Successful implementation of strategy requires very strong stakeholder support. Managers must therefore, carry out stakeholder analysis and address the specific needs of the key stakeholders before and during implementation.
A strategy implementation journey is just like any project with definite life and expected critical outcomes and milestones.
Stakeholders are the people or groups that can influence or are affected by your strategy outcomes, both inside and outside your organisation. Understanding who these are and what they want or expect can help you prepare to deal with their needs and concerns. As is with any change management process, some stakeholders may block your agenda, not because they mean doom, but out of fear that the success of your actions might jeopardise their existing privileges.
Stakeholder analysis helps to understand who will help and who is likely to hamper your strategy. The analysis also helps to identify communication and management strategies needed for your strategy to succeed. It is the key stakeholders that will make the resources you need available and support you when change management will be necessary that need most attention. To achieve this, managers must undertake a deliberate process to identify these key stakeholders. One of the ways is through a stakeholder analysis matrix.
The most important outcome of a stakeholder analysis is to know which stakeholders will support you, and which are likely to block you. If you know this, you can manage your stakeholders effectively and accordingly.
Based on your analysis you will be able to anticipate which stakeholders will require some change management as you progress through your strategy journey.
A strategy journey is an improvement and change management process. Not everyone is open to improvement projects, and not everyone believes that the improvement will really better their positions. So as you work hard to achieve better results, this group will be working even harder to defeat or overturn any achievements you might realise.
Therefore, they need to be identified early, and appropriate strategies put in place to manage them and minimize or eliminate the impact of their actions.
The first step to a stakeholder analysis is to identify who the stakeholders are. The process of identifying stakeholders requires careful and cautious efforts from the Strategy Management Team. This activity would normally include identifying individuals, groups of individuals or enterprises that will influence the strategic projects and/or will be impacted by the projects.
Document relevant information about all such individuals, groups of individuals or enterprises and also about their interests and involvement in the project. Document how these individuals and enterprises can influence the project and how they can be impacted by the project and determine their levels of importance.
The second step is to prioritise your stakeholders by looking at how much interest they have in your strategic projects and how much power they have. Groups that can provide resources or take away resources are very crucial for the success of the strategy. With the help of four square, stakeholder power interest matrix, you will get four key stakeholders and develop specific strategies to manage them effectively.
In the matrix, you will need to keep high power and low interest stakeholders satisfied during the entire strategy implementation phase. Provide them with periodic feedback on implementation progress, deviations and challenges and updates on processes to bring performance back on track.
Manage high power and high interest stakeholders closely. Provide them with periodic feedback and seek approvals on key milestones prior to rollout.
Keep low power and high interest stakeholders informed.
Provide them with why it is necessary to start the strategy journey, address their concerns and assure them on how the strategy will affect them for the better, and provide regular updates on progress to forestall any rumors and anxiety. Employees may rank in this category and you do not want to experience labor strife and strike in the middle of a strategy rollout.
Low power and low Interest stakeholders should be monitored with minimum effort. General publics can be grouped here and occasional press releases can adequately address this group of stakeholders.
Shareholders of public companies is an important stakeholder whose day-to-day oversight role is delegated to the management boards.
They are a high power and high interest group that must be on-boarded the strategy train through approval of the overall strategy and regular updates at the annual general meeting.
The benefits of stakeholder analysis include being able to identify the most powerful stakeholders and have them help shape your strategy in its early stages.
Stakeholder analysis avoids early stage difficulties and strategy failures. It also ensures their buy-in, secure their support, not to mention the valuable input they could give.
A good stakeholder analysis will show you how people will react to changes due to your strategic projects and will guide you to win over difficult stakeholders.
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