Identifying and Establishing Stakeholders

 

Journey to 'Destination Unknown'

 

A project, a proposal, an approval or a recommendation – All need to have stakeholders’ concurrence and agreement in order to be successful. A lot of time word stakeholder is designated to people who are directly associated with say a project or else provide endorsement for it. This is a traditional and narrow definition of stakeholders. In today’s business and its complexity a different definition of stakeholders need to be understood. Identifying and establishing stakeholders was always important in any business or social setup, today, in business context, it has taken the proportions of being critical. It is an art, which everyone needs to learn, specifically leaders.

A stakeholder is anyone, who is either of these

• A ‘Participant’ directly involved
• An ‘Endorser’, who needs to bless it
• An ‘Approver’ who has the signing authority
• A ‘Reviewer’, who decides the progress and success criterion
• Someone who is just impacted by act/project/decision
• Someone who is just ‘Interested’
• A person, who can be an ‘Influencer’

So, the question is, ‘How do we identify all stakeholders’ and ‘Is it needed to identify and establish all of them’. The section below discusses some of the ways we can adopt to identify stakeholders.

For an example, we will pick a project, for which we need to identify the stakeholders. Here are some of the ways to think about stakeholder eco-system of a project. A project needs people, it needs finances, it needs approval, it needs support from peer projects, it may need elements/componenets from another running project, it needs support from people who may not be involved directly but can influence, it needs reviewers and it needs endorsers. Now applying this, we can build a thought framework, which can assist us in identifying stakeholders. Here is how …

Think of following ‘things’, when identifying stakeholders.

1. You will need ‘Finances’ to beging with and then continuity of it
2. There will be a need of a ‘Team’
3. The ‘Dependency’ factor will need to be taken care of
4. ‘Noise’ making elements will need to be managed
5. ‘Appropriateness’ of the project will need to be established
6. An ‘Inward Dependency’ factor will need to be managed
7. ‘What is in it for me’ factor will need to taken care of
8. An ‘Interest’ factor will need to taken care of

So, now the question is – If there are going to be so many stakeholders, how much time needs to be spent on managing them?

The straight and simple answer is ‘Not too much and not too little’. The detailed and probably more appropriate answer is ‘Use a proximity model to decide how much time to spend on each type of stakeholder’.

The ‘Proximity Model’ is a concept, where you establish someone’s ‘Distance’ from the project. You also factor in ‘Attention Span’ of a person, who you identified as a stakeholder using one of the criterion in the section above. The ‘Distance’ and ‘Attention Span’ should help you decide two things.

1. How to establish them as a stakeholders in your eco-system
2. How much time to be spent on these established stakeholders in your project

The ‘Distance’ factor can be found by using organization structure. Use the organization hierarchy along with project team structure to find out the ‘Distance’ of a given stakeholder from your project.

The ‘Attention Span’ can be found by associating core responsibility of a given stakeholder to project you have. Sometime you can also use level/role of a given stakeholder to find out the ‘Attention Span’

Once you find and confirm the ‘Distance’ and ‘Attention Span’ of a given stakeholder, you can decide ‘How much time to be spent on managing, retaining and sustaining a stakeholder in your project. There is no set rule or formulae to calculate the time you ought to spent on stakeholder. But you can draw a generalization using ‘Distance’ and ‘Attention Span’. The farther the ‘Distance’ of a stakeholder and lower the ‘Attention Span’ of a given individual who is established as a stakeholder, the lesser time you need to spent on ‘managing’ ‘em. Generally this formulae will have a skew on ‘Attention Span’. ‘Attention Span’ will play a significant role in ‘Time to be spent’ decision.

A lot of time projects are derailed or are not successful – Not because of execution issues, it is because of eco-system of stakeholders was not managed well or was not given due consideration. Finding and establishing stakeholders and then managing them is an ‘Art’ and every leader should learn it.