From the course: Leading Strategically

Involve your stakeholders

From the course: Leading Strategically

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Involve your stakeholders

- Have you ever gotten to the final stretch of a project and realized that you used an old logo on every single piece of communication? Yikes! It's likely because you didn't check in enough with your stakeholders throughout the process. When you lead strategically, checking in with your stakeholders is the key to assessing your options and successfully making organizational change. There are several steps to assuring you are involving stakeholders throughout any process. The first step is to gather your stakeholders. Who's going to be affected at every stage of the project? You can look for stakeholders in a couple of places. Who's going to be effected by the change? This might be due to shifts in work, responsibility, reporting, or linkages. Make a note of those that are more impacted than others. These people are likely to offer more pushback and more importantly will likely have insight into how you can be more strategic in implementing the change. Also, look for who has the authority to approve or reject, thinking through the processes and anyone who may be involved in the acceptance, implementation, and after-effects of the change. These are the people you have to involve with check-ins. The best laid plans could be easily derailed if the people with veto power aren't heard. This should include any gatekeeper that can say yes or no, withhold or allow required resources or can grant approval, licensing, or permits. These can be people internal or external to the organization. Finally, look to find everyone who has an interest in the process. This might be other divisional heads observing how your team handles the change, shareholders, or governmental agencies, among others. Once you've gathered a list of all of your stakeholders, rank them in two ways, first, from least powerful to most powerful. Who can have the most effect on your team or the outcome? And second, from least to most interested. Who has the most investment in how this turns out? Check for those at the top of both lists who have high power and high interest. Make sure to involve them early and often and be careful to take plenty of time to understand what influence techniques will work with them. Next, look to those with high power but low-interest. For these stakeholders, you should check in with them to ensure you're correct about their interest level. Don't get blindsided by a high power stakeholder who turns out to be more interested than you thought. Now, for those with high interest but low power, turn them into cheerleaders. Keep them informed as it makes sense and make sure they don't turn into detractors. Consider your whole team as stakeholders whether they have an influence or not. Respecting their voices is essential for initiating a smooth transition. No matter what, you want your team to feel heard and involved. Talk with them and get their thoughts. Then use those ideas to improve your plan. If you can't or don't integrate their ideas, you need to make sure they know why.

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