Stakeholder Analysis

Stakeholder Analysis

Due April 3rd.

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The more senior you are in your role, the work you do and the projects you run become more important. That means it will impact more people. Some of these people have the power to undermine your projects and your position. Others may be strong supporters of your work and help you influence.

Today's discomfort challenge provokes you to identify the key stakeholders that can be your long term partners and understand how to win their support.

Make a Copy of the Stakeholder Mapping template we created for you in Figma FigJam. Or feel free to use your own template

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1. Identify and understand your most important stakeholders. Write down their name, their role, their influence in the company, their expertise, the level of trust you have built with them.

• As part of this step, think of all the people who are affected by your work, who have influence or power over it, who give you feedback or people who have an interest in its successful or unsuccessful conclusion.  
• Think of your manager, manager's manager, engineers that work with you, product managers that work with you or are affected by your work, all the people that work closely with you or have an influence on your project.

2. Prioritize them by influence and interest, and plot their name on the Influence/Interest grid.

• The Influence-Interest matrix plots stakeholders along two axes, from low- to high-power and low- to high-interest.
• Each Stakeholder falls into one of four quadrants. Each quadrant calls for a different stakeholder-collaboration strategy.

3. What is the relationship between you and them? visualize that by adding arrows between each stakeholder on the influence Interest Grid.

4. Who are 1-2 key people that are highly influential and interested in your project who can help support you that you would like to connect more deeply with?

• Understand what motivates them and how you need to win them around.
• Ask yourself whether you are communicating as effectively as you should be with them?

After you visualize your Stakeholder Analysis, share in the community the following:

• What did you learn while doing this exercise? Did you find something new that you didn't expect?
• What actions can you take to collaborate better with the 1-2 stakeholders you identified important to build the relationship with? What will win them around to support your project?
• If you don't think that you’ll be able to win them around, how will you manage their opposition? What kind of support/ advice do you need? 

Have fun long the way.

The key with this exercise is not to agonize over whether your stakeholder list is “right.”

By working through the four steps in the mapping process, you will have created a robust, relevant, prioritized stakeholder list that directly applies to your work and goals. However, this is not a static process. The list will evolve over time based on the needs you have so we recommend doing this exercise periodically.

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