Stakeholders and how to manage them
Who's my customer?
In the world of finance there's a concept called “know your customer” (KYC).
The idea is simple: you shouldn’t do business with someone unless you know them well enough to assess the risks.
But how well do you need to know them?
The answer is: as well as humanly possible 😊
Seems obvious, huh? True. Until you have to define the words "know" and "customer".
The thing is that our customers list is not limited to just those who requested a feature / product, etc. In reality, we “owe” plenty of others as well. That’s why we use the term stakeholder.
And, no, unfortunately, that word has nothing to do with a juicy steak (apart from the fact that successful professionals are often taken out for steak dinners by their stakeholders 😁). And, yes, it’s spelled differently!
Besides the obvious people, like company staff and whole departments, your stakeholders can include:
🌸 the company’s shareholders
🌸 other businesses
🌸 government and regulatory authorities
🌸 …even society at large!
So, how do you get to know them? You gather data and make it visual!
Getting your stakeholders in a row
There are three steps you simply can’t skip:
- Identification: figure out who they are, where to find them, and introduce yourself
- Analysis: determine their unique features – how much influence or interest they have, and classify them
- Approach: decide how you’re going to engage with each category
You need to approach stakeholder analysis from all angles. The specific approach depends on your project’s needs, your company’s peculiarities, and…how much time you’ve got 😬
Here's an overview of the basic approaches for each of the steps I mentioned above:
Identification tools:
🌸 Stakeholder Register (keep a list of your stakeholders)
🌸 Onion Diagram (don’t worry, it doesn’t usually make you cry)
Analysis and prioritization matrices:
🌸 Power/Interest Grid
🌸 Influence/Impact Grid
🌸 Salience Model
Engagement models:
🌸 RACI Matrix (Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed)
🌸 Stakeholder Cube (like the RACI matrix, but with three dimensions instead of two)
🌸 Engagement Plan (your communication plan)
All of these are easy to Google, so I won’t dive deep into details. In my experience,
Because if you don’t know who you’re doing the work for and why , you’re doomed from the start.
Waste of time?
Who's got the time to create those registers and matrices? We need to work!
Well, you could skip these steps and “save” time. But before you try to efficiently tackle “real” tasks, here’s some food for thought:
Don Vito Corleone, and his successor Michael, kept a detailed mental map of their relationships:
🌸 Friends – those who respect the Don’s authority and accept his help (like Enzo the baker, saved from deportation)
🌸 Enemies – those who showed disrespect or betrayed the family (like Virgil Sollozzo, who orchestrated the hit)
🌸 Debtors – people who owed the family for favours (like Johnny Fontane, whose career the Don rescued)
I’m no Don Vito, obviously, but I tend to use a similar system: I keep track of who's helped me or the team and with what, so when a certain support request gets stuck, infrastructure problems pop up, or someone needs to find out what the unofficial stance of a certain department is, I know exactly who I should turn to.
Trust me, it works the same way with stakeholder registers and matrices 😌
Who's who in the stakeholder world
and how to make sure you found them all!
Stakeholders are a fascinating species: their job title and their role in the project are not always connected 🤔
Meaning, that a stakeholder might look like the person in charge, but there could be an invisible middle manager actually calling the shots based on their own experience or the info they get from the “"visible” stakeholder.
But... how can that be?
It’s no secret: the higher someone is on the corporate ladder, the further they are from the nitty-gritty, day-to-day details. And that’s totally OK
E.g. The CFO might not have an in-depth knowledge of the whole payroll process. Best-case scenario is they delegate the project-related questions to someone who’s hands-on with the process, and you get to meet the real expert. Worst-case scenario — they “get advice” from that person quietly in the background, while you remain in the dark.
The CFO who steers the project is what we’d call a Decision-Maker.
But sometimes, they’re simply voicing the opinions or decisions of those classic “gray cardinals”– the Real Decision Makers
What can I do about it?
In finance, when working with legal entities, companies go to great lengths to identify the individuals – “the warm bodies”– the ones who actually pull the strings, whether directly or indirectly. In industry slang, this is called “getting to the warm body.”
To you this means that you need to
Here’s how you can do it:
🌸 Study the org chart – that way you’ll find out who reports into whom
🌸 Read the company's / department's policies – you’ll see who does what and spot the “unofficial advisors”
🌸 Pay close attention in meetings (especially informal ones) – you’ll notice the group dynamics and who truly shapes opinions and exerts influence
🌸 Don’t be afraid to ask direct questions, like:
"Whose opinion matters most when decisions are made?"
"Whose workflow breaks if we change X?"
Do this, and you’ll be able to predict risks, tailor your communication, engage stakeholders, and gather requirements far more effectively! 🤩
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