Map those Stakeholders!
Ben Greenstone & Sandro share some thoughts on the art and science of “stakeholder mapping”
A core responsibility of any GR professional is to engage with and influence stakeholders. It is central to representing your organisation’s interests to policy makers, politicians and the public. To do that well, you need a clear understanding of who your stakeholders are. You also often need to narrow down and define the nebulous “stakeholder” concept in the first place. We thought we’d write on how to think about mapping your relevant stakeholders for GR work and would be curious about comments and feedback — what are some best practices that you’ve seen work well here?
What are you trying to influence?
The first thing you need to define when mapping your stakeholders is what you are trying to achieve. The GR Blog has written previously on different kinds of GR work, and it is worth reading while you consider your objectives.
Are you trying to build or protect a brand for your organisation? Or are you trying to influence the development of a specific, technical piece of policy? Or perhaps you’re planning a campaign to ensure support for your organisation’s sector during a crisis. Even if all these tasks were being undertaken for the same organisation, they would require different approaches, and the most important stakeholders will shift accordingly.
That will mean that you will likely have different stakeholder maps for different parts of your GR work. That is a good thing.This is in line with what Ansgar wrote about Simple Rules — don’t overcomplicate things by going overboard, but being specific about what part or specific goal the stakeholder map is for will actually make it simpler in our opinion.
So before you start mapping your stakeholders, define explicitly your target outcomes.
Who holds the levers for these outcomes?
The next step in mapping your stakeholders is to identify who holds the decision making power that will get the results you need. This stakeholder group will be very small. Often it will be one person, and it will rarely be more than five.
It’s important to be strict with yourself here: effective engagement and influence requires laser focus on the right stakeholders. Again, there is the curse of knowledge. Too often we’ve seen stakeholder maps which are more detailed than the org chart of any given Ministry itself — this is not the place to prove how many people you know or your team has connections with — it’s about bringing focus to your actions and executions.
Who influences the lever holders?
After you’ve established your small group of decision makers, it’s time to widen your net and look at who influences these decision makers, and how they do it. You will not always be able to have a direct conversation with the crucial stakeholders, so this stage allows you to engage with and influence individuals and groups who will advise and change the minds of your lever holders.
It’s important to never underestimate a potential stakeholder or influencer. Seniority and title don’t necessarily make a great target. A minister may well not be the person who cares, or who advises their boss. Sometimes a junior official can offer excellent value.
This group will often be broad, and that’s not a bad thing: it pays to be creative when compiling this stakeholder group. But try to be specific. Political advisers will often be relevant, but which ones? The public will also often be an influencer, but your stakeholder map can and should be more targeted than that. Is there a demographic that is particularly relevant? Could you specifically target the constituents of your lever holders? The sharper your target list, the more likely you are to cut through.
Don’t forget to include your peers and competitors
GR professionals are used to thinking about supporting their organisation or client specifically. You want wins for them, and rightly so. This can lead to the mistake of working in silo while ignoring your peers and your competitors.
Governments and supranational bodies very rarely make policy for or about a single business. It is only slightly more common for this to happen for a small group of business. But it is relatively common for policy to be made for industries and sectors.
Every good GR stakeholder map considers the peers, competitors and trade associations that can be allies in achieving your objectives. You’re used to competing on price, on new features and much more. But you might both benefit from a particular policy or regulatory change. Great GR work is often like great politics: it involves working across the aisle.
Involve your colleagues
Good stakeholder mapping requires working closely not only with your GR colleagues, but with the wider organisation. This is especially true in larger organisations: it will often be the case that a colleague in another part of the business will have connections and insights that you do not.
Now that you’ve got your stakeholder map, it’s time to start planning your engagement.
Weight your stakeholders
After you have your comprehensive list of stakeholders, you need to prioritise them. GR professionals are great, but they are (just about) bound by the laws of space and time. Sometimes you will have to make trade offs. So it’s important to have a solid understanding of the order of priority in which you should engage your stakeholders.
There are three key elements to assign weightings to:
- Their power to help you achieve your desired outcome (either themselves, or through their ability to influence a lever holder);
- Their attitude to your organisation and sector (on a spectrum from positively to negatively); and
- Your (and your organisation’s) access to them.
This lets you get to the actual mapping of your stakeholders. We like to map to four quadrants, along the axes of power and attitude. Your sweet spot is the top right. Top left and bottom right are candidates for prioritisation by access. Typically you should only engage with your bottom left quadrant if it requires very little additional effort.
Now you have your stakeholder map, it’s time to start engaging with them.
We’d love to hear your thoughts on stakeholder engagement. What are you and your team’s favourite methods?
Ben Greenstone, Director at Taso Advisory
Ben is an experienced public affairs and policy advisor. At Taso Advisory he works with clients from listed businesses through to start ups to help them manage political and regulatory risk and opportunity.
Before founding Taso Advisory Ben was a principal advisor to UK Government Ministers on technology, the digital economy and the creative industries.
