A wise man once said: "If you want something to get done, put someone in charge of doing it."
Stakeholder management is vital to ensuring your plan is successfully delivered. StratNavApp.com allows you to specify which Stakeholders are Responsible, Accountable, Supporting, Consulted on or Informed (See RASCI) about your plan itself, as well as each element within it.
Stakeholders can be People, Organisations or Groups of People or Organisations.
You can add Stakeholders either to the plan itself, or to Initiatives, Actions, Goals, Objectives, Insights, Competitors or Processes within the plan.
How to add a stakeholder to the strategy itself
To add a stakeholder to the strategy itself:
- From the Strategy Board page, click the Edit this Project button towards the bottom of the page.
- Then, on the Project form, scroll to the bottom and click either "Specify people involved in this strategy", "Specify organisations involved in this strategy" or "Specify generic groups involved in this strategy".
- This should open a new input on the form. Start typing the name of the person, organisation or generic group. If the system finds a stakeholder in your plan with that name already, you can simply click on it to link it. If not, finish typing the name of the stakeholder and press enter. The system will then create the stakeholder record for you.
- Once the stakeholders are created in this way, they should appear on the form. Click on the name of the stakeholder to open a form to edit the details about them.
How to add a stakeholder to an element within the strategy
To add a responsible or accountable, etc. stakeholder to an element within the strategy (assuming you've already created the element):
- Click on the element to open up a form to edit the details about it.
- Scroll down to "Do Next" and click on "Specify people...", "Specify organisations..." or "Specify generic groups". This will open up a new input area on the page, and put the cursor in the input to link to a Stakeholder.
- Start typing the name of the stakeholder.
- If they already exist in this project, they should appear in the dropdown list attached to the entry field. Simply click on an existing stakeholder on the dropdown to create a link to the stakeholder.
- If they don't already exist in this project, simply finish typing the name and press the Enter key.
- Once you've added a link to the stakeholder, you may be able to add additional information, such as role name, role description, RASCI category (e.g. Responsible, Accountable, Supporting, Consulted or Informed) and whether the role is as a performer or a beneficiary.
Once you've linked one stakeholder to an element, you can link additional stakeholders by following steps 3 and four immediately below the list of linked stakeholders.
Viewing a list of all Stakeholders
You will see that you can link a stakeholder to multiple places in the plan if appropriate. If you want to see a list of all stakeholders regardless of where they are attached, return to the Strategy Board and click "Stakeholders" from the Governance block in the middle. From there you will be able to select between People, Organisations and Groups.
Groups of Stakeholders
Sometimes we need to refer to stakeholders groups without referring to the individual stakeholders.
For example, we may want to refer to a customer segment without having to refer to each of the individual customers within that segment. In the case of a target customer segment this may be even more necessary as we might not even be able to identify individual members of that segment.
In that case, we can refer to Groups of Stakeholders. StratNavApp.com allows you to do everything with groups that you can do with individual people or organisations.
Understanding all the roles each Stakeholder plays
A stakeholder can play many roles with many elements in your strategy.
To see what all of these are, open up the edit screen for that Stakeholder. This screen will include links with role definitions to other elements such as Goals, Objectives, Initiatives, Actions, Insights etc. You can also create links to additional elements from this page.