Stakeholder analysis is a vital part of the engagement process. This article gives a brief overview of what stakeholder analysis is and how to get started. For more in-depth information, view some of our other stakeholder analysis articles:
- Techniques for stakeholder analysis and adopting the best approach
- Step-by-step guide to stakeholder analysis
- When do you undertake stakeholder analysis?
- 5 essential tools for stakeholder analysis
What is stakeholder analysis?
Well, in simple terms, it is identifying and segmenting the perceived stakeholders based on certain factors before commencing the project. Not just this, but the analysis also includes determining the best practices for involving and communicating with each stakeholder segment.
What is the purpose of a stakeholder analysis?
- Helps you gather crucial input
Prioritising key stakeholders according to their level of interest and influence will assist you in structuring the best methods and assessment criteria to obtain their input.
- Helps you strategies efficiently
Understanding your stakeholders and sometimes dependent on the project the potential champions and detractors, assists in developing a strategic engagement framework.
- Helps you build trust and credibility
Engaging with stakeholders on a regular basis will build their trust in your organisation.
Now that you know the importance of stakeholder analysis, you would want to know how to conduct stakeholder analysis. Well, to begin with, we would like to tell you that stakeholder analysis exercises will vary by company, industry, and the teams conducting them (e.g., project management vs. product management). But all these analyses have a few common steps, some of which are written below:
- Identify your stakeholders
Make a list of the people who you think will be impacted and/or benefit from the project/proposal.
- Prioritize your stakeholders
Once you have identified the people who matter, determine who will indeed be the stakeholders. You can categorise them based on their influence, interest and levels of participation in your project. For instance:
- High power, high interest: These are the stakeholders of utmost importance, engage them the best and make the greatest efforts to satisfy them.
- High power, low interest: You should never fail to satisfy them as they are people of great influence, but having said that, you shouldn’t even over-communicate with them.
- Low power, high interest: Talk to them to make sure that no major issue arises. Also keep in mind that since these are interested people, they can play a very supportive role.
- Low power, low interest: Keep them informed periodically but don’t over-communicate with them.
- Understand your key stakeholders
Identifying and prioritizing the stakeholders isn’t enough, you also need to understand how they feel about the project. To understand them completely, ask simple questions such as:
- Besides the financial interest in the project, do they also feel emotionally associated with the outcome of the project? In the positive or in the negative sense?
- Is the reason for their association and interest being satisfied with the current growth of the project?
- What aspects are they are not satisfied with, what can you do to win the support of stakeholders?
- Who influences their opinion, and are those influencers also your stakeholders? Yes! Then who are they?
- What priorities do they have and what are their expectations from the project.
Since engaging the stakeholders is one of the important aspects of stakeholder analysis, you can always begin by using online engagement software. Engagement Hub is one such all-in-one community engagement and stakeholder management solution to drive participation and collaboration.
Contact us for a detailed proposal, book a demo to organize an online screen share and discussion of your objectives, or to explore the features in detail on our Engagement Hub demonstration site.
