How to conduct a stakeholder analysis?

• Organize group brainstorming. Identify all the people, groups, and institutions that will affect or be affected by your project and list them in the column under “Stakeholder”.
• Once you have a list of all potential stakeholders, review the list and identify the specific interests these stakeholders have in your project. Consider issues like: the project’s benefit(s) to the stakeholder; the changes that the project might require the stakeholder to make; and the project activities that might cause damage or conflict for the stakeholder. Record these under the column “Stakeholder Interest(s) in the Project”.
• Review each stakeholder listed in column one. Ask the question: how important are the stakeholder’s interests to the success of the proposed project? Consider:
  • The role the key stakeholder must play for the project to be successful, and the likelihood that the stakeholder will play this role
  • The likelihood and impact of a stakeholder’s negative response to the project
    Assign A for extremely important, B for important, and C for not very important. Record these letters in the column entitled “Assessment of Impact” (Schmeer, 2000).

• Consider the kinds of things that you could do to get stakeholder support and reduce opposition. Consider how you might approach each of the stakeholders. What kind of information will they need? How important is it to involve the stakeholder in the planning process? Are there other groups or individuals that might influence the stakeholder to support your initiative? Record your strategies for obtaining support or reducing obstacles to your project in the last column in the matrix (Schmeer, 2000).

Guidance for using Stakeholder map:

• High power, interested people: these are the people you must fully engage and make the greatest efforts to satisfy.
• High power, less interested people: put enough work into these people to keep them satisfied, but not so much that they become bored with your message.
• Low power, interested people: keep these people adequately informed, and talk to them to ensure that no major issues are arising. These people can often be very helpful with the detail of your project.
• Low power, less interested people: again, monitor these people, but do not bore them with excessive communication (Schmeer, 2000).

The needs of stakeholders with low power, but high or medium interest should be addressed mainly through continuous, selected information distribution. Gaining the support of these stakeholders through lobbying can be a good tactic because they can be valuable allies in influencing the attitudes of other, more powerful stakeholders.

Stakeholders with high or medium power, but low interest, are often difficult to plan with and to develop consistent strategies. These stakeholders might, in general, be quite passive, but might unexpectedly exercise their power in reaction to a particular event or policy. Under-estimation of this group can have disastrous consequences for the adoption of the new approach. These stakeholders should be kept satisfied through continuous communication, and possibly also through selected involvement to focal activities.

Stakeholders in the middle of the power/interest matrix with relatively high power and interest should be encouraged for a solid and continuous support of the work and activities undertaken. These stakeholders can be valuable resources and also provide required support to plan and initiate new ideas.