Stakeholder analysis consists of three broad steps:
- Identify ALL of your stakeholders.
- Group the stakeholders by their relationship to the organization and their stance regarding the proposed change.
- Determine each stakeholder's needs and goals to decide how they should best be engaged in light of those needs and goals.
The Linkage Model
The linkage model was designed by James Grunig and Todd Hunt in 1984, and is an excellent tool to ensure you capture all your stakeholders. Your stakeholders all have a transactional relationship, or link, with your organization. They can be grouped into four types, each based on these interactions.
- Enabling stakeholders have some control and authority over the organization. These stakeholders provide an organization with resources and necessary levels of autonomy to operate. When enabling relationships falter, the resources can be withdrawn, and the organization's autonomy limited, restricted or regulated. These include:
- Government leaders
- Senior commanders
- Regulators
- Law enforcement
- Allies and partners
- Functional stakeholders are essential to the organization's operations and are divided between input (providing labor and resources) and output (receiving the produced services). These include:
- Employees
- Suppliers
- Service providers
- Families
- Allies and partners
- Normative stakeholders are associations or groups with which the organization has a common interest. These stakeholders share similar values, goals or problems, and also encompass competitors. These include:
- Other armed services
- Adversaries*
- Allies
- Civic associations
- Political groups*
- Professional groups
- Diffused stakeholders are the most difficult to identify because they include those who have infrequent interaction with the organization, and become involved based on the organization's actions. They often arise in times of crisis. These include:
- Community residents
- The media
- Voters
- Non-governmental organizations
- Special interest groups
NOTE: *Some normative stakeholders, such as adversaries or political groups, may not share your organization's values or goals, but you may find yourself in direct opposition to them for the same resources in a transactional space.
Look for your stakeholders under each linkage type and you should have a complete list of stakeholders. Remember that your commander is not a stakeholder; your commander is your boss and is in charge of directing your efforts.
Power and Interest
After identifying your stakeholders, they can be further defined and prioritized according to their respective power and interest in a project. Power is their ability to either block or advance an initiative. Interest is a measure of how much they care about what you are doing. This is where a power/interest grid comes in handy to plot your stakeholders' relative positions. People with high power need to be kept satisfied, while people with high interest need to be kept informed.
Power/Interest Analysis identifies:
- Players: high power + high interest
- Context setters: high power + low interest
- Subjects: high interest + low power
- Crowd: low interest + low power
Power and Support
You can also plot your stakeholders on a power/support grid. Power remains their ability to either block or advance an initiative, while support measures how favorable they feel toward your project. Use their relative positions to prioritize, plan and tailor your engagement efforts.
Power/Support Analysis identifies:
- Weak supporters: high support + low power
- Weak opponents: low support + low power
- Strong supporters: high support + high power
- Strong opponents: low support + high power
Information Needs
Once you’ve plotted your stakeholders related to Power/Interest and Power/Support, you will need to assess their respective information needs.
Assess the outcome you are trying to achieve with a particular stakeholder:
- What is the desired outcome of stakeholder engagement and communication?
- In what ways can this stakeholder help or hurt achieving that outcome?
- What knowledge, attitude or behavior change must be created?
Consider the characteristics of the stakeholder as planning factors. What are the stakeholder's:
- Values?
- Desires?
- Requirements?
- Barriers to support?
- Key relationships and influences?
- Communication capabilities?
The overall combined stakeholder analysis informs which stakeholders are prioritized as well as what and how you communicate to them.