Effective Stakeholder Management

Programs bring together a mix of advocate and adversaries. Programs teams attempt to satisfy regulators and consumers. Who will triumph-those wishing the program success or failure? Or will it be those who are pushing for the program to switch direction albeit slightly in order to add a savory bit of scope? And who will judge the program’s success?

Programs are surrounded by people who would like to influence or be influenced by the program. These individuals are refereed to as stakeholders and they represent both a threat and an opportunity to the program’s management teams.

While stakeholder have the power to ensure a program fails, the programs teams need to have a proper plan in place to identify their stakeholders needs and communicate as well as engage with them. A program’s stakeholder management plan should be a key element of the program’s teams planning effort.

Program management teams therefore need to devise processes and techniques that they will put in place to engage, manage and guide the various program stakeholders.

For the programs team to put together an effective stakeholder engagement plan, the teams’ immediate step would be to identify anyone who is affected by the program-name or company-after which, they get categorized.

These should be stakeholders who; will be affected positively or negatively by the program, have power over the program, would like to ensure the project fails as well as those who would like to see the program come to fruition.

It’s therefore imperative for program teams to develop a well though out stakeholder management plan that they will use for their stakeholder management. These steps will ensure that the base is covered;

List the program’s stakeholders:

Knowing the program’s stakeholders is imperative. And this falls into internal and external stakeholders.

Internal stakeholders are typically those within the organization and have key interest in the completion of the program such as the heads of departments. These stakeholders affect the program directly or indirectly by influencing the direction of their departments on the program.

External stakeholders are typically part of the organization itself but made up of investors, users or customers, the fourth estate, related businesses, oversight authorities, quality assurance or Governments.

Prioritize the stakeholders:

Different stakeholders will wedge varied levels of influence at different stages of the program implementation cycle. This therefore means that the programs teams ought to understand that those priorities can flex at different program points.

The programs team also need to be aware that as the program moves into the implementation phase, stakeholders with special interest in the implementation will have their goals elevated over planning.

Interview the stakeholders:

Program teams need to understand their stakeholders-some are easier to manage than others- hence the need to contact stakeholder interview.

Through the interviews, the programs team obtain a solid understanding of their stakeholders’ feelings-negative or positive- about their program and at this stage, their perspectives might shift. The team also determines stakeholders with a stronger set of views and those whose views are flexible and open to compromise. This will help mitigate any stop gaps along the program implementation.

Develop a Matrix:

A quick mock-up of a quadrant to sort the program teams’ findings will aid in distinguishing those with high interest, high priority versus low interest and those in between.

Set and Manage Expectations:

Setting and managing expectations is the nucleus of stakeholder management for programs and organizations. This has an immense direct impact on whether a program succeeds or not.

Once the team outlines their matric and have priorities and interests, then the program plan can be drawn. Clearly identifying which stages each key stakeholder will be involved in and time lines by which their feedback is needed.

Whereas stakeholders can assist make it an extremely easy process by contributing funds, resources, materials, tools and relevant expertise, poor stakeholder management can make it extremely chunky process with a lot of messy red tape during the implementation.

Stakeholder management is also important from a Public Relations perspective-stakeholders don’t work alone; they hear about the program progress from other sources and stakeholders involved. Hence the need to keep the communication line with stakeholders open.

Keeping that line of open communication is a salient step to applying risk management to people as a way to mitigate against program failure. Most programs fail as a result of interests and lack of attention to the requirements of stakeholders.