Stakeholders are an important part of any business development. When starting any business or project, many decisions need to be made. One of the most important decisions is effectively managing stakeholders. Whether you are launching a new product, starting a new project, or implementing a change in your business. In all these cases, it is crucial to ensure that our plan is successful and conflicts are minimised. In all these cases, it is essential to manage stakeholders properly. If you fail to manage stakeholders properly, your business may face losses, and you might encounter failure in your project. If you manage stakeholders effectively, you can easily build strong relationships and eliminate obstacles in your business or project. If you want to know more about the stakeholder this article will be very beneficial for you. In this article, we will guide you with all the essential information about stakeholders that you need to know.
What is Stakeholder Management?
Project stakeholders might include internal ones (like members of your team) and external stakeholders (like customers, suppliers). Each has norms, interests, and personalities that mix up to affect the project delivery negatively or positively.
Stakeholder management is ensuring the understanding of what every stakeholder wants from the project.
As an example, Stakeholder management, in other terms, can be termed as the process of interacting with an individual who will be influenced towards one's project success or lay-down failure in terms of a profession.
Strong stakeholder management will assist you to:
Build good relationships with stakeholdersCommunicate with stakeholdersIdentify and deal with risks associated with stakeholdersMaximise opportunities for successful project deliveryThe importance of stakeholder management
We will explore the importance of stakeholder management.
Enhanced project success
Efficient engagement with the stakeholders enables the project to achieve its objectives in line with stakeholder expectations. The initiation of attempts to engage stakeholders early enough and continually during project execution ensures that their needs will be collected and integrated into the planning and execution of the project. As a result, there would be improvement in project outflow since stakeholders would feel more at ease with participating in a project that addresses their concerns while delivering value.
Better risk management
Stakeholder management helps identify the potential risks and issues earlier in the life-cycle of the project and engages these stakeholders so that proactive measures can be expected by project managers from those areas where problems might otherwise arise before they become large-scale issues. Stakeholders may be able to uncover project-related issues in addition.
Better management of risk
Management of stakeholders allows for the early identification of possible risks and issues in the life cycle of a project. That is, making a point to include the stakeholder in the participation process allows a project manager to preempt and mitigate risks before they develop into major incidents. Stakeholders have some insight into possible impediments as well.
Improved communication
Stakeholder management, thus, implies open and transparent communication between the stakeholders and the project team. Regular updates on status, changes, and critical decisions help build trust, collaboration, and alignment. Clear communication invites stakeholder feedback and engagement in the success of the project.
Efficient conflict resolution
The management of stakeholders supports the identification and settlement of various interests or priorities. Open dialog and negotiations by the stakeholders create win-win scenarios. The project manager also uses stakeholder analysis to appreciate power bases and influence of different stakeholders.
Sustainable long-term relationships
Good stakeholder management paves the ground for broad and long-lasting relationships within the firm and out there with the stakeholders. For example, they develop trust through regular solicitations and responses to their complaints and concerns- address their feelings, engage in their interests, and provide them with resources. Such positive relationships would allow room for future possibilities as partnerships and support toward the organisation's initiatives.
Stakeholder Management Process
Get to master the arts of effective stakeholder management by enrolling in our Stakeholder Management Training course for Projects!
We will discuss the Stakeholder Management Process through some important steps:
Stakeholder Analysis
The analysis concerning stakeholders becomes extremely important as a step in project management that tries to identify and understand the people, groups, or organisations that can influence or be affected by a project. In doing so, project managers should well engage with stakeholders, address their issues, align their expectations with that simple process, and read more on stakeholder analysis as a process.
Stakeholder Identification
Stakeholder Identification is the initial step in the stakeholder analysis process and forms the basis of the stakeholder management plan. This process, as the name indicates, intends to identify all your internal and external stakeholders. These stakeholders will later be analyzed, prioritized, and involved.
Some of the factors to consider by project managers during the stakeholder identification process are:
Review project planning documents such as your project charter to help identify stakeholder information.Identify any government regulations that apply to your project. If so, those government agencies become project stakeholders.Ask your team members and other internal stakeholders for input.Identify all the people and organizations that support your supply chain.Stakeholder Mapping
It's now time to assess the interest levels and the power or influence of all internal and external stakeholders in your project. An important step in the stakeholder relationship management process because only then will you have all the info needed for stakeholder prioritization.
Stakeholder Prioritisation
Once you have your complete list, you are ready to begin ranking your project stakeholders according to their importance to the project. Identify which among them has an upper hand in terms of serving influence over the project and being affected by it.
Next, keeping key stakeholders in mind will facilitate monitoring of said stakeholders and
deciding which of the suitable strategies to opt for in stakeholder management to keep them satisfied.
Stakeholder Engagement
Lastly, you figure out how to engage your stakeholders with the information forged in mapping them. This process entails deciding how to interact and communicate with your project stakeholders.
Thereupon follows a communication plan that indicates how often and through which channels you will communicate with each stakeholder in your project. Use our template to plan your communications.
Enhance Your Skills with the British Academy for Training and Development
Stakeholder management is one of the greatest skills of project managers and business leaders. Through best practices and organised processes, you can navigate the dynamics of the stakeholder successfully for project wins and future business growth. Access advanced training in stakeholder management! Enroll for Stakeholder Management Training for Projects at the British Academy for Training and Development today and learn practical measures for managing stakeholder relations.