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About this lesson

Every stakeholder is unique and their influence and impact on the project is likely to be unique. Understanding their perspective assists the project manager and team in structuring the project so as to obtain their support and effective decision-making on the project.

Quick reference

Stakeholder Influence

Stakeholder engagement and influence will vary.  Understanding each stakeholder’s perspective can assist in determining the interaction strategy that should be used with that stakeholder.

When to use

The project manager should regularly assess the interaction strategy to be used.  Stakeholder interest in a project will change as business conditions and project performance change.  At a minimum, the project manager should assess stakeholders at the beginning of each project phase.

Instructions

There are many ways to predict a stakeholder’s influence on a project.  The interaction cube provides a framework for assessing stakeholders and determining an appropriate interaction strategy.

Interaction Cube

The stakeholder interaction cube uses three stakeholder attributes to determine the optimal interaction strategy.  The three attributes are the stakeholder’s interest in the project goals, their attitude towards the project and project management approach, and finally, their power to directly affect project activities. The project manager should assess each stakeholder against those three characteristics.

  • High Power, High Interest, Positive Attitude – Pillar of support, interact regularly with full and open communication.
  • High Power, High Interest, Negative Attitude – Saboteur, This stakeholder can create major problems for the project, be on the defensive with them.
  • High Power, Low Interest, Positive Attitude – These can become key supportive stakeholders, if you can get them to focus on the project, win them over by ensuring that the project will meet one of their goals.
  • High Power, Low Interest, Negative Attitude – Although a potentially influential stakeholder, since they are negative and uninterested, don’t annoy them.
  • Low Power, High Interest, Positive Attitude – This stakeholder is friendly to the project, but cannot directly impact it.  So, leverage their support with others who have power.
  • Low Power, High Interest, Negative Attitude – This stakeholder is often an irritant.  Their negative attitude has them complaining about the project, but they have no power to directly affect anything.
  • Low Power, Low Interest, Positive Attitude – This individual is a bystander who can encourage others but has no ability to directly affect the project.  Engage them to endorse the project with others.
  • Low Power, Low Interest, Negative Attitude – This individual is not a factor and can be ignored. 

Decision Matrix

Stakeholders are often engaged in the project at the time that critical decisions are made.  That is an appropriate time for them to influence project direction and activities.  However, the uncertain nature of projects means that often the information from which to make a decision is either unreliable or unstable, meaning that it is not based upon facts and is constantly changing.  A project manager should set expectations with stakeholders about the decision-making progress based upon the nature of the information. 

  • When working with fixed facts, a final decision can be made.
  • When working with fixed opinions, the stakeholders can decide and the project should proceed along the decision path, but it should also seek out information and facts to validate the decision.  If the facts, once they are available, show a contrary conclusion is better, the decision should be revisited.
  • When working with fluid or unstable facts, the facts that are available can often serve to rule out some options.  This sets the boundaries of acceptable approaches and allows the team to focus on a general direction, but no final decision can be made.
  • When there are only opinions and those are often changing, no final decision can be made.  However, the project manager and stakeholders can at least decide to start on a possible path and begin to collect data.

Hints & tips

  • Don’t treat every project stakeholder the same way.  Decide what strategy best fits the situation.
  • You normally do not have enough time and resources to provide in-depth interactions with all stakeholders.  Prioritize those with the most power to affect the project.
  • When conducting a major review or stakeholder meeting without a full and complete set of facts to support a decision, review the decision matrix to set expectations with the stakeholders.
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  • 00:04 Hi, I'm Ray Sheen.
  • 00:05 Let's now look at stakeholder influence, both how you can influence them and
  • 00:10 how they influence the project.
  • 00:13 Let's start by looking at the stakeholder influence cube.
  • 00:16 Power is on one side, interest on another, and attitude on the third.
  • 00:20 For power and interest the corners are low and high.
  • 00:24 For attitude the corners are positive and negative.
  • 00:27 The positive stakeholder who is also interested, but
  • 00:31 has no power is your friend, leverage their support where you can.
  • 00:35 The positive stakeholder who is powerful, but
  • 00:38 not interested in is the unfocused stakeholder.
  • 00:41 In this case, you need to gain their interest and win them over.
  • 00:45 The stakeholder who is interested and powerful, but
  • 00:48 negative towards the project is a saboteur.
  • 00:51 You need to defend the project and your team from them.
  • 00:54 The stakeholder who is interested, but with low power and
  • 00:57 a negative attitude is an irritant.
  • 01:00 Do your best to pacify them.
  • 01:02 The stakeholder who has no power or interest, but
  • 01:05 is otherwise positive is just a bystander.
  • 01:08 Consider engaging with them to turn them into a friend.
  • 01:11 The stakeholder who has power, but is uninterested and
  • 01:14 likely negative as a sleeping dog.
  • 01:17 Don't annoy them and turn them into a saboteur.
  • 01:21 If they aren't interested, have no power, and will likely be negative,
  • 01:24 they're not a player with respect to your project.
  • 01:27 I suggest you ignore them.
  • 01:28 You have too many other things to worry about.
  • 01:32 If the stakeholder is interested, positive, and powerful,
  • 01:35 they are a pillar of support.
  • 01:38 Maintain full and open communication with them.
  • 01:41 Use this cube to create your communication and interaction strategy.
  • 01:45 This should guide the creation of the communication plan,
  • 01:48 which we'll talk about in another lesson.
  • 01:50 Sometimes I will change the definition of deliverables in order to move someone to
  • 01:55 a different position on the grid.
  • 01:57 Or to change their use of a resource, so, as to avoid a problem stakeholder.
  • 02:02 Of course, the project goal is unchanged.
  • 02:05 Since we're discussing stakeholder influence,
  • 02:08 let's focus in on decision making.
  • 02:10 I've used this chart with stakeholders to help them manage their expectations about
  • 02:14 decisions we're making.
  • 02:16 This chart works with two aspects of the information used to make the decision.
  • 02:21 How stable is it?
  • 02:22 And how reliable is it?
  • 02:23 Stability is characterized by either fixed or fluid.
  • 02:26 Is the information about a situation constantly changing?
  • 02:29 Or is it steady over time?
  • 02:31 And the other axis is reliability of the information,
  • 02:35 meaning the ability to verify it with facts as compared to someone's opinions.
  • 02:40 When we have fixed facts, we can make a final decision.
  • 02:43 We should make sure the stakeholders know that this is the case,
  • 02:47 all the facts are in and they are stable.
  • 02:49 So once this decision is made, the topic is closed.
  • 02:53 Sometimes we have fixed opinions.
  • 02:55 If those opinions are from subject matter experts,
  • 02:58 the decision maybe a very good one.
  • 03:00 But the point here is that it's not a final decision.
  • 03:03 We decide on the direction and the project goes forward at full speed.
  • 03:07 But we still need to verify that decision at some point with facts.
  • 03:13 Then there is the case of fluid facts.
  • 03:15 Now, that doesn't mean that the facts are changing.
  • 03:18 But rather that there are big holes in the available facts and
  • 03:22 the situation seems to be fluid, because every day brings new information.
  • 03:26 In this case, we often can't make a final decision about what to do, but
  • 03:31 we can make a final decision about some things not to do.
  • 03:35 The information we have will rule out some of the options.
  • 03:38 So, now instead of ten different things that we could do, the facts have helped us
  • 03:43 to understand that there are really only three viable options.
  • 03:46 The value from this decision is that we can narrow the focus and
  • 03:50 accelerate the work to get more facts.
  • 03:53 Finally, sometimes there are only opinions and everyone has a different one and
  • 03:57 those are changing.
  • 03:59 This is often the case when early in a problem analysis or crisis.
  • 04:04 The decision at this time is to do something, anything, but to start moving.
  • 04:09 As you begin to investigate, take some actions, the dust and fog will clear,
  • 04:14 and you will start getting some facts and some stability.
  • 04:18 Of course, this decision is definitely not final, you'll need to revise it over time.
  • 04:22 As I said,
  • 04:23 I use this chart with stakeholders when we are doing early project reviews.
  • 04:28 So they understand the nature of the decision that we're making.
  • 04:33 And sometimes we even using this chart right up front when we're doing project
  • 04:37 origination.
  • 04:38 Stakeholders will have an effect on your project.
  • 04:41 And that's why we take the time to understand their potential influence.
  • 04:45 And, where possible, we influence them to assist in project success.

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