Stakeholder management

Stakeholder management is a critical component to the successful delivery of any project, programme or activity. A stakeholder is any individual, group or organization that can affect, be affected by, or perceive itself to be affected by a programme.[1]

In a nutshell, the stakeholder management comprises four steps:[2]

• Identify, recognize and acknowledge stakeholder;
• Determine their influence and interest;
• Establish communication management plan
• Influencing and engaging stakeholder

Stakeholder identification

Main article: Stakeholder analysis

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.[3]

People and organizations that:

• Are affected by work.
• May have the power either to block or advance.
• May be interested, others may not care.

Customers

Within the field of marketing, it is believed that customers are one of the most important stakeholders for managing its long-term value, with a firm's major objective being the management of customer satisfaction.[4]

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?

Organizational stakeholders

It is well acknowledged that any given organization will have multiple stakeholders including, but not limited to, customers, shareholders, employees, suppliers, and so forth.

Stakeholder prioritization

Stakeholders may be mapped out on a Power/Interest Grid, and classified by their power and interest. There are other tools to map out stakeholders and how to influence them.

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.

Position on the grid may show actions:

• 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.

Stakeholder engagement

• Communicate: To ensure intended message is understood and the desired response achieved.
• Consult, early and often: To get the useful information and ideas, ask questions.
• Remember, they are human: Operate with an awareness of human feelings.
• Plan it: Time investment and careful planning against it, has a significant payoff.
• Relationship: Try to engender trust with the stakeholders.
• Simple but not easy: Show your care. Be empathetic. Listen to the stakeholders.
• Managing risk: Stakeholders can be treated as risk and opportunities that have probabilities and impact.
• Compromise: Compromise across a set of stakeholders' diverging priorities.
• Understand what is success: Explore the value of the project to the stakeholder.
• Take responsibility: Project governance is the key of project success

Source: [5]

Stakeholder management creates positive relationships with stakeholders through the appropriate management of their expectations and agreed objectives. Stakeholder management is a process and control that must be planned and guided by underlying principles. Stakeholder management within businesses, organizations, or projects prepares a strategy using information (or intelligence) gathered during the following common processes.

With a clear understanding of your Stakeholders, engaging and communicating can be achieved through a variety of channels based upon who the stakeholder is.[6]

• High power, interested people: Manage closely. Best channels: Issue, Change Logs, Status Meetings
• High power, less interested people: Keep satisfied. Best channels: Steering Committee, Board Meeting Updates
• Low power, interested people: Keep informed. Best channels: In-Person, Video, Email Updates
• Low power, less interested people: Monitor. Best channels: Send Email, Status Reports

See also

• Project stakeholder
• Responsibility assignment matrix
• Stakeholder analysis
• Stakeholder engagement software
• Stakeholder register

References

1. Sowden, Rod; Office, Cabinet (August 30, 2011). Managing successful programmes. Stationery Office. p. 59. ISBN 9780113313273.
2. Association for Project Management (APM). "APM Knowledge Stakeholder management".
3. Sowden, Rod; Office, Cabinet (August 30, 2011). Managing successful programmes. Stationery Office. p. 64. ISBN 9780113313273.
4. Gordon E. Greenley and Gordon R. Foxall. (2003). Multiple Stakeholder Orientation in UK Companies and the Implications for Company Performance. Journal of Management Studies, 34, 259–284.
5. Association for Project Management (APM). "Stakeholder engagement".
6. Moore, Gwendolyn (December 12, 2011). "PMI Great Lakes Chapter Forum, Tools and Techniques for Managing Stakeholder Expectations" (PDF). p. 8.

Further reading

• Berman, S. L; Wicks, A. C; Kotha, S; Jones, T. M (1999). "Does Stakeholder Orientation Matter? The Relationship Between Stakeholder Management Models and Firm Financial Performance". Academy of Management Journal. 42 (5): 488. doi:10.2307/256972. JSTOR 256972.
• Bourne, Lynda; Walker, Derek H.T (2008). "Project relationship management and the Stakeholder Circle™". International Journal of Managing Projects in Business. 1: 125–130. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.619.5028. doi:10.1108/17538370810846450.
• Buysse, Kristel; Verbeke, Alain (2003). "Proactive environmental strategies: A stakeholder management perspective". Strategic Management Journal. 24 (5): 453. doi:10.1002/smj.299.
• Carroll, Archie (2017). Business & Society Ethics, Sustainability & Stakeholder Management. Mason, OH: Cengage Learning. ISBN 978-1-337-51447-7.
• Cleland, David I. (1997). "Project Stakeholder Management". Project Management Handbook. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. pp. 275–301. doi:10.1002/9780470172353.ch13. ISBN 978-0-470-17235-3.
• El-Gohary, Nora M; Osman, Hesham; El-Diraby, Tamer E (2006). "Stakeholder management for public private partnerships". International Journal of Project Management. 24 (7): 595. doi:10.1016/j.ijproman.2006.07.009.
• Post, James (2002). Redefining the corporation : stakeholder management and organizational wealth. Stanford, Calif: Stanford Business Books. ISBN 978-0-8047-4310-5.
• Preston, Lee E; Sapienza, Harry J (1990). "Stakeholder management and corporate performance". Journal of Behavioral Economics. 19 (4): 361. doi:10.1016/0090-5720(90)90023-Z.
• Roloff, Julia (2007). "Learning from Multi-Stakeholder Networks: Issue-Focussed Stakeholder Management". Journal of Business Ethics. 82: 233–250. doi:10.1007/s10551-007-9573-3.