Speaker 1: Hello and welcome to my video. In this video, I'm going to talk about how to identify your stakeholders, analyze them, plan for how you want to engage them, and determine if these stakeholders are in fact engaged. Let's start with the definition of what a stakeholder is. A stakeholder is anyone who is actively involved directly or indirectly with a project or initiative that you're involved in. The stakeholder's interest may be positively or negatively affected by the initiative that you're working on. A stakeholder may exert influence on your project and its deliverables. We may directly or indirectly interact with these stakeholders. Any one of these stakeholders may have some needs, wants, requirements that need to be taken into consideration as we work on our initiative. Now, examples of stakeholders would be anyone who has anything to do with the project, such as if you're in a company, yourself, the employees, including management and staff, external parties like government regulators, suppliers, customers who will use this, developers, contractors who you might hire to get the work done. Now, what we need to know about stakeholders is that they could have different roles or responsibilities when it comes to this specific initiative. They could be inside or outside the organization. They may have different objectives. They may be supportive and sometimes they would like to derail your project. We need to, on any initiative, identify all the stakeholders and continue to do this as the initiative progresses. Any stakeholder that you don't identify could potentially be a problem as you work on your initiative. Now, the best time to identify your stakeholders is as soon as you have that business need. So when your boss calls you in and says I would like you to work on this or if this is you, working on your own initiative, the moment you know what your need is, you need to start to identify who are these stakeholders that have something to do or can be affected or touch it in one way or interact with it in a different way. Who are these people that have something to do with this project and start to list them down? There are different ways to identify your stakeholders. First, you may want to consider who are the people that have the approval rights or decision-making on the thing that you're working on. So if this is an initiative that needs to be approved by a government entity, then that government entity becomes a stakeholder. If it's your boss, if it's a specific department head, these are the people who have the approval rights towards the thing that you're working on. You could also brainstorm, obviously, with your colleagues and peers and try to determine who should be involved in this one project. Who should you go and talk to and find out what they need? So your colleagues, your peers can help you find that out. You could also interview some of the stakeholders or department heads and others or, you know, anyone that you already identified as a stakeholder. Talk to them and try to find out if there are other people that need to be involved. Additionally, you could also run these workshops and discuss maybe your need or your requirements and some people would point out who some of the stakeholders need to be. You could also draw the organizational model, try to see who reports to whom, and in that way you would figure the reporting relationship, the communication network that happens within the organization and understand who of these people needs to be involved in this one project. My favorite is process modeling. So if I map out the process of whatever it is that I'm going to do, let's say it's an app that I'm developing, then who's going to use this app? How will they use it? Who are the people that will be engaged throughout? So if finance has to be involved in the payment, you know, or someone that does the financial aspect, then I need to talk to them. If the user is going to enter information in the beginning, then I need to find out what the user might prefer to see on their screen. How about the back end? You know, people who receive maybe the orders from the app. What do they need to see? What do they need to receive? But what about the people who fulfill the orders? For example, what do they need to see? So if you map the process out, you can identify the different actors and players within your own solution. Now we could map out the process, but what you're going to find out is that there are people who don't belong in that specific process. So people who don't really have a say in it, and this is called scope modeling, you want to put a boundary on who should be involved and who should not be involved. And those who do not need to be involved should not be included in your initiative and analysis. Now, there's another technique that I really, really love. Actually, this is a tool. It's called the RACI matrix or RACI chart. The RACI chart, the acronyms RACI, it stands for responsible, accountable, consulted and informed. The responsible are the people that are going to do the work, they're going to be tasked with it, and they have to get the job done. The people who are accountable are ultimately responsible and can be blamed if the work isn't done. The consulted are the people we have to check with, maybe subject matter experts, approvals, comes from them. They're the ones who give us go, no-go, so we had to consult with them. And the informed would be the people who need to be copied on all communication that happens. The RACI tells you who could be a stakeholder on your project, anyone that you would put on your chart, as an example this chart that you see here. All the people that would be on this, whether they marked R, A, C, or I, are stakeholders on your own initiative. You could also use a mind map. What a mind map does is it starts from the heart of the project and starts to branch out different categories of stakeholders. So you might say internal, external, right? And then from internal you could go to management, then you go to staff, and then from management you can talk to different, you can, you know, branch out to different departments. And at some point you would identify specific people at the end of those branches or map that would be stakeholders in your own initiative. You could also use an organizational chart as we discussed earlier. This one helps you figure out who is who within this initiative and who needs to be considered as you go on identifying requirements for your own initiative. So once you've identified all of your stakeholders, where do you track them? Do you just remember it or do you put it on a tool, a document? Well, there is an Excel sheet that you could put it on. It's called a stakeholder register and here's an example of it here. And what you want to put is information such as their name, their contact details, their role in the project, their title in their job, the location, any special needs they may have. You could categorize the stakeholders internal, external, contract, those things like that. And also you may want to list down the level of influence that they have. Next, once you've listed all of your stakeholders in the stakeholder register, you want to analyze these stakeholders. So one of the first things which I just mentioned is categorizing your stakeholders by how you see their involvement in the project. You also want to understand their influences on this one project. This is part of analyzing them, knowing who is supportive, who is not, who you may tap into because they are part of the leadership or maybe part of the senior management that can help you with moving forward on your specific project. Stakeholder analysis starts from the moment we have the task to do and it continues all through until the task is completed. Why? Because stakeholders could change along the way. Any stakeholder needs that you missed or misunderstand and gets uncovered late could be a problem for the initiative that you're working on. So you really have to be diligent in understanding what your stakeholders want and really know their level of involvement within your own project. Now, one of the tools that we use is called a stakeholder matrix or stakeholder grid or a stakeholder map. And what it is is four quadrants showing you the level of importance of the stakeholder. Not all stakeholders are going to be important. This is mapping them based on their level of interest in your initiative and also the level of power that they have. Mind you, the people that have a lot of power and they have a lot of interest. These are the people you really need to pay close attention to their needs and wants. You cannot be messing with their requirements. You need to be very clear. This could be a direct management and they have a lot of power and they could take you off that specific project, right? Now, there are other stakeholders in another quadrant who are powerful and maybe not so interested in your specific project. These could be government agencies. They regulate what you do. You are not important to them. They just have oversight over what you do and you really need to make sure that they remain satisfied with whatever it is that you're working on, right? There's another group that does not have that much power, but it is very interested and that could be yourself. It could be a technical team. They're not that powerful as far as influence, but they really want to know what's going on. So keep them informed. And then finally, there's another quadrant that talks about people with low power and low interest in your project. Obviously, these you can just monitor from a distance. They're not as important as the rest of your stakeholders. Another tool that we use is called the Onion Diagram. Yeah, it has a funny name to it and maybe a bad smell. Who knows? But what the Onion Diagram represents is the circles that you'll get if you were to slice an onion. And it shows you the level of involvement of different stakeholders. So if you think about any initiative that you're working on, start from the heart of it. Think about who is involved in the work, like the project managers, the business analysts, the technical resources, developers, construction people. So think about people who are actually doing the work from the heart and try to identify those stakeholders from the heart. You go to the second layer, which is the directly impacted department within the organization that is asking for this work to be done. Now, obviously, this makes a difference if you're doing the work inside the organization, if it's your own initiative outside. But, you know, outside of the people doing the work, directly impacted departments, organizations and so on. Who are these that want this result? Who are the ones that ask for it? It is possible that sales or HR asks for you to do the work. And so they become that second layer. Then you can go to the third layer, which is the whole enterprise, your whole organization, subject matter experts, people outside of the project that are within the enterprise or organization that can support your project. Find out who these people are. Then go outside of that to the customers outside, the users of the system, the suppliers. These are the external part of it. So by going through the different layers of this onion, that's why it's called the onion diagram. You can identify different stakeholders along the way. Now, there are other techniques that you could use, like interviews or workshops. You could talk to different people to try to understand what are the needs and wants of specific individuals or groups within the organization. You could also use the stakeholder register that we talked about. Sometimes they call it a stakeholder map or persona. And what it tells you is the different stakeholders and maybe how they are connected to the project and analyze that connection to the project to try to understand. You could use process modeling, the one we discussed previously, to identify the stakeholders. But in here, what you're trying to do is analyze why they are relevant in the process and where does the system or solution support the needs and wants that they have. You could use surveys and questionnaires to understand what different groups of stakeholders are looking for. And you could also analyze the risk that could come from specific stakeholders who may, for example, want to jeopardize this one project or maybe their inability to participate could become problematic for you on this specific project. Now, once you've analyzed the stakeholders, the next thing that you want to do is plan for how you want to engage the stakeholders. And here it's going to require a lot of interpersonal skills and communication. Essentially, once I know that a specific stakeholder is interested in the project due to some aspect of it, then I need to think about how do I collaborate with this specific stakeholder in a positive way or keep them positive with this collaboration, which could require communication, meeting face to face and other means where I tap into their needs, wants and make sure they're always aware of what's going on and that they're always supportive and working towards a mutual goal for all of us. Now, some of the things you want to consider when you develop your collaboration plan is, you know, the timing for these collaboration events. When are they going to happen? The location? Where is that person? Where is the best place to meet with them? What technologies would be best and what would the stakeholder prefer? Do they prefer in person? Do they want to meet online? Their location, your location, neutral location. Consider that in developing your collaboration plan. The best way to keep your stakeholders engaged, and this is probably one of the best things, is to know what your project is about or your initiative and try to figure out what the benefits would be to that specific stakeholder. If you can talk to the stakeholder and let them know where their benefits will come from, how is it directly impacting them positively? How is it going to help them minimize some effort or save time? Show them what's in it for them, right? And that would keep them focused and positive with you. Now, you could also look at any tools or processes that exist in your organization and these would be an asset to you in maybe how to interact with different stakeholders. So an organization may already have its own well-developed means for how they engage different stakeholders. Maybe they have a methodology that they use. So see if they have any of these if you're in an organization and you could tap into that. You could also go back to lessons learned in the organization and see how these stakeholders engaged in different initiatives in the past. Were they always supportive? Were they troublemakers? Try to get a sense for what has happened in the past. One thing I want to mention also is keep track of issues as they come up and make sure you get these issues resolved. Never promise a stakeholder that you will take care of something and then ignore it. They would really turn against you. So identify issues, make sure you're tracking them, assign them to someone, delegate it or do it yourself, and plan for when these major changes are about to happen and make sure you're communicating with the stakeholder so they know about these things and they're not afraid or surprised or panicking or getting anxious because of some change that is about to happen. Communication is really going to be key in managing or engaging stakeholders. I keep saying managing, but you know what? You really cannot manage stakeholders. You can only manage their expectations. That's why we prefer to really say engage the stakeholder, manage expectations. These are better terms than saying managing the stakeholder. They're not really yours for you to manage. So then you've done all this work. How do you know that your stakeholders are engaged? Well, there's a few things you could look at. Number one, frequency of communication. Are they communicating with you? If the communication has slowed down, it's either they're distracted or they're not interested or they have an issue with you. Are they showing up to the meetings? Are they showing up to the workshops? Are they participating? If they are, that's a good sign. If not, then you have to go figure out why they're not doing so. And finally, you want to look at how much they're able to provide you for support, like information or resources. When they're holding back, it tells you they're against the project. So find out why it is that they're not providing you with the required resources or information, and that may help clear out some of the issues. Well, that's all for now. I hope that was beneficial. Hope this helped you in working with your stakeholders and keeping them engaged. Let me know if you have any comments. Put them down here. If you liked the video, please give me a thumbs up. And if you're not a subscriber yet, please subscribe so that you'll be notified of upcoming videos. Make sure to hit that notification bell also. Thank you for watching. My name is Edward Shihab. Happy to have had you on this video and hope to see you on the next video. Bye-bye.