Planning Your Stakeholder Communications

What Is Stakeholder Management?

Planning Your Stakeholder Communications

If you want your project to succeed, it pays to remember the old saying, "No man is an island."

Why? Because almost every project you work on – large or small, simple or complex – needs input from other people. And, chances are you'll depend on some of them for support, investment and resources.

Stakeholder management is the process of engaging with these people, and maintaining good relationships with them. You'll likely be working with people in many different roles, with varying levels of influence over your project. Communicating with each one in the right way can play a vital part in keeping them "on board."

So, in this article, and the downloadable worksheet that accompanies it, we outline the key steps that you can follow to create an effective, targeted stakeholder management plan.

Developing Your Stakeholder Management Strategy

The first step toward managing your stakeholders is to identify who they are!

Begin by reading our article, Stakeholder Analysis. It explains how to identify the key people who are involved with your project, and how to assess their power, influence and interest in relation to it.

The article also shows you how to enter this information on a simple Power/Interest Grid.

Once you've mapped out your stakeholders' positions on the grid, you can start to devise a strategy for managing them. Remember, the aim of your communications is to win support for your project, or to ensure that your existing support is maintained.

Planning Your Stakeholder Communications

First, download our Stakeholder Communications worksheet. Then use the following six steps to manage your stakeholders:

1. Enter Your Power/Interest Grid Information on the Worksheet

First, in the Stakeholder Name column of your worksheet, enter the names of the key stakeholders that you identified on your Power/Interest Grid.

In the next column, Communications Approach, write down the strategy that is best suited to each stakeholder. The options are "Manage closely," "Keep satisfied," "Keep informed," or "Monitor."

2. Consider Your Stakeholder Management Approach

The way that you manage your stakeholders depends on:

• The size and complexity of your project. You could assess this by comparing it to past projects, by examining the project's milestones , by the amount of resources required, or by the time allocated to it, for example.
• The amount of help you need to achieve the results you want. This could include sponsorship, advice and expert input, physical resources, reviews of material to increase quality, and so on.
• The time you have available to communicate. You need to consider how to manage the time you expect to spend on communication, particularly if your project requires a lot of stakeholder input.

It is often better to allocate more time to communicating with stakeholders, rather than trying to "get by" without all the help or input that you need.

3. Think Through What You Want From Each Stakeholder

Now, return to your list of stakeholders and think about the level of support that you want from each one – is it High, Medium or Low? Enter this value in the Desired Support column on your worksheet.

And, what role would you like each one to play in your project (if any)? Will you need full-time technical support, for instance, or just "ad hoc" advice? Note this down in the Desired Project Roles column.

Try to be as detailed as possible about what you want from your stakeholders. If there are specific actions that you need them to take to move the project forward, write them in the Actions Desired column of your worksheet. And make sure that you can explain why these actions are so important!

4. Identify the Messages You Need to Convey

Next, think about what you need to say to persuade your stakeholders to support you and to engage with your project.

Highlight the benefits that your project will bring to the organization or the individuals concerned, and focus on key performance drivers, such as increasing profitability or delivering real improvements.

5. Identify Actions and Communications

Now, work out what you need to do to win and manage the support of your stakeholders. Bearing in mind the time and resources that are available to you, identify how you will manage the communication to, and the input from, your stakeholders.

Focus on the most important stakeholders first, and the less crucial ones later (refer back to your Power/Interest Grid, if you need to). Devise a plan that communicates with them as simply and efficiently as possible, with just the right amount of appropriate information.

Consider how often each stakeholder will want to receive updates, and in what form. Would they prefer email or face-to-face meetings, or visual updates such as Gantt charts, for example. Remember, your goal is to keep your stakeholders engaged and supportive, so take care not to "overload" them or waste their time!

Also, think about how you can win over or neutralize the opposition of skeptics. Where you need their active support, think about how to raise their level of interest. For example, could you show them a prototype of your new product or service, or persuade another influential stakeholder to present the project to them?

6. Implement Your Plan

Once you have prepared your Stakeholder Management plan, you can start to implement it.

Aim to make Stakeholder Management an integral part of your project, rather than treating it as a side task. As with all plans, it will be easier to implement if you break it down into a series of small, achievable steps which you action one by one.

And remember, projects are often subject to change as they go along. This means that your stakeholders' needs may change, too. So, review your plan regularly to make sure that you continue to communicate with the most influential stakeholders, in the most effective way, for the duration of your project.