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Raveena is opening a cloud kitchen in Gurugram from where she will deliver food to all of Delhi-NCR. Starting a food business involves getting several approvals and certifications, and she makes a list of all she has to do.
She has everything in order and the kitchen opens. But just two days in, the delivery service flags an issue—Raveena doesn’t have her GST registration, and this is essential to work with her service provider of choice. All work grinds to a halt while she scrambles to get her paperwork in order.
How could Raveena have avoided this? Had she put together a stakeholder analysis matrix, she could have anticipated this need and prevented the unscheduled closure.
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What Is A Stakeholder Analysis Matrix?
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Stakeholder Responsibility Matrix
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Benefits Of Stakeholder Analysis
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Learn More About Stakeholder Matrix
What Is A Stakeholder Analysis Matrix?
A stakeholder is anyone with any interest in a business, no matter how big or small. Raveena’s stakeholders could include her employees, investors, family members, social media influencers, trade bodies, suppliers and—as she found out too late—her preferred delivery service. Some of these are vital to the functioning of the business while others have a supporting part to play.
The steps in stakeholder analysis appear straightforward—the team or organization needs to make a comprehensive list of all stakeholders and then put them into categories, depending on how closely they are likely to be involved. This helps understand what work needs to be done to ensure buy-in from each of them. It can be more complicated if the team doesn’t have a good grasp on all the processes involved in the task that has been set for them.
Stakeholder Responsibility Matrix
Once the process of stakeholder analysis is complete, we can divide them into four major categories in the Power-Interest Matrix.
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High Power, High Interest
These people command attention at all times. It could be a hands-on investor or Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the organization. Getting stakeholders to buy-in from this group is critical to achieving goals and someone must monitor them closely.
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High Power, Low Interest
These are the people who wield power but aren’t interested in the organization’s operations on a day-to-day basis. It could include a trade organization that provides certification or a community group. It’s important to reach out to these people, but it’s unnecessary to involve them in business decisions or communications.
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High Interest, Low Power
They will be closely involved with the business or project, but have a minimal say in the decision-making. However, this doesn’t mean they don’t have a role to play and keeping them informed is important. If an organization is building a new factory, the local community would be included in this category.
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Low Power, Low Interest
These are the people who aren’t highly involved with the organization or the project and have limited control in the stakeholder matrix. However, by keeping them in mind and monitoring them loosely, the project manager will make sure they’ve missed nothing. This group could include the public or the organization's future employees.
Benefits Of Stakeholder Analysis
As is clear from any example of a stakeholder matrix, there are several advantages of creating a grid. Here are a few to consider.
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Identifying Potential Hurdles
When starting off on a project, creating a list of stakeholders allows a team to see the road ahead more clearly. If they’ve missed any important stakeholders, it may cause problems and delays down the line. This is one of the primary reasons stakeholder analysis in project management is a critical step to complete before work begins
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Building Ownership
By creating a stakeholder responsibility matrix, it clearly defines all those with an interest in what the organization is doing. They can be taken on board for inputs and ideas. This creates a stronger result and also builds a sense of ownership and goodwill
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Encouraging Engagement
Getting stakeholders involved can be a means of getting the organization’s message out even before launch. For instance, ahead of big tech launches, organizations send samples out to their loyal followers who can then do unboxing, reviews and post on social media, resulting in anticipation and strong launch sales
Learn More About Stakeholder Matrix
Stakeholder analysis in project management is one of the advanced skills tackled in Harappa’s High Performing Leaders program. Perfect for managers in sales and delivery teams with over 10 years’ experience, the course covers this and much more in its 30 hours of material. Stakeholder maps, the RACI matrix and Pareto Analysis are just a few of the critical project planning and management tools covered through a mix of self-paced learning and live masterclasses with top faculty. Habit drills instill sustained behavior change and observed feedback provides learners with an assessment against pre-program skills benchmarking to ensure they achieve learning outcomes.
Explore Harappa Diaries to learn more about topics such as Who is a Project Manager, Must-Have Skills For Leadership, Top Behavioral Skills For Managers, Operational Manager Skills & Managerial Roles And Skills that will help organizations tap into their employee's potential.
