Stakeholder Management: How to Identify and Collaborate
So, perhaps you’re reading this article because you work with a lot of stakeholders or you plan to intensify your work with them. As a Product Manager, I’ve worked and collaborated with a lot of stakeholders over time.
What do you think about this statement:
“Great Product Managers are great communicators!”
Which answer seems most reasonable to you?
[ ] - I strongly agree
[ ] - I somewhat agree
[ ] - I neither agree or disagree
[ ] - I somewhat disagree
[ ] - I strongly disagree
The good news is, no matter what answer you choose this article contains information that can help you to learn something new. If you don’t feel comfortable with that please stop reading!
This article will focus on 2 key topics:
The definition of a stakeholder & how to identify them
How to communicate and negotiate for a “win-win” outcome (=❤️)
Over the years I’ve identified certain patterns around the lack of stakeholder management. During coaching sessions with Product Teams or individual Product Managers, I love asking the following questions:
Me: “Do you know all your stakeholders?”
Mentee: “Of course!”Me: “Great! Can you list all of them now?”
Mentee: “Well, I have them in my mind…”
I believe you know what direction we’re heading in. In day-to-day business, we believe that we know everything and are in full control. And I trust everyone who tells me they are. That being said, trust is good, and documentation is better. 😉 After people created a list/overview of their stakeholders they came to one of two conclusions:
They underestimated the number of people who are stakeholders.
They’re fully aware of the list of people.
If you’re fully aware of your stakeholders and know that this list/overview won’t only help you, you can move to the next chapter.
Next, we’ll have a look at how to best get an overview of your stakeholders.
Stakeholder Categorization and Identification
In my very first article, I wrote a bit about the different types of stakeholders. Let’s take a closer look this time. One of the biggest mistakes I’ve made in my career was not creating a written overview of my stakeholders. It means very quickly forgetting about one person and later on needing to spend extra time clarifying and communicating. The bigger the organization the more helpful an overview can be.
Stakeholder Power vs. Stakeholder Interest
Colin Eden created the stakeholder matrix which looks at the level of power vs. interest. It’s based on the 4 different types of stakeholders that you need to manage and communicate with differently.
The Key Stakeholder: Players 🏓
The “Players” are the type of stakeholders who have a big interest in what’s going on and a lot of power. Typically, these people are in positions like:
C-Level
Owners
Managers & Leads
These stakeholders need to be managed closely. That means they need high-quality data and insights from you as well as regular status updates. They don’t just want to be informed, they want to be involved. Some of them more and some less. However, I’ve learned to always involve them in relevant discussions and decisions to get early buy-in and feedback.
Important Stakeholder: Context Setters 🎯
The stakeholder category “Context setters” has a lot of power and not a lot of interest. This can be for example:
Shareholders
Governments
It’s very important to keep them satisfied with good updates and visibility into projects and anything else you may see as meaningful. A great place to start can be executive calls and detailed email updates. Keep in mind that it’s important to follow up on their feedback on project-related topics.
Not Suspects but: Subjects 📖
Stakeholders with a lot of interest and not much power are the “Subjects”. They are the kind of “read-only” stakeholders. Examples are:
Employees
Non-Profits/NGOs
The best way to keep them “happy” is to send and feed them with regular updates. For example a bi-weekly or monthly email.
A Wide Audience: Your Crowd 👨👩👧👦
The “Crowd” are all the people and departments that have low interest and low power. Some examples are:
Customers
Society
Financial Institutions
It’s important to monitor, but not bore them. I’ve learned that I can keep my efforts around them quite low (low doesn’t mean “0” though).
With an understanding of what kind of stakeholder power and interests exist, it’s time to name and formalize them in a list.
Creating the Stakeholder Overview List
Three years ago I was leading 4 different projects as a Product Manager and started losing connection to my stakeholders. The next thing I did was create a stakeholder list. My goal was to get an overview of the different people who were my stakeholders. The list helped me to also understand who wants information from me and who can provide me with information.
I structured the list with the following columns
Name
Email address
Department
How to manage
Key Interests
Channel(s)
Update frequency
Information flow
Here you can find an example:
Access and copy the free template 👉 here 👈.
You can change the headlines and the order to your own needs. The most important thing is to take the first step. Sitting down for half an hour and having a think about all the people and writing them down helped me a lot.
Note: This is a living document. I recommend regularly having a look at it especially when you start new projects.
Stakeholder Engagement: Getting What You Want by Telling What You Need
Are you still reading this article? You should scroll up and re-read the first few sentences. What have I marked in bold and what did I underline? What was my message?
Correct: “You feel comfortable reading!” because you’ll learn something new.
I left you the choice to decide whether you wanted to continue or stop reading. We love the feeling of being in control. The same thing counts for our stakeholders.
“Sometimes, written letters have a bigger impact than spoken words.”
How do you feel about that way of highlighting key points in a message? Is it a good way to be provided with information or is it too “manipulative?” In both cases continue reading...
Asking Your Stakeholders for Information and Feedback
I always tell my stakeholders exactly what I need. And you can do it better than me at the beginning of the article. I recommend always asking for what you need from them straight away. Share enough background and clear scope to avoid misunderstandings. I always focus on:
A good intro, background, and problem statement (current challenge)
Asking for data, experience, and hands-on (if needed)
Sharing a timeframe (or deadline)
Stakeholders love good structure and good information. You can read more about improving the quality of your information and KPIs here. This can be applied to F2F or in written form.
Don’t expect something you haven’t spoken out about. That only causes disappointment and frustration on both ends.
Asking Your Stakeholders for Decisions and Actions
When I needed help from someone or for them to take action, I learned that it’s always better to be very precise. Sometimes I thought: She/he knows what I need and I’ve contacted them and got disappointed. Not because of them, but because of my unclear communication.
Let’s look at two different versions:
1. Hi [Name],
We’re ready to launch the project. Can you approve?
2. Hi [Name],
+[Name 1], +[Name 2] in cc
The App Team [team name] is ready to launch the new app version [number]. We are depending on one last backend pull request [#PR number] from your team [team name]. Could you help us move forward with the review? We plan to upload the app by [date], [time] to the App Store. If you have any questions don’t hesitate.
Which one do you like more? 🙂
Presenting Different Options to Your Stakeholders
Remember the beginning of this article? Is it manipulation? Yes and no!
Everything can be seen as manipulation (don’t think about a unicorn 🦄). In business, we’re confronted with challenges and we need to make decisions. As Product Managers, it’s our job to evaluate the best possible options and present them to our team members and stakeholders. You’re asking them to make a decision that they have to take at some point anyway. By providing a given frame of answers you make their lives easier. That has nothing to do with the correctness of your suggested options. In case there are more options, people will tell you and you’ll enhance the number of options.
I’ve always shared all possible options and my “known unknowns”.
Disclaimer: If you’re not using these “techniques” for the best of your company and colleagues to your best knowledge they’ll feel and figure that out very quickly. We (human beings) feel if someone is hiding information. Mid and long-term bad results will speak for themselves. Don’t outplay yourself by pushing your short-term agenda.
Healthy Disagreement & Discussions
It’s not only important to clearly formulate what you want. I disagree and let people disagree to figure out what they want and what’s missing. Not everyone has the same knowledge and insights about certain projects as you do. Product Managers are usually very deeply involved. I thought many times (arrogantly) that people know what I know, which is very dangerous thinking. Sometimes it took me 15-30 minutes to bring a person fully up to speed with all the relevant information. No matter if that was through a conversation or the written form. However, it’s always worth the investment. You can’t repeat yourself often enough. 😉
If you still want to learn more about stakeholder management and relationship building I recommend this podcast episode 🎙️
Stakeholder Management Summary
Stakeholders can be categorized based on their power and interest.
Once you know the different types you can create a stakeholder list.
That’ll help you to get an overview of all the people you interact with and in what frequency & channel.
Make sure you formulate needs and updates as clearly as possible to avoid misunderstandings.
Invite your stakeholders for discussions & challenge them as well.
Good & regular communication is key.
