You will need to collaborate with stakeholders whether you are working on a project, leading a team, or trying to get a new idea approved by the board.
A key competency of the modern manager is stakeholder management, which is used to convince others to support your ideas.
Stakeholder analysis is useful for determining who to recruit, who to approach, and with whom to spend your time and effort when attempting to forge lasting relationships.
By collaborating with the right people, you can use their insights to win the support of others. More resources for your project and other ideas may be obtained with its assistance.
Maintaining relationships with your stakeholders will help you get the support you need for your ideas. You can more easily sway people by gathering suggestions, advice, and ideas from others.
You must first identify your stakeholders in order to conduct a stakeholder analysis. Once you have done that, you can begin to identify the key stakeholders.
Think of internal and external people. Write them in a list. Capture their name and job titles. Consider the connections between them as well. e. do they know each other and if so how.
Consider their needs, what matters to them, what they want to know and what they don’t want to know, how well they currently know you (do you have credibility), what concerns them, and who else they are connected to.
Learn everything you can about them because doing so will help you develop a plan to improve your interactions with them.
Relationships are the foundation of effective influencing, but the first step in that process is identifying the people with whom to spend time and effort.
- The power/interest grid has an x axis for interest and y axis for power.
- The grid is split into four quadrants, the bottom left is keep informed; the top left is actively consult; top right is actively engage; and bottom right is maintain interest.
Power/Interest Grid | Stakeholder Analysis
How to use a power interest grid
Here are six steps for using a power interest grid:
Create your stakeholder management plan
You can create a plan for how and when to communicate with stakeholders based on category once you’ve used the populated grid to categorize them. Project managers frequently group each type of stakeholder into the following categories:
This category is for high-power and high-interest stakeholders. These are your most important stakeholders. To ensure their ongoing satisfaction with the project’s goals and progress, you can prepare to maintain regular contact with them.
This category is for high-power and low-interest stakeholders. These stakeholders are crucial, but you might not communicate with them as frequently as those who are closely managed. But when you do speak with them, make sure to give them all the details to prevent any mistakes. Their strong position allows them to influence the project’s progress.
This category is for low-power and high-interest stakeholders. It’s advantageous to maintain sporadic contact with them as they might have suggestions and direction for the project as well as early notice of any emerging issues. You could, for instance, organize public forums or other gatherings to invite interested parties to talk about the status of the project.
This category is for low-power and low-interest stakeholders. Although you can try to stay in touch with them because they are your lowest priority, you might not communicate with them as frequently as you do with your other stakeholders. If you have extra time or resources after speaking with other stakeholders, you might think about using posters or other forms of advertising to quickly inform them.
What is a power interest grid?
An instrument for locating, classifying, and managing stakeholders is a power interest grid, also known as a power interest matrix. This straightforward table, which has an axis for both “Power” and “Interest,” can assist a manager in categorizing each stakeholder into distinct groups. To manage stakeholder communication and guarantee satisfaction, project managers can establish a grid early on in a project and use it throughout all of the project’s phases, from conception to completion.
We must first identify our stakeholders before we can start managing them. Stakeholders can either be individuals (e. g. the project sponsor) or groups of people (e. g. our customers, the general public, or staff).
I’ll discuss the Power Interest Matrix in this blog post as one of the resources I use to manage project stakeholders.
Good communication is crucial to successful stakeholder management, but we can only communicate with people, not with organizations. As a result, if our stakeholder groups consist of organizations, we must consider who we will communicate with.
Identifying our stakeholders is the first step in our stakeholder analysis. The project manager should be in charge of a small team from the core of the project to handle this. Consider all the parties involved in the project, those with power or influence over it, and those with a stake in its success or failure.
Let’s define what a stakeholder is first, especially in relation to projects and change.
What is a Power Interest Grid?
A technique for managing stakeholders that is based on the strength and influence of the stakeholder in the project is called a “Power Interest Grid” or “Power Interest Matrix.” It measures each project stakeholder’s level of influence and power. Create a stakeholder mapping grid to gauge each stakeholder’s influence and interest in the project. Based on the documentation already in existence, workshops, and business process maps, one can determine each stakeholder’s contribution.
An analysis of the stakeholders in Power Interest Grid is helpful for categorizing them and for formulating plans for managing each of them with priority in the project. A communication plan will help in creating this. High-power and high-interest stakeholders will participate regularly in this communication plan, while low-power and low-interest stakeholders do not need to be communicated with on a regular basis. Nevertheless, the project’s stakeholders should not be disregarded because of their contribution.
The role of each stakeholder in the project is objectively depicted using a Power Interest Grid template. This results in seamless project management. The project success rate increases if the project manager is capable of managing the project’s stakeholders. All stakeholders are not alike. Project managers need to be able to manage each stakeholder individually based on their project preferences. Gaining a deep understanding of project management and stakeholders is made possible by the Power Interest Grid stakeholders.
Low Interest / Low Power
You will currently have the least concern for this particular group. Even though you don’t want to completely ignore them, their low power and low level of interest put them naturally at the bottom of your list.
For instance, because they aren’t particularly interested in your project, they won’t want to be informed frequently about its progress. However, since they have little influence over you or the project itself, it wouldn’t be wise for you to communicate with them frequently. The best approach in this case can be called ‘monitoring’. Keep an eye on these individuals, interact with them when necessary, but don’t let them consume too much of your time.
FAQ
How would you use the power interest grid in your stakeholder management strategy?
You can determine who has the most or least influence over your project and who has the most or least interest by plotting your stakeholders on a power/interest grid. High power individuals must be kept happy, and high interest individuals must be kept informed.
What is a power influence grid?
A straightforward tool that aids in categorizing project stakeholders according to their level of power and influence over the project is the Power/Influence Grid, also referred to as the Power/Influence Matrix in stakeholder management. This tool is very similar to the Power/Interest grid.
What is the best way to manage stakeholders which are low on power and interest?
Low power – High interest: keep them well informed and communicate with them to ensure that no significant issues are developing. These people can frequently be very beneficial for your project’s specific details. Low power, low interest: keep an eye on them, but avoid droning them with unnecessary communication
What is the difference between power and interest?
According to their level of authority (“power”) and level of interest (“interest”) in the project’s outcomes, the stakeholders are grouped in the power/interest grid model.
