. You then use Stakeholder
Planning to
build the support that helps you succeed.
The
benefits of using a stakeholder-based approach are that:
- You can use the opinions of the
most powerful stakeholders to shape your projects at an early stage. Not
only does this make it more likely that they will support you, their input
can also improve the quality of your project
- Gaining support from powerful
stakeholders can help you to win more resources – this makes it more
likely that your projects will be successful
- By communicating with
stakeholders early and frequently, you can ensure that they fully
understand what you are doing and understand the benefits of your project
– this means they can support you actively when necessary
- You can anticipate what
people's reaction to your project may be, and build into your plan the
actions that will win people's support.
How to Use the Tool
The
first step in Stakeholder Analysis is to identify who your stakeholders are.
The next step is to work out their power, influence and interest, so you know
who you should focus on. The final step is to develop a good understanding of
the most important stakeholders so that you know how they are likely to
respond, and so that you can work out how to win their support – you can record
this analysis on a stakeholder map.
After
you have used this tool and created a stakeholder map, you can use the
stakeholder planning tool to plan how you will communicate with each
stakeholder.
The
steps of Stakeholder Analysis are explained below:
Step 1 – Identify Your Stakeholders
The
first step in your Stakeholder Analysis is to brainstorm who your stakeholders are.
As part of this, think of all the people who are affected by your work, who
have influence or power over it, or have an interest in its successful or
unsuccessful conclusion.
The
table below shows some of the people who might be stakeholders in your job or
in your projects:
Your boss
|
Shareholders
|
Government
|
Senior executives
|
Alliance partners
|
Trades associations
|
Your coworkers
|
Suppliers
|
The press
|
Your team
|
Lenders
|
Interest groups
|
Customers
|
Analysts
|
The public
|
Prospective customers
|
Future recruits
|
The community
|
Your family
|
|
|
Remember
that although stakeholders may be both organizations and people, ultimately you
must communicate with people. Make sure that you identify the correct
individual stakeholders within a stakeholder organization.
Step 2 – Prioritize Your Stakeholders
You
may now have a long list of people and organizations that are affected by your
work. Some of these may have the power either to block or advance. Some may be
interested in what you are doing, others may not care.
Map
out your stakeholders on a Power/Interest Grid on our free template as shown in figure 1, and classify them by
their power over your work and by their interest in your work.
For example, your boss is likely to have high power and influence over your
projects and high interest. Your family may have high interest, but are
unlikely to have power over it.
Someone's
position on the grid shows you the actions you have to take with them:
- High power, interested people:
these are the people you must fully engage and make the greatest efforts
to satisfy.
- High power, less interested
people: put enough work in with these people to keep them satisfied, but
not so much that they become bored with your message.
- Low power, interested people: keep
these people adequately informed, and talk to them to ensure that no major
issues are arising. These people can often be very helpful with the detail
of your project.
- Low power, less interested
people: again, monitor these people, but do not bore them with excessive
communication.
Step 3 – Understand Your Key Stakeholders
You
now need to know more about your key stakeholders. You need to know how they
are likely to feel about and react to your project. You also need to know how
best to engage them in your project and how best to communicate with them.
Key
questions that can help you understand your stakeholders are:
- What financial or emotional
interest do they have in the outcome of your work? Is it positive or
negative?
- What motivates them most of
all?
- What information do they want
from you?
- How do they want to receive
information from you? What is the best way of communicating your message
to them?
- What is their current opinion
of your work? Is it based on good information?
- Who influences their opinions
generally, and who influences their opinion of you? Do some of these
influencers therefore become important stakeholders in their own right?
- If they are not likely to be
positive, what will win them around to support your project?
- If you don't think you will be
able to win them around, how will you manage their opposition?
- Who else might be influenced by
their opinions? Do these people become stakeholders in their own right?
A
very good way of answering these questions is to talk to your stakeholders directly
– people are often quite open about their views, and asking people's opinions
is often the first step in building a successful relationship with them.
You
can summarize the understanding you have gained on the stakeholder map, so that
you can easily see which stakeholders are expected to be blockers or critics,
and which stakeholders are likely to be advocates and supporters or your
project. A good way of doing this is by color coding: showing advocates and
supporters in green, blockers and critics in red, and others who are neutral in
orange.
Figure 2 shows an example of this – in this example, you can see that a lot of
effort needs to be put into persuading Piers and Michael of the benefits of the
project – Janet and Amanda also need to managed well as powerful supporters.
Example:
You
can create your own example of Stakeholder Analysis at work – whether for your
current role, a job you want to do, or a new project.
Conduct
a full Stakeholder Analysis. Ask yourself whether you
are communicating as effectively as you should be with your stakeholders. What
actions can you take to get more from your supporters or win over your critics?