Stakeholder identification for projects isn’t necessarily easy, but it’s well understood.  The PMBoK provides a framework for stakeholder analysis based on interest, rights, ownership, knowledge, and contribution.  However, the needs of change projects are different.  Change projects, particularly transformational change projects, require a different way of evaluating stakeholders that includes three attributes: power, urgency, and legitimacy.

Legitimacy

In their 1997 article, “Toward a Theory of Stakeholder Identification and Salience: Defining the Principle of Who and What Really Counts,” Ronald Mitchell, Bradley Agle, and Donna Wood identify three key attributes of stakeholders.  The first of these attributes is legitimacy.  The legitimacy of stakeholders is defined by the kinds of evaluations that the PMBoK recommends.  A person’s legitimacy in a change project is based on the kind of impact that the change will make on their role.

Legitimacy is sometimes conveyed through historical experience rather than current activity.  A manager who has “grown up” or worked their way up through the ranks of a department are still legitimate stakeholders based on their experience even if they no longer directly perform the work that the change relates to.

In the context of a RACI chart, those who have high legitimacy are those who have the knowledge and experience to be consulted.  While they may not be directly responsible or accountable for a task or for the change, they’re those people whose input you need to ensure the change makes sense and whose support you need to provide evidence that the change is reasonable.

While this is a great start in the identification of stakeholders, it clearly doesn’t address everyone.  It doesn’t always engage those who are responsible or accountable for the project’s completion.

Power

The attribute power addresses the ability for the stakeholder to influence others towards action.  In the context of a RACI chart, these people are those who are accountable to the project or the task.  It’s perceived that their position in the organization allows them to control or influence the resources sufficiently that they’ll complete the work.

A different kind of power exists in additional to the kind of structural power conveyed upon stakeholders by the nature of their position.  The other kind of power exists in the network of relationships that the individual or group has and their ability to leverage this network to encourage or block behavior changes in others.  Consider the executive assistant with no direct reports but who largely controls the executive’s calendar.  They can be a powerful ally for a project to ensure that the issues that the change project are addressing are given ample time in the appropriate meetings and forums.

Power, therefore, isn’t simply getting executive support.  Power lies in the ability to influence others – which is partially impacted by position but can be more powerfully influenced by the person’s connections.  The challenge with many people with deep personal connections and non-positional power is that they often don’t see a sense of urgency for change, because their relationships are built on the status quo, and that’s why the third attribute of an ideal stakeholder is urgency.

Urgency

Change efforts are frequently – but not always – forward-looking activities.  There’s a looming impact to the business that’s being addressed or an opportunity that is being chased.  Changes bring uncertainty and loss, and therefore organizations naturally resist them.  For a change to succeed, the stakeholders and the organization need a sense of urgency to drive the change through the resistance.

While legitimacy and power are relatively easy to detect by reviewing positions and communications patterns, a sense of urgency is more context sensitive to the change being made.  Identifying those stakeholders who believe the change needs to be made now can sometimes be discovered by the pressure being placed on the team to start and then execute on the project.  However, they often must be solicited to find those people who are the most engaged with the necessity of the change and most excited about the new possibilities that the change will bring.

Mapping Stakeholders

These three attributes are not binary in that they either exist or don’t exist in a potential stakeholder.  Instead, all potential stakeholders will express some degree of these three attributes.  When developing a comprehensive set of stakeholders that will drive a change project, it’s important to identify the right mixture of stakeholders such that all three attributes are addressed; power, legitimacy, and urgency are all required collectively.

Mitchell, Agle, and Wood recommend names for the kind of stakeholder that someone is based on their degree of the attributes and their overlapping regions.  They are: Dormant (Power), Dominant (Power, Legitimacy), Dangerous (Power, Urgency), Discretionary (Legitimacy), Dependent (Legitimacy, Urgency), Demanding (Urgency), and Definitive (Power, Legitimacy, Urgency). See Figure 1 for a graphical representation of these stakeholder identifiers.

Figure 1: Stakeholder Attributes and Labels

Divining Definitive

While it’s convenient to attempt to find high degrees of power, urgency, and legitimacy in a single stakeholder or a stakeholder group, most successful project managers recognize that it’s rare to find these attributes in a single individual or group.  Instead, the objective of stakeholder identification should not be attempting to find all these attributes in a single person but rather to find a way to get a collection of stakeholders for the project that can collectively express these attributes.

References

Mitchell, R. K., Agle, B. R., & Wood, D. J. (1997). Toward a Theory of Stakeholder Identification and Salience: Defining the Principle of Who and What Really Counts. The Academy of Management Review, 22(4), 853-886.