How can stakeholders be managed

These ten steps outline a huge process that could take years to perfect. To put them into practice effectively, what is really needed is an effective leader, one who can both think strategically, and motivate others to turn strategy into reality.

By Jennifer Bramley. By Nigel Girling. By Jeff Biggin. By Mia Lewis. By Tracey Francis. We use cookies on our website. You are free to manage this via your browser setting at any time.

To learn more about how we use the cookies, please see our Cookie Policy. The cookie settings on this website are set to "allow cookies" to give you the best browsing experience possible. If you continue to use this website without changing your cookie settings or you click "Accept" below then you are consenting to this. How to Manage Stakeholders: 10 Steps. Who are your stakeholders A stakeholder is anyone with an interest in the activities, team development or performance of your organisation.

Prioritise your stakeholders Considering you may have hundreds of different types of stakeholder needs, prioritisation is key. Understand your stakeholder Once you know who your most important stakeholders are, you need a clear picture of what they expect from you, and what you could benefit from offering them. Establish objectives for your stakeholders Every organisation should have a strategic vision , with clearly defined objectives. Align current strategy with your stakeholders You need to do more than devise isolated stakeholder objectives.

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Establish effective communications As well as sharing your strategic thinking internally, you should communicate by managing your team by contacting important stakeholders, both to establish trust and to help your strategies play out smoothly. Download checklist.

The first step in stakeholder management is identifying stakeholders and their claim to the project. This involves evaluating any person, department or organization that has a role in completing the project. This can vary drastically from one stakeholder to another. For example, a project sponsor might commend a project that finishes on or under budget, while a sales team might measure success by deliverables that exceed customer expectations.

Often, this dynamic is depicted in a grid, with influence charted on the y-axis and interest on the x-axis. An understanding of this relationship forms the basis of effective stakeholder communication. According to Wakeman, this lets the manager know what information each stakeholder needs, which helps determine the best way to relay information to that person or group. This process helps inform the project change impact analysis more on this later.

Bondale says that one of the biggest mistakes a manager can make is using a one-size-fits-all approach when communicating with stakeholders. Determine the preferred method of communication: Stakeholders will prefer to communicate in various ways—some want a weekly summary email, others a daily phone call. Create a communication schedule: Wakeman advises setting up a communication schedule so managers stay engaged with stakeholders throughout the project.

Facilitate stakeholder communication on a recurring basis—it is NOT a one-off task to be done at the beginning and end of a project. Understanding how each stakeholder defines project success, particularly among major influencers, can help managers overcome these obstacles.

Identify advocates and potential adversaries: At this step, managers should evaluate which stakeholders are project advocates versus those who are project adversaries , i. Then, focus on all the milestones along the way and ask stakeholders what they think could go wrong. This helps managers and stakeholders identify which risks should be monitored closely and which require less attention. With the smaller deal things, we estimate in advance the likelihood of an occurrence and what we will need to fix the problem if it arises.

Once you have created your stakeholder network map and defined your influence boundary, you can then more effectively keep track of, engage with, and manage your stakeholders. To do this, you need to be able to answer three questions for each stakeholder, according to Boutilier.

This will gauge the social license, which Boutilier defines as the degree of social acceptability of your organization and its activities. These will overlap and sometimes be embedded within each other. When you understand what relationships your stakeholders have, and how collaborative those relationships are, you can truly start drawing your stakeholder network map and potentially identifying your grasstops.

Using a stakeholder management tool allows you to label and group stakeholders by interests and track their activity with your organization, as well as with key legislation. Edward Freeman, professor and an academic director of the Institute for Business in Society at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business, urges us to look for the interconnection between stakeholders or, as Boutilier also explained it, the common narrative, to find creative solutions and strategies.

But it is true if you don't look for it, you won't find it. Either with or without a trade-off, managing multiple stakeholders means being able to bring together stakeholders who may have competing interests at times, to accomplish an objective.

This allows you to better manage your stakeholders and proactively create strategies that address conflicts from the get-go. Your issues or campaigns are connected to implementing some elements of organizational strategy. According to Stephen Townsend, networks engagement facilitator at the Project Management Institute, they usually fall into three categories:.

Using an issues management solution allows you to find, organize, and manage all the information you need and all of your stakeholders in one place to help you better prioritize your outcomes and deliver on your objectives. Reaching people where they are at the right time plays an important part in a successful communications plan, as described in our FiscalNote Advocacy Benchmark Report. Be it email, social media, phone or video calls, in-person meetings, or even traditional mail, your strategy must account for how stakeholders best communicate with you and each other.

Make it easy for them to engage and collaborate to further your goals. Another very important aspect to consider is when to communicate with your various stakeholders. Perhaps for your internal stakeholders, business hours might work well, but for your supporters, the weekends might be a better time to engage with your messages. A good communications plan is set out in advance to be as effective as possible and to stay top of mind.

Your strategy should include not only urgent and action-oriented communications but also informative and insightful messages that can foster a deeper connection between your stakeholders and your goals. Try planning ahead and capitalizing on dates of interest for certain stakeholders or for your organization.

If you are dealing with, for example, environment-focused stakeholders, make sure to have communications around dates such as Earth Day to keep your issues and your organization top of mind. For internal stakeholders, try recurrent email updates or in-person meetings to celebrate progress and discuss challenges.

Externally, email and social media came out on top in our Advocacy Benchmark Report. Conduct an audit of what content and materials you already have and what you will need to create to support your communications plan. Check your library to find materials from previous campaigns that you can reuse or upgrade without having to start from scratch. Make sure you measure how your stakeholders are engaging with your messages and optimize your communications plan as you go.

Try different subject lines for emails or images on social media to see what resonates best with your stakeholders and do more of that. Check your assumptions and notice any trends in how your stakeholders are engaging with your messages. Technology evolves quickly and new platforms surface almost every year, your stakeholders might move from one channel to another. It is important that you stay current and top of mind. Managing multiple stakeholders requires regular updates on where each party stands on the different parts of the campaign.

Using a stakeholder management solution makes reporting on your progress and results easy to show the success and ROI of your government relations or advocacy work. This is naturally important for your internal stakeholders but is also valuable to communicate to external stakeholders as part of your communications strategy.

Keeping all stakeholders abreast of your progress can help make them feel more connected with your issue and increase their engagement. Managing multiple stakeholders means a lot of variables are always at play.