Analyzing your Stakeholders is crucial to the success of your business or project. This step by step guide shows the best way to analyze stakeholders - by influence (or power) and interest.
What is Stakeholder Analysis?
Stakeholder Analysis is a systematic way to analyze stakeholders by their power and interest. High power, high interest stakeholders are Key Players. Low power and low interest stakeholders are least important. stakeholdermap.com
How to conduct a Stakeholder Analysis - with a free template
Often the process of identifying stakeholders will result in a long list of individuals and groups. After identifying all stakeholders for a large building project at a university, I discovered that there were nearly 20,000 individuals involved. But when I looked at the list, I saw that many of the people on it had similar interests.
I have shown the snapshot of my stakeholder analysis below. It shows the stakeholder groups and their interest areas mapped onto a matrix.
Table outlining the interests of stakeholder groups—visitors/users of the campus grounds, local residents, academic departments, and students—in impacts such as finance, environment, legislation, business as usual, and reputation. Checkmarks indicate specific interests: visitors/users of the campus grounds and local residents are interested in the environment; students are interested in finance, business as usual, and reputation.
Creating an interest matrix can help you make a communication plan that matches each stakeholder's interests and worries.
Once you have mapped the interests of your Stakeholders you need to prioritize them in order of importance. This step will drive your stakeholder engagement strategy. Different methodologies suggest different ways of analyzing stakeholders some complex and some very simple. A common approach is to map the interest and power or influence of each stakeholder group on a quadrant (Bryson 1995: 71 -5).
Matrix chart categorizing stakeholders by their influence/power and interest. The categories are: 'Meet their needs' (high influence, low interest), 'Key player' (high influence, high interest), 'Least important' (low influence, low interest), and 'Show consideration' (low influence, high interest).
Once you have mapped your Stakeholders you can focus your efforts on the highest priority groups while providing sufficient information to keep the less powerful groups happy. The table below shows an example engagement strategy based on the interest/influence stakeholder map. More detail on Stakeholder Engagement.
How Stakeholder Analysis drives engagement strategy
Power versus interest grid adapted from Eden and Ackermann (1998: 121-5, 344-6). The engagement strategies for each group are as follows: Key player - focus efforts, involve in governance, engage regularly; Meet their needs - engage and consult on interest area, try to increase level of interest; Show consideration - make use of interest through involvement in low-risk areas, keep informed and consult on interest area; Least important - inform via general communications such as newsletters, websites, and mail shots.
Meet their needs
- Engage & consult on interest area
- Try to increase level of interest
- Aim to move into right hand box
Key player
- Key players focus efforts on this group
- Involve in governance/decision making bodies
- Engage & consult regularly
Low Influence
Least important
- Inform via general communications: newsletters, website, mail shots
- Aim to move into right hand box
Show consideration
- Make use of interest through involvement in low risk areas
- Keep informed & consult on interest area
- Potential supporter/goodwill ambassador
Identifying Key Players is crucial if your project is to succeed. They have a high political interest and are powerful enough to either stop work completely or to move mountains to make your project a success. Continuing our guide to Stakeholder Analysis here are some tips to on recognizing the key players on your project.
Below is another example of a Stakeholder Analysis template created using a mind mapping tool. The first four branches organize Stakeholders into the impact and influence groupings, and Stakeholders are then mapped by adding branches to each group.
Using a mind map is a great way of analyzing stakeholders and many mind mapping tools have collaboration options which allow multiple people to work on an analysis.
stakeholdermap.com
Adding influence lines to the Power and Interest matrix lends a subtlety and depth to your analysis by revealing the importance of Stakeholders within each box in the matrix. They also reveal lines of communication between Stakeholders predicting the path potential issues will follow as they flow along influence lines to become an important concern for a key player. stakeholdermap.com
As a group review the matrix and think about who influences who. Draw lines between Stakeholders to illustrate the influences between them, the lines can be in two directions, but you should try to identify the strongest direction of the influence.
An example of a completed analysis with influence lines is shown below.
I suggest illustrating the stronger influence lines by using wider or darker lines. Once the lines are complete you will have clear indication of who are the most influential or central stakeholders.
