You should understand the stakeholder needs to ensure change projects are successful.

Stakeholders include anyone impacted by the outcome of your work. They might be close to the project, in the wider system, or somewhere in between. You should think of them as users too.

Understanding stakeholder needs offers many benefits:

  • allows you to navigate the organisation and understand the landscape better
  • creates opportunities for support by finding the best incentives aligned to project goals
  • uncovers and addresses conflicts or concerns to avoid late surprises that affect success

When to engage with stakeholders

You can identify who to influence, communicate with and involve at any moment within your project.

How to understand your stakeholders

This resource provides a combination of templates to help you understand your stakeholders by:

  • identifying who they are
  • grouping and prioritising their needs
  • planning how to involve them in your work

Map your stakeholders

Start by writing down all the stakeholders, including individuals, groups or organisations, who will be involved and can influence your project.

Group them by the different types of stakeholders:

  • core team: this is your day-to-day project team, working together to meet your user needs and project outcomes
  • involved: these are subject matter experts and people with specialist skills who you might need to collaborate with during the project. There will also be decision makers in this group who you need to involve and consult
  • informed: this group will include people less involved in your project. They still have a stake in its outcomes, and may cover other areas of your organisation, or outside partners

Next, move each stakeholder to the map template and discuss where to place them. Once agreed, you should then identify the best communication and involvement strategies for each group.

Create stakeholder profiles

Use these templates to share information about your stakeholders within the project team. This will help you to identify any gaps in knowledge or opportunities to address.

Add information about each stakeholder. This allows you to identify their roles, interests and concerns. It should also help you think about how they might be able to support the project.

This level of detail works well for the main stakeholders. Once filled out and shared, the whole project team will have access to these useful details.

Create a system stakeholder map

Use this template to identify the system connections in your change project. The system could be the service area you are working in, the local neighbourhood, or as big as the national view of your project.

It will also help you to understand the stakeholders relationship to the wider system, and how you can plan for and make use of those connections.

Start by creating a broad list of all the people in the wider system. Once identified, place the stakeholders into the matrix. The matrix asks you to identify the power and interest levels of each stakeholder to help you understand who to closely engage with throughout the project.

What you can do next

You should now have a better understanding of which stakeholders to engage with throughout your project. This will be based on their needs, their place in the system and how they can support the project.

You can also include some of the details about stakeholders as part of understanding your user needs.

You can recreate this resource in a format that suits you.

Map your stakeholders

  1. Draw three nested (technically known as concentric) circles as large as you can on a sheet of paper or other working surface.
  2. Label the central circle ‘core’.
  3. Label the middle circle ‘involved’.
  4. Label the outer circle ‘informed’.
  5. On post it notes, list down all of the stakeholders and then place them onto the map.
  6. Once completed, add three column headings to another sheet or working area:
    • stakeholders
    • what is the best communication channel and method available?
    • who will be involved and when?
  7. Copy across your stakeholders to the first column and fill out the other two columns with the relevant information.

Create stakeholder profiles

  1. Divide a sheet of paper into eight equal sections.
  2. Along the top four, add the headings:
    • name, leaving space for an image
    • my role and responsibilities are…
    • I can offer expertise in…
    • things I’m doing that might be an opportunity for your project…
  3. Along the lower four sections, add the headings:
    • job title
    • priorities I care most about…
    • how I tend to work…
    • things I’m doing that might affect your project…
  4. Now you are ready to fill out the sections for the stakeholder you are profiling.

System stakeholder map

  1. Similar to the stakeholder map, draw four nested circles as large as you can on a sheet of paper or working surface. In the resource, these circles are nested but not centrally (known as eccentric circles). Either works.
  2. Label the smallest circle ’individual’.
  3. Label the outward circle ‘social environment’.
  4. Label the third circlet ‘services and organisations’.
  5. Label the final circle ‘policy and society’.
  6. On post it notes, list down all of the stakeholders and then place them onto the map.
  7. Draw a cross with a horizontal and vertical line which intersect in the middle. The horizontal line represents interest. The vertical line represents power. Go from left to right, and bottom to top, as both values increase.
  8. Now you are ready to place the stakeholders into the matrix according to the power and interest levels of each stakeholder.