The SRM Key: Enlightened Self-Interest

Michael R. Wood is a Business Process Improvement & IT Strategist Independent Consultant. He is creator of the business process-improvement methodology called HELIX and founder of The Natural Intelligence Group, a strategy, process improvement and technology consulting company. He is also a CPA, has served as an Adjunct Professor in Pepperdine's Management MBA program, an Associate Professor at California Lutheran University, and on the boards of numerous professional organizations. Mr. Wood is a sought after presenter of HELIX workshops and seminars in both the U.S. and Europe.

  Communications Management   Stakeholder Management  

There are a number of theories for how to manage stakeholder relationships. Most are logical and address key elements of the Stakeholder Relationship Management equation in terms of:

• Stakeholder Influence
• Stakeholder Power
• Stakeholder Interest

While these elements are essential to understand when developing how stakeholder relationships are to be managed for a single project or across the landscape of all projects, real SRM success lies in the enduring quality of the personal relationships created and nurtured over time.

Some might argue that every project needs its own SRM strategy, and rightly so; but that denies the bigger organizational reality that stakeholders have memories beyond the boundaries of single projects, initiatives and campaigns. A mismanaged relationship in one project could have serious ramifications on future projects and careers. The politics of SRM are very real and present--and therefore require a long-term strategy that is designed to cultivate stakeholder relationships for as long as those stakeholders exist, a strategy that embraces “Enlightened Self-Interest”.

For example, assume you developed a project’s SRM strategy via the following model (as presented in the post on stakeholdermap.com entitled “Stakeholder Salience”). In doing so, you would create a static view of the stakeholder …

Please log in or sign up below to read the rest of the article.