Effective stakeholder management
Engaging stakeholders is essential in any form of business development activity, including partnering and alliances. However it's generally not done well and is one of the reasons why projects get delayed, cancelled late on or fail soon after launch meaning a great deal of investment gets wasted.
With organizations having fewer resources that must do more things it's also important to focus energy on the stakeholders that are going to make a difference. Of course not all stakeholders are equal and nor should they be treated as such. We introduced a Stakeholder Map that helps teams quickly identify and create strategies to address stakeholders based on their power and (day to day) interest levels vis-à-vis their other priorities. It is also crucial to understand whether a stakeholder is supporting or sabotaging your project so the Map has a happiness indicator too. This ensures effective engagement of stakeholders leading to optimal resource management and greater probability of project success.
There is a version of the stakeholder map in the book, but we recognize that paper and spreadsheet based tools just don't work well and are inefficient. Its why we built the stakeholder map in PAM. Being easy to use it offers attractive visual feedback to aid communication activity and resource investment; especially important as power, interest and support levels may change over the lifecycle of a project and therefore need close monitoring. Not all team members are always aware of the hot topics and key messages for certain stakeholders. The Map helps teams consider these issues and articulate points that any team member can reinforce as a 'party line' if questioned. This reduces risks of ill informed team members guessing or sharing their 'opinion' which could compromise project success. With alerts, exports and the facility for sharing this tool makes the process of stakeholder management much easier, letting you concentrate on getting the job done well.
To learn more about stakeholder management and PAM as a solution to meet your needs contact us now on either +44 (0)1273 704500 or email enquiries@alliantist.com