A stakeholder was named as a group, individual, company, or any parties interested or involved in a project directly or indirectly. These were the group that usually bring a significant impact on the outcome of the project. The project would go “haywire” if the team failed to manage the stakeholder positively.
Stakeholders could be classified by their level of impact and level of interest. Level of impact means the level of the influence of the stakeholder towards an overall project, high. In contrast, the level of interest means the level of involvement needed from each stakeholder. All the stakeholders could be divided into four levels generally :
Level 1: High Impact – High Interest (e.g., Sponsor, Top management, etc.)
Level 2 : High Impact – Low interest (Eg: other Division head, shareholder, etc.)
Level 3: Low Impact – High Interest (Eg: Consumer, competitor, etc.)
Level 4: Low Impact – Low Interest (Eg: public, etc.)
The stakeholder who fell under level 1 was the project’s key person to whom the project team needs to pay full attention to communicate. The team need to keep them informed closely and take their input seriously as this was the group of people who may jeopardise the whole project.
Next, was those stakeholders in level 2. They might influence the project, but they are not necessarily interested in it until there was a direct impact on them. Therefore, the project team needs always to keep them satisfied by coping with the information to keep them informed.
However, it does not mean all the input from stakeholders of these 2 levels could be neglected totally. Stakeholders who fell into Level 3 & 4 were those who have minimum influence on the project. Their high interest could make them useful to the team at some point, Eg: Environmental Bodies who protest towards your construction projects, they were a stakeholder in level 3, but they could provoke the public (who was level 4) to go against your project if the team refuse to talk to them. The best approach to manage these 2 levels was to provide as much information as possible but listen to them if needed to avoid confusion.
Managing stakeholders was always a challenge in a project. Still, your project success rate will increase significantly if you could properly manage all stakeholders and keep them satisfied.
