18.3. Practice 2. Network Mapping and Stakeholder Analysis
Although there is enormous benefit to conducting a full organizational network analysis (ONA) to determine workflow, bottlenecks, and knowledge opportunities and risks, team managers and leaders can apply a simpler network analysis to improve their understanding of their key stakeholders. The result is a more comprehensive understanding of exactly who stakeholders are and how best to reach and influence them. This practice takes about an hour to complete.
18.3.1. Key Learning Points
Mindset shift. Stakeholder analysis can help identify some of your current stakeholder barriers and opportunities, but this traditional approach often falls short in offering the best approaches for accessing and managing stakeholders. By applying a network map approach to stakeholder analysis, you can gain a clearer—and perhaps surprising—view of who your stakeholders actually are. And you can develop a deeper appreciation for how they are connected to the organization, which can help you manage them more effectively.
Skill set built. The ability to develop a more comprehensive view of your stakeholders, along with those who influence them, and develop a plan for managing stakeholders that is consistent with the way work naturally gets done in the organization.
Toolset used. "Rough cut" network analysis.
18.3.2. Overview
Most leaders and managers have conducted a stakeholder analysis, usually in the context of a team they led or a project they directed. In most of these analyses, you name a key project, issue, or initiative and then list that project's stakeholders—that is, the individuals or groups who are affected by the project and have a vested interest in it. The purpose of this analysis is to figure out how to gain the support of these individuals or groups and how to eliminate any obstacles they present.
Stakeholder analysis is challenging, in large part because there are all sorts of stakeholders that can exist just about anywhere. Stakeholders may play large or small roles in influencing the outcome of a project or providing resources; they may play no direct role at all but have a strong interest in the outcome and influence others' opinions. Stakeholders may be in your department or function, or in other units, departments, or locations, which means that you must manage relationships across formal boundaries. Stakeholders can also be external and internal clients, staff members, managers, partners, and customers.
The key point is that stakeholders exist in a complex organization made up of complex relationships. Some may connect directly to your work; while others may not but may be able to connect you to other people who can help you navigate the organization and systems. This is the key to understanding why network analysis can greatly increase the effectiveness of stakeholder analysis.
18.3.3. Preparation
This exercise is best accomplished with a group of about five to seven people. For larger groups, it is best to start with a small subgroup and then complement the analysis with additional members' perspectives after the first round. To begin, it is critical to make sure that the participants have access to a stakeholder management framework. Figure 18.2 is a simple but good example of the kind of initial analysis that the team might have done.
18.3.4. STEP 1: Clarify Stakeholder Connections to Each Team Member
Start with the standard stakeholder analysis conducted by the team, such as the one in Figure 18.2. It's a good idea to post it on the wall or project it onto a screen that everyone can see.
Figure 18.2. AN INITIAL STAKEHOLDER ANALYSIS
Figure 18.3. ONLY ONE PERSON IS CRITICAL TO KIM
Now the challenge is to determine how the stakeholders are connected to each team member. To get at this, ask team members, "Whom do you rely on most in the organization for the resources, knowledge, and support you need to be an effective contributor to this project?" By asking the question in this way, each person should be able to construct, on the fly, a rough-cut network map of his or her own. Participants can list people who were not on the original analysis, and they are not required to show direct connections to all the names on the original analysis.
Next, ask team members to graphically depict their connections. They do so on a flip chart or white board by writing the stakeholders' names and their own name on sticky notes (one name per sticky note) and then drawing arrows from the sticky note representing themselves to each stakeholder. This should be done individually by each member on his or her own flip chart paper or section of a white board. (Note: arrows can be drawn in a unidirectional manner (→) or in a bidirectional manner (←) to indicate whether critical project information flows principally from the stakeholder to the team member or fluidly between both members.)
In the example in Figure 18.3, Kim determined that there is really only one other person in the organization, Binh, who is critical to her for this project. She also determined that information flows from Binh to her as well as from her to Binh. Note that Binh had been identified as a stakeholder in the group's original analysis.
18.3.5. STEP 2: Connections to the Team as a Whole
Group the team around a flip chart or large piece of butcher paper attached to the wall. It's a good idea to write the original question prominently on the paper to remind the members what we mean by "connection" to stakeholders. In this example, the facilitator would write on the paper, "Whom do you rely on most in the organization for the resources, knowledge, and support you need to be an effective contributor to this project?"
Ask each team member to transfer the sticky notes with their names from their individual work area to the center of the butcher paper or white board, leaving plenty of room between names.
Next, ask one team member to add his or her stakeholder sticky notes to the paper, leaving plenty of space for the other team members' additions. The team member should again draw arrows from his or her own name to those stakeholders after all his or her sticky notes are on the flip chart or butcher paper.
Ask the next team member to repeat the process, transferring his or her stakeholder sticky notes to the butcher paper, but only if those sticky notes represent new names. Duplicate sticky notes should be eliminated. This team member should also draw arrows from his or her name, as appropriate, to any and all stakeholders to whom he or she is connected according to the question written on the paper. For now, the arrows should only be drawn between a team member name and a stakeholder name, not between stakeholders or team members.
Ask each remaining team member to follow the steps just outlined. Once complete, the end result might look something like Figure 18.4.
In this simple example, the three-person team has worked out that it is critically connected to Binh and Greta. So far, it is notable that Binh is the only project stakeholder who had been identified in the original analysis. Also, none of the three has named Ian or Craig, whose names came up in the earlier analysis. A new person, Greta, emerges, but it is a bit early to call her a stakeholder because she may wield little to no influence in directing the course of the project and may even have very little interest in it.
Figure 18.4. A VIEW OF CRITICAL STAKEHOLDERS
18.3.6. STEP 3: Connections Among Stakeholders
Ask a team member to volunteer to put the stakeholders from the original analysis on the map (remember Ian and Craig?) in the form of sticky notes.
Here's where the exercise gets interesting. Ask the participants to use what they know about the stakeholders named on the butcher paper to estimate whether those individuals rely on one another for information and resources related to this project.[]
To indicate the relationships between individual stakeholders, ask team members to draw arrows between them. It's a good idea to use a pencil or to re-create the map on a white board so that items can be moved to create a "clean" view of the network. Team members can do this in turn or can discuss what they think as a group before drawing.
Additionally, if team members know that a named stakeholder is connected to another stakeholder only through a previously unnamed person, they should add a sticky note with the new person's name on it and represent this indirect connection using arrows.
As an example of the step overall, imagine that the team came up with the composite rough-cut network map in Figure 18.5.
It becomes immediately clear that to gain the support of both Ian and Craig, the team must work through other people in the organization—namely Isabel, Miguel, and Greta. The good news is that Binh, who was already identified as a stakeholder and has a direct connection to team members, becomes a valuable connector to Ian and Craig, though not directly. Very quickly the team sees that Isabel, Miguel, and Greta might actually be stakeholders: they might provide access to Ian and Craig and serve as intermediaries between the team's work and Ian and Craig's concerns. In essence, the indirect ties among the stakeholders point to the importance of people whom the team might have missed in its initial analysis.
18.3.7. STEP 4: Action Planning
Now the team is ready to conduct its action planning. Ask team members to consider what the new list of stakeholders looks like. Create the following columns, one at a time:
Figure 18.5. A ROUGH-CUT NETWORK MAP
18.3.7.1. Stakeholder Column
List stakeholder on a separate flip chart in a single column on the left side of the page marked STAKEHOLDERS
18.3.7.2. Action Column
Place this column to the right of the STAKEHOLDERS column. In the ACTION column, the team will capture all actions that need to be taken for each stakeholder. Using the preceding example, next to the name Binh, a critical action could be "Request that Binh introduce the project initiative to Isabel, Miguel, and Greta on behalf of the team." Another action, next to Binh and Greta, might read, "Provide update on current project deliverables, milestones, timelines, and resources needed."
18.3.7.3. Accountable Column
Place this column to the right of the ACTION column. In the ACCOUNTABLE column, the team will capture who is accountable for the various actions.
18.3.7.4. By When column
Use this column to capture deadlines for the actions listed. Because this exercise often reveals new stakeholders and more complex actions, time frames may be initially unclear. Agree as a team how to make those time frames explicit.
If the team had relied purely on its initial "flat" analysis of stakeholders, team members might never have learned how to reach their most important stakeholders, and they might never have realized that others in the organization play critical supporting roles in their projects. By remembering the way the work flows in the organization—not just where stakeholders sit in the org chart—teams can greatly improve the degree to which they garner the support and commitment they need to execute their most important initiatives.