Not all stakeholders are created equal.

If you’ve ever been part of a stakeholder mapping workshop, you’ll know that it doesn’t take much to identify a wide array of stakeholders, no matter what your change or transformation program is about. In any well-run brainstorming session, people will submit their ideas and you’ll end up with a huge number of stakeholders.

In fact, in the last stakeholder mapping session I hosted, in a fairly short group brainstorming activity, we came up with a total of more than 100 stakeholders combined in the first pass. Obviously, that can be a pretty overwhelming number to deal with.

Most change teams are running pretty lean these days. And to actually deliver effective and sustainable change, they have a lot to do.

Identifying stakeholders is an important task - because you and the team can’t be all things to everyone. You need to focus your energies on where you’ll get the biggest bang for your buck.

The success of your change or transformation program rides on how well you engage with key stakeholders throughout the change journey.
So, identifying your most important stakeholders, and then investing your change effort accordingly, becomes absolutely critical.

You need to focus on the relationships that matter the most - or else you just won’t get anywhere.

That’s why, on today’s episode of The New Way podcast, I’m sharing 5 super clarifying and no-fail questions I use to identify the most important stakeholders in any change program.

In this episode, I cover the questions I use to easily:

Figure out which stakeholders are most influential to the change program
Uncover potential dependencies and common interests with key stakeholders
Know what to do with stakeholders you *must* have on side to land the change

By the way, these questions are approach agnostic, so no matter what stakeholder mapping and analysis the change team is going with, or which change management method your organisation uses, the insights you get from your responses to these questions will be game-changing.

Listen in to (and bookmark!) this super practical episode so you can use these powerful questions anytime you want to uncover your most critical stakeholders.

TOPICS DISCUSSED AND WHERE TO FIND THEM:

[1:30]: Stakeholders are people, groups or organisations that have some form of interest in the change program.

[3:07]: Not all stakeholders are created equal.

[3:50]: You and the team cannot be all things to everyone. You need to know where to focus your energy.

[4:27]: An initial group brainstorming session is a great way to get started. You then need to distinguish which stakeholders are the most important to the success of your program. Then plan your engagement and communications accordingly.

[5:40]: Take some time to list out all of the different stakeholders you can think of.

[6:26]: 1st question - Does this stakeholder have a critical impact on the success of the transformation program?

[7:21]: 2nd question - Is this stakeholder directly involved with the input and/or the output of this change program?

[8:27]: 3rd question - Does this stakeholder have a common interest in the success of this transformation program?

[9:37]: 4th question - Can we deliver the organisational change without this stakeholder being on board with the change program?

[10:20]: 5th question - Do you need to grow the relationship with this stakeholder for the change program to be successful?

[12:35]: When you focus on any candidate and ask these five questions, you will quickly identify your most important stakeholders who are really worth investing your time and energy in.

LINKS

Website: https://www.everchange.com.au/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drkatebyrne/

5 Questions To Help Identify Your Most Important Stakeholders