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Stakeholder Analysis can BOOST your career! How to analyze your own stakeholders

by | reviewed 17/11/2023
The influence and interest stakeholder analysis quadrant is a great tool for supercharging your career. Just as you can use it to analyze stakeholders for a project or a business you can also use it to analyze your stakeholders at work. stakeholdermap.com

Using stakeholder analysis tools to manage your stakeholders at work

Lets look at an example of a fictional person, Joe, who is a sales rep. He lists all of the people who:

  1. have an interest in the success or failure of his role as a sales rep or
  2. could impact or be impacted by his role.

Joe then draws a large square which he splits into four quadrants. He labels the Y axis Power and the X axis interest.

He goes through his list and for each person he decides if they have high or low power (or influence) and whether their level of interest in Joe's success is low or high.

He then writes the name of each person in the quadrant or square that matches their power and interest. For example the Contracts Manager is powerful and influential, but she isn't particularly interested in Joe's role or his success (she works with many sales reps). Joe writes her name in the top left square (high power, but low interest).

Here is Joe's completed analysis:

An example Career Stakeholder Analysis

An Example of using the stakeholder analysis impact and influence grid to manage your career

Reviewing the career Stakeholder Analysis

Joe reviews his analysis and decides to make some immediate changes:
  • Key players - Joe finds no surprises among his key players, but he realises he needs to spend more time engaging with the VP of sales.
  • Meet their needs - Joe finds that there are key people in the high power/low interest square that he would like to have a closer relationship with, for example the service sales manager for his region. The sales manager has high power and influence that could be useful. Joe decides he will work on increasing the sales manager's level of interest by meeting face to face rather than engaging over email. By doing this Joe should be more easily able to call on the sales manager to help him close his deals.
  • Key players at important decision points - Joe notices that some people are in one quadrant overall, but can move to another quadrant at certain decision points or phases in a sales cycle. In particular he decides to meet face to face with the Contracts Manager as she can often be a key player during the closing stages of the sales cycle, and Joe will sometimes need her to work over and above to get his deals over the line.
  • Least important - Consulting admin have set up weekly meetings with Joe to go over his opportunities. Although this meeting is important to consulting admin for their workload forecasting it takes a lot of Joe's time. After analyzing their power and interest Joe decides to move the meeting to skype, make it bi-weekly and reduce it to ½ hour.
  • Show consideration - Although partner sales show a lot of interest by being frequently in touch with Joe they don't have that much power and Joe decides not to make any changes in his approach unless a client has a particular relationship with a partner and insists in their involvement.

Download this example in PowerPoint or PDF

Example Career Stakeholder map in .pptx

Example Career Stakeholder map in .ppt

Example Career Stakeholder map in .pdf

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