Power/influence, stakeholder

Power/Influence Category This column tracks how much power the stakeholder has in the organization, relative to the influence they hold over the project. Skip it until step 3. 

Power/Influence Category Enter the corresponding quadrant letter for each stakeholder (from step 2). 

Now that you know who your stakeholders are, and to what degree they support the project, you need to decide where to focus the majority of your stakeholder management efforts. Using a power and influence map, indicate where each stakeholder lies relative to their power in the organization... 

EXHIBIT 8.2 (Downloadable). Stakeholders in Quadrant A have high power in the organization and a lot of influence over the project, making them the most important to manage. 

Rieger has high power in the organization but less influence over the innovation deployment than most other stakeholders (Exhibit 8.2). Thus, any resistance on her part will be less consequential than those who have more control over the deployment. 

After filling out the power and influence matrix, return to the stakeholder diagnostic and fill in the remaining items ... 

Participation and Involvement If you have stakeholders with considerable power to resist, find ways for them to participate early and throughout the project. This gives them the opportunity to influence the project proactively instead of reactively. In our example, the very resistant vice president of research and development should definitely be involved early and remain a key player in the innovation deployment. 

Social interaction processes. Interpersonal behaviors that are involved in enacting structures and systems, including leadership at every level, negotiations, problemsolving, decision-making, power and influence, teamwork, and partnerships with multiple stakeholders. 

The results of the regression analyses are included in Table 6. The explanatory power of the process (Adj. R =25.0%) and chain (Adj. R =24.2%) EMS are both relatively high. Table 6 shows that the process EMS-performance is significantly determined by company size (P<0.01) and the perceived influence of public stakeholders (P<0.01). Furthermore, correspondence appears to play a role, but of minor importance (P=0.10). 

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