Stakeholder Analysis
A Stakeholder Analysis is a comprehensive analysis of the stakeholder universe surrounding a topic (e.g. ‘Diabetes’, ‘Family Car’, ‘Personal Current Account’, ‘Software Development’, etc.).
A Stakeholder Analysis provides answers to key questions such as
- Who are the most influential stakeholders of the issue; what is the actual influence of these stakeholders; how do the stakeholders cluster?
- What are stakeholders saying about the issue (or our brands/company); what are the trends in the debate; which issues are important to stakeholders and what makes them happy/unhappy?
An overview over the standard questions answered in a Stakeholder Analysis is contained in Table 1.
A Stakeholder Analysis also often answers a number of agreed questions addressing issues of specific interest to the client.
Last but not least a Stakeholder Analysis puts each metric, observation and finding into the relevant context and addresses the issue from the client’s vantage point.
A Stakeholder Analysis is normally delivered as a report combined with an in-person presentation/discussion of the findings.
A Stakeholder Analysis is the typical benchmark and starting point for analysing the online debate. It often forms a precursor to Periodic Monitoring Reports (see below). Alternatively, Stakeholder Analyses are often repeated annually.
| Standard Question | Relevance |
Who are the most influential stakeholders of the debate on the topic? |
This information provides a more precise understanding of who are actually influential in the debate. Research shows that when people ‘expertise’ about who is influential on any particular issue we naturally overrate the importance of those we are more familiar with and similar underrate the importance of those we are less (or un-) familiar with. By understanding who the influential stakeholders are we can prioritise our communication and engagement process to match the real world rather than our perceived version of it. |
How influential are they relative to each other? |
By understanding the relative influence of each stakeholder we can further optimise our communication and engagement strategies, but more importantly attribute the correct weight to the viewpoint of each stakeholder (or group of stakeholders). Treating all stakeholders, even the 100 most influential, as equally influential will often lead to serious errors in prioritising communications resources. |
Who are the most popular stakeholders of the debate on the topic? |
By understanding how popular a stakeholder is and comparing this to their measured influence, we can gain insight into a number of issues (see below). Often we can also predict which stakeholders and stakeholder groups will be more important in the future. |
Who is more/less influential than their popularity would lead us to believe? |
As mentioned above, people overrate the importance/influence of those stakeholders who are very popular and similar underrate those who are less popular. As a consequence, the cost of engaging (whether in direct cost or in the amount of time/works spent) with a stakeholder is closely tied to the stakeholder’s popularity. However, since the outcome of engaging with a stakeholder is more closely tied to the stakeholder’s influence we can optimise our engagement by initially focusing on those stakeholders who are more influential than their popularity would lead everybody to believe. |
What are meaningful ways of clustering the influential stakeholders? |
By understanding how stakeholders cluster we not only gain a more precise understanding of the importance of each cluster, but also ensure that our communication strategies effectively cover all the clusters and not only those we are focused on because of tradition or groupthink. |
Table 1 - Minimum Standard Content of Stakeholder Analysis
