My Process For Keeping On Top Of Stakeholder Engagement

Every couple of weeks, I use Grant Duncan's  "Stakeholder Mapping" method to help me stay on top of my relationships with stakeholders. Grant, who works for Warner Bros., was generous enough to share this useful tool with me. This method helps me keep track of all the interactions I need to have with my stakeholders.

It's a fairly simple process that can be done in 15 minutes, or it can be extended for occasional deeper dives. I like to do this on a white board, though I've also used online mind mapping tools like this Miro template.

To start, I make a list of all the stakeholders that I'm working with. This can be people inside the company, teams, clients, vendors, etc. Anyone that I need to engage with to ensure the success of my product. There are some names that always appear on this list, others come and go as projects start and then wrap-up.

After I'm confident that I've captured everyone, I assign a priority (or importance) to each one using a 5-star rating system. I assign the ratings according to how I'm feeling about each stakeholder relationship. If there is existing tension the rating will be higher, similarly deadlines or urgent projects will push ratings up.

Sometimes as I work through later steps the ratings get changed - I don't try to spend too much time here as prioritization is not my goal - yet.

I then go through each stakeholder and make a list of anything that needs to be done or discussed. My goal here is to capture as many of the ways that I need to engage with this stakeholder that could need my attention.

Once everything has been captured I start reviewing. Each item is evaluated based on; due dates, urgency, do I already have an action item for it, importance assigned to the stakeholder, etc. I tend to think about the urgency and importance matrix as I work, eliminating anything that is neither. As I make the evaluations I book meetings, record action-items or delegate the effort.