A Systematic Approach to Stakeholder Management
By Simon Davis
Mapping Individuals
Mapping the stakeholder organisation gives context but it is individuals, their relationships and the dynamics of the organisation that give you the power to influence and the knowledge to optimise your communications with both individuals and the organisation.
The initial exercises of identifying and then understanding your stakeholders will have provided a long listing of the individual stakeholders. You will have collected information around the nine points mentioned above. Your process should include scoring of the responses by how interested and committed is each stakeholder in their influence and how much power they wield.
What is now necessary is finding a mechanism that allows this information to be easily assimilated, that exhibits both their absolute and relative position within their own organisation and provides a means for optimising your communications with them.
The power / interest matrix is a useful tool for mapping the expectations and impact of particular stakeholders. It analyses and resolves, graphically, the interest and power drivers discussed above. See Fig 2 below:
Example
A group of local residents has been established to object to the Super Stores Planning Application. They are an eclectic mix but they could possibly wield significant influence.
| How much power do they wield as individuals | How much power do they wield within the Group | TOTAL POWER | What financial interest do they have in the project | What emotional interest do they have in the project | TOTAL INTEREST | ||
| Col Swagger-Stick | 8 | 10 | 18 |
5 | 8 | 13 |
|
| Mrs Tweed-Suit | 7 | 9 | 16 |
3 | 8 | 11 |
|
| Citizen Smith | 3 | 2 | 5 |
2 | 4 | 6 |
|
| Mrs Flowery Green | 5 | 5 | 10 |
1 | 7 | 8 |
|
| Bill Stickers | 6 | 5 | 11 |
4 | 2 | 6 | |
| Milky Left-Leaning | 3 | 3 | 6 |
2 | 9 | 11 |
|
| Tracey Giggle | 2 | 3 | 5 |
7 | 6 | 13 |
This summarises all that you know about each individual on the stakeholder map. It identifies those who are likely to be advocates and supporters and those who are blockers and critics. Figure 3 shows the matrix graphically represented
Fig 3 Power/Interest Grid For Stakeholder Prioritisation
Managing your Stakeholder communications
The exercise of analysing and mapping your stakeholder base will, by its very nature, improve your insight into your stakeholders and their drivers. The Power / Influence mapping will indicate where you are with individual stakeholders and will point up where you need to be, again by individual stakeholder. The questions you need to ask yourself now are:
- Are we communicating as effectively as we should with our stakeholders?
- What actions should we take to gain more support from our advocates?
- What should we take to be winning over our critics?
- Are we doing enough to move stakeholders up and to the right on our power / interest matrix?
The process is as follows:
Plan your approach
How much time and resource can we bring to bear in the round? Where should we spend most / where should we spend the least?
What do you want from each stakeholder?
What role do you want them to fulfil? What actions can we get them to perform? How can they use their benign influence to greatest benefit? How do we minimise their malign influence?
What is the message you wish to convey?
Major on benefits at all times, to them as individuals, as members of an organisation themselves and as members of the broader community. Try to offer Key Performance Indicators that they, whether they do this systematically or not, can relate to and measure.
Identify your Actions and Communications
Plan physical campaigns in the same way as you would conventional marketing
EXCEPT that you may only be targeting a very small number of individuals. Link this
to the resource you have available and allocate tasks accordingly. How do you manage the output and how do you handle and manage the response?
It may be instructive to compare one matrix with a more favourable one and discuss what policies were adopted to get the latter into a favourable shape.
Focus first on the high power / high interest stakeholders. Allocate resources accordingly and communicate appropriately. Think what you do to keep the advocates on board and what you need to do to get the critics on board. What strategies to adopt to re-position stakeholders? What is known from the past that can inform us now?
Update and re-visit your matrix
On the basis of your responses re-map the organisation and then analyse how your communications have impacted your stakeholders. Learn by iteration those things that go right and those that have not, the matrix will tell you how, through looking at the length of difference in location before and after and by gradient difference, how effective you have been.
Conclusion
Stakeholder Management is the process by which you identify your key stakeholders and win their support. This paper gives you a Systematic method for optimising the process through Identification – Analysis – Mapping – Communication. It provides feedback closed loops so that what you learn through each communication iteration is taken forward to the next
What is not discussed are ethical or legal limits on the data held or the means by which those data are leveraged. Nor have we looked at the internal preparedness of the organisation to implement Stakeholder Management.
MarketDeveloper and Stakeholder Management
MarketDeveloper is a marketing software and services firm. Our web-delivered, hosted CRM, Marketing and Sales solutions simplify and automate the job of marketing teams and help their customer relationship and business generation activities. MarketDevelopers' CRM solution can be optimised for in depth Stakeholder Management in the following ways;
- Profile Manager allows you to collect and store limitless profile on an individual
- The Data Warehouse permits the holding of data on both the Organisational and Individual level
- Hold records of contacts with individuals by;
- letter
- web contact
- recorded telephone message
- printed material (eg Council minutes)
- scanned images
- The Process Manager will allow the 'scoring' of profile at both Organisational and Individual level. In 2006 we will introducing automated mapping at both hierarchical levels
- Survey Manager permits the building, automated data collection, storage and analysis and reporting of any sort of survey
- Query Manager permits the selection of individuals or cohorts on the basis of any database variables
- Campaign Manager allows you to establish, run, handle response, run ROI's, store and learn from your multi-channel stakeholder campaigns
MarketDeveloper injects systems and rationality to the complex process of Stakeholder Management. It allows your teams the power to manage the process from one source.
Simon Davis is Managing Director of MarketDeveloper Ltd, one of the UK's leading producers of hosted Marketing, Sales and CRM solutions. MarketDeveloper Ltd were amongst the first to market with 'evaluate' in 2000 and the current version is marketed under the MarketDeveloper brand name.
Copyright 2006 MarketDeveloper Ltd
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www.marketdeveloper.com
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