Stakeholder Management in Change Programs

Abstract

Overview

TBD

Stakeholder Analysis

Stakeholder analysis typically involves the following four steps (BSR):

1. Identifying: Listing the individuals or groups that can be affected by and/or affect the change program.
2. Analyzing: Formulating an understanding of the stakeholders, regarding their point of view, ambitions, power etc.
3. Mapping: Visualizing the results of the previous step.
4. Prioritizing: Ranking the relevance/importance of stakeholders in order to decide with which to engage.

Identifying

The objective of the first step is to produce a list of the stakeholders relevant to the organizational change program. Various tools and methods can be used on this stage such as:

• Brain Storming: Where people are ask to write down any individuals/groups that come to mind as relevant and then the results are gathered and sorted.
• Mind Mapping: A visualization technique used to organize information. A mind map is hierarchical and illustrates the relationships between pieces of the whole. Broad categories can be used as a starting point such as the OGC stakeholder categories (ref) (users/beneficiaries, governance, influencers & provider) and be expanded until a list of stakeholders is composed
• Experience from previous projects/program: Utilize a stakeholder analysis that have been conducted during a previous project/ program. However, this should be performed with caution since the dynamics of stakeholders can change over time and also because stakeholders that are relevant considering one project/program are not necessarily relevant regarding another.
• Organization charts: These can be especially helpful for identifying the internal stakeholders i.e. those entities within the organization

Typical examples of stakeholders regarding organizational change programs include:

Analyzing

Once the list of stakeholders has been conducted, the next step involves further analysis of each stakeholder in order to determine their relation to the change program, the links between each other as well as their importance, based on a chosen set of criteria. Multiple criteria have been proposed and being used in practice and their selection depends on the specific case and the background of the people conducting the analysis. Some of the most common criteria are: (ref)

• Support towards the change program
• Ability to influence the outcome of the change program (power)
• Awareness regarding the change program
• Interest towards the change program
• Willingness to engage
• Necessity of involvement
• Position in the information flow network. (LINK TO ARTICLE)

Mapping

The mapping stage aims to provide a better understanding of the relative importance of stakeholders by visualizing the relative position of the stakeholders based on some or all of the criteria used previously on the analysis phase. Usually mapping is two dimensional with each axis representing a criterion. However three dimensional mapping is also possible with the size/color/shape of the depiction of the stakeholders representing the third dimension. Frequently use stakeholder mapping tools are:

• Power/Influence- Interest grid
• Power/Influence – Impact grid
• Three-dimensional grouping of power, interest and attitude (ref)

Prioritizing

As it is not practical and usually unnecessary to engage with all stakeholder groups with the same level of intensity it is important to prioritize them in order allocate the most time and effort to the most important ones. The analysis and mapping steps, if performed correctly, would lead to a shorted list of stakeholders based on a set of criteria. Furthermore groups of stakeholders can be formed at this stage that require the same form of engagement. Finally the importance of the selection of the right set of criteria at a given time should also be stressed.