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Vesa Purho
Development Manager, Nokia
When you plan your documentation strategy or think of making
major changes in your documentation environment, like moving
into single sourcing, you must think about the various
stakeholders who have interest in and power over your
decisions. A method called Stakeholder Mapping can assist
you in identifying the various stakeholders and planning how
to communicate with them.
Stakeholder Mapping, as described in Exploring
Corporate Strategy (Prentice Hall 2002) by Gerry Johnson and Kevan
Scholes, identifies stakeholder expectations and power. You
have to judge the stakeholders on two issues:
- Are they interested in impressing their expectations on
your decisions?
- Do they have the means to actually influence your
decisions?
With those two aspects, a power-interest matrix can be
created. It looks like the following:
The key players (segment D) should naturally be the major
consideration when creating new strategies. They are highly
interested in your decisions and also have the power to
influence them. The power may be direct, like your boss or
managers above him, but also indirect; for example, they may
be in control of some of the key resources needed in
implementing the strategy or they have such a high status in
the organisation that even though they are not directly
above you in the chain of command, they can influence those
who are.
Segment C is often the most difficult relationship to plan
for because although stakeholders in this group are
generally quite passive, if their level of interest is
underrated and they do not receive enough information about
the planned changes, they may reposition themselves to
segment D and disrupt the change process. It is wise to find
out the expectations of this group as early as possible so
that you can successfully communicate with them and prevent
any sudden changes in their level of interest.
Also, segment B is important because although they may not
have high power over your decisions, they can be very useful
allies in influencing the attitudes of more powerful
stakeholders.
Stakeholder Mapping is a useful tool to identify the roles
of different stakeholders and to decide whether or not you
should try to reposition certain stakeholders to lessen an
influence of a key player or to acquire more key players to
back up your efforts. You can also use Stakeholder Mapping
to analyse who are the key blockers and facilitators to the
change and to determine how they will be addressed, for
example, through education or persuasion.
References
Exploring Corporate Strategy
Gerry Johnson and Kevan Scholes
2002, Upper Saddle River, NJ
Prentice Hall
ISBN: 0273651129
This article is the personal opinion of the author and does
not necessarily reflect the opinion or practice of Nokia.
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