By: Muhammad Arif – Account Manager of Fortune PR
As a PR pro, it is critical to conduct stakeholder mapping when starting a project. Stakeholder mapping will help you quickly identified the key stakeholders in each area that you need to engage, types of input they require, and the kind of program they might need.
Stakeholders are people who can affect or is affected by an organization, project, or strategy. They can be internal or external and in the junior or senior level. According to Eden and Ackermann[1], stakeholders are people or small groups with the power to respond, negotiate, and change the future of an organization. Without stakeholders, there would be no projects to manage. The stakeholders are all the interested parties in a project. They are the people who affect and influence the project as well as those who will be influenced by it.
If a company is conducting a CSR project, the stakeholders will be divided into internal and external stakeholders. The internal stakeholders consist of the management, employees, and shareholders. While the external stakeholders consist of vendors, partners, consumers, local government, local police and soldiers, associations, organizations, and institutions involved in the project.
When we are managing a project, it is our full responsibilities to ensure the success. It’s up to us to produce a project on time with an effective budget and the best quality. Conducting stakeholder mapping and the involvement of stakeholders in the project is very important to achieve this goal. If we can manage the stakeholders well, they will actively support your project.
Here are the four steps of stakeholders mapping to gain support and help you to achieve your objective:
- Stakeholders identification
You can identify your stakeholders through brainstorming, mind mapping, creating a list of stakeholders, analyzing the documentation from the previous projects, using organizational charts and directories, and the categorization of stakeholders. The identification is based on the data availability, time, and the number of personnel involved.
- Stakeholders analysis
After all the stakeholders are successfully identified, then we conduct an analysis about the impact and the influence of the stakeholders related to the project’s objectives. This is done by providing a measured value through several categories of stakeholders, which includes power, urgency, legitimacy, influence, and their interest in organization.
- Planning and management
Now it’s time to develop a strategy that will gain more stakeholder involvement. According to Thomspon[2], achieving a win-win negotiation is done when all parties reached an agreement that can no longer be developed further. The key is to manage all the stakeholders well without giving a negative impact to the project or the organization. You can conduct an interview to make them interested, and even focus group discussion or workshop to make them feel involved and to give them opportunities to support a good cause, without having to spend a lot of money.
- Stakeholder engagement
The point of this last step is to figure out how to engage the stakeholders so they can support our messages and the objectives. We start by developing communication and report. Use all the information that we have collected in the previous steps. Record our communication plan and write a report based on the information needed, the frequency of communication, the provider of communication, and the communication channels for each stakeholder. Utilize the existing report to communicate with our main stakeholders, and also don’t forget to make use of technologies like webinar, video conference, internet, and intranet. Updates on our on-going and previous projects achievements can benefit our reputation profile. You can also publish it on the internal magazine.
The right stakeholder mapping will make your stakeholders actively involved and support your project. In the end, this can help you achieve your objectives.
[1] Ackermann, Fran., Eden, Colin., (2011). Strategic management of stakeholders: theory and practice. Long Range Planning. 117. http://www.hadjarian.com/esterategic/tarjomeh/2-90/khamesi.pdf
[2] https://www.med.upenn.edu/gastro/documents/Negotiation.pdf
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