In our world today, we are all interconnected; we need each other to survive. Don't we?
So, we don't like to be left out, we want to be seen as a stakeholder when it comes to decisions that will affect us. And we tend to resist in one way or the other when we feel disregarded or threatened by a decision that we are not pleased with.
Beyond daily interactions with other people, stakeholder management determines whether the affairs of an organization will run smoothly or not. Pretty much how we relate to others in the organization; as well as other related parties beyond the organization.
From time to time a Procurement Manager makes decisions that influence processes and outcomes. Now, these decisions can have a positive or negative impact on a project, people, or organization. This is the reason stakeholder management is important.
Who is a stakeholder? This is an individual, group, or organization that's influenced by the result of a decision, a purchase, or a project.
You can't talk about stakeholder management without doing stakeholder analysis just like there is no policy formulation without data gathering.
So, what is stakeholder analysis? This is a process of identifying who your stakeholders are, their influence, and their impact on the project or decision at hand.
Essentially, stakeholder analysis involves the following steps;
📍 Identifying Your Stakeholders; This process involves identifying all your internal and external stakeholders. Here you want to consider all those who may be impacted by a project you are handling. Begin identifying stakeholders from your colleagues, technical department, senior management who may influence decisions, etc. Also look out for supply chain partners, vendors, customers, approval authorities, and regulatory bodies that might affect your project. Pretty much everyone is involved in your supply chain.
📍 Stakeholder Mapping: This is where you determine the level of interest of your stakeholders and the influence they have over the project at hand. An easy way to do this is to create a power interest matrix and assign each stakeholder a position based on their level of interest and power/influence over your project. So, the information you get from mapping stakeholders into their various categories would help you prioritize your stakeholders.
📍Stakeholder Prioritizing: At this stage, you prioritize your project stakeholders by the level of their influence on the project. Factor out who has the most influence on a project and those who are going to be affected. The more their influence, the more focus you would give to stakeholder management for this group of people.
Identifying the key stakeholders, mapping their influence, and prioritizing will help you make the most of your interaction with them to get the best outcome for your project.
Supply Chain Management just got easier. To learn more about Supply Chain Management and Procurement processes, sign up for a course at academy.efemini.com
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