Engaging Stakeholders

Effective change management requires knowing who your stakeholders are and what is important to them. Let’s start by defining stakeholders for purposes of this blog. Stakeholders are those individuals or groups who are affected by the change. They can be affected in different ways, for example:

• They may be leaders who want to make something operate more effectively

• They may be employees who are being asked to change how they work

• They may be customers whose needs aren’t being fully met

• They may be suppliers who are being asked to provide a new service

In order to prepare for any change, it is important to identify the most important stakeholders and how they will be affected by the change. How will they perceive the change? How could they potentially benefit from it? What concerns would they likely have about the change? There are many ways you can do this but the best and simplest way to gather this information is to ask. If the stakeholder group is large, you might want to do this with a survey or focus group with some representatives of the group such as the finance or marketing department.

When gathering this type of information, I typically capture the following information:

• Stakeholder group

• How stakeholder feels about the change - supports it, neutral, does not support it

• Potential benefits

• Concerns about the change

• What information do they need & how they would prefer to receive it

Once you have this information available, you will be well-positioned to draft a customized communication plan that addresses the unique needs of each individual stakeholder group.