Tools For Stakeholder Analysis
There are many tools available for stakeholder analysis, however none is as efficient as a person's mind. When you're using a pre-set matrix to analyze your stakeholders, it's important to keep in mind that this isn't a fool-proof way to understand the interests and needs of your stakeholders. While you can quantify the financial investment of a stakeholder, there are many other factors that are nearly impossible to quantify.
To truly care for your stakeholders in the best possible way, it is important to analyze them as individuals. When starting this, gather the members of your team and have those who are most familiar with the individual stakeholder offer a more personal analysis. It may be that a certain individual is very supportive of the project as it stands, but has plans to pull all support if even a minor change is made. Others who are against your project may be brought on board with small tweaks to the business plan.
As you're assessing your stakeholders, you should also determine the best plan of action for including them in future developments. If you have a close relationship with one stakeholder, it may be that you can simply communicate news and updates via regular phone calls. Others may feel that this is too informal and prefer a regular newsletter. Some people love brief memos that keep them in the loop while others prefer in-depth reports. Obviously, you cannot make every stakeholder happy. However, if you have two or three very important stakeholders with different personality types, it may be worthwhile to cater to their preferences to ensure that you get the support that you need.
You should interact with your stakeholders as often as possible to assess their level of interest and address any concerns that they may have. Sending out a newsletter to all your stakeholders is great, but if you don't provide a way for recipients to interact with you, you won't be able to properly assess their standpoint. Learn as much as you can about how your stakeholders think and what their opinions are.
Stakeholder analysis systems are a good starting point for assessing the important stakeholders for your business, but they should not serve as the end-all for your business analysis. Keep in mind that human interactions and flexible analysis tools that let you take a more objective look at the situation will always be better for fine-tuning your business goals and processes.
