4 Critical Components of a Stakeholder Management Plan

A stakeholder management plan is a foundation for managing stakeholder engagement throughout your project. Like any good strategy, it should answer key questions about what you’ll do and why. More specifically, it should include:

A description of each of your stakeholders and their relevant interests

The first section of your plan should be a list of all the known stakeholders and their relevant interests. This can be more than a simple list, however. For example, your plan may include a description of each stakeholder, their interests, and how they might be affected by your project. 

An interest is an advantage or benefit that a stakeholder wants to achieve by engaging in a particular action. For example, a stakeholder may want to be recognized for their contribution to the project, or they may want the project to be successful in supporting their own interests. The more stakeholders who are involved in the project, the more important it is to understand their interests. If a stakeholder does not have their interests addressed, they can take their business elsewhere.

This is often part of a stakeholder analysis, which is a bit more complicated than just a list of stakeholders. This section aims to help you understand how your project affects the stakeholders and to help you identify if there are any stakeholders that you might have overlooked.

The goals you hope to achieve with each

It would help if you had a clear idea of what each stakeholder group expects from you and your project. This will help you develop a stakeholder management plan that will drive your project to success. If your stakeholder group is a large one, consider creating a strategy for each group. You can then develop a stakeholder management plan that ensures you are addressing the expectations of each group. You can handle this by creating a document that details each stakeholder group’s relationship with your project.

This is really the meat and potatoes of your stakeholder management plan. If you don’t have a plan to tell you what you’re going to do and how you’re going to do it, you’re not going to get very far. The actions you take should be specific to your business, your goals, and your industry. In addition to the actions you take, you should also include the people you’ll be working with and explain how they will be involved in the process. This is your opportunity to show management how you’ll be able to meet your goals by working with others in the organization.

Communicating your stakeholder management plan effectively  

One of the most important parts of any stakeholder management plan is communicating effectively with the people who are on your list. Stakeholders can be anyone, from the top managers at your company to the accounting people who will be approving your expenses. Often, it is not enough to just send them an email or document containing all the information you want them to see, or even just inform them they need to do their jobs. 

You have to communicate your messages in such a way that they will actually pay attention, and you have to do this while being aware of the fact that they have a lot of other things to pay attention to. You can add a useful tool like stakeholder engagement software in the equation to ease and tweak the task of communicating. Communicating your stakeholder management plan effectively is one of the most important parts of the process. 

Create criteria for evaluating whether or not you’ve been successful

One of the most critical aspects of developing a stakeholder management plan is determining what it means to be successful. There are many factors that go into this, but at its most basic level, you’ll want to know what you are trying to accomplish with your stakeholders and how you will be able to measure your progress. The most common way of evaluating your success is in monetary terms, but you can also evaluate success by looking at metrics such as the number of people who were impacted by the project, how much you raised in donations, and the number of people who were involved in the project.