The stakeholder power-interest grid is a strategic management tool that allows organizations to assess the significance of stakeholders and determine appropriate engagement strategies. One very routinely performed activity on a project is to analyse the stakeholders. This involves identifying the new stakeholders and updating the existing stakeholders.
During stakeholder analysis, there is a need to prioritize and group the stakeholders based on their power, influence & interest. One of the reason of this grouping is the limited time and resource the PMs have to engage the stakeholders.
Stakeholder Analysis is the first step in Stakeholder Management, an effective three-step process for identifying, prioritizing, and understanding your stakeholders.
Imagine you have 150 stakeholders on a project, it would be difficult for project managers to equally allocate the time and listen problems of all 150 stakeholders. The solution is to group the stakeholders based on their priority and this priority can be determined based on their power and interest. Once the power and interest of stakeholders have been assessed, they can be placed into four distinct categories within the power-interest grid.
High Power, High Interest Stakeholders:
High power, high interest stakeholders are individuals or groups who possess significant influence over the organization or project and have a highly active interest in its outcomes. Engaging with these stakeholders is important to success as these stakeholders have decision making authority and are good source of information as well.
High Power, Low Interest Stakeholders:
High power, low interest stakeholders are those who have the ability to exert significant influence but may not have a direct interest in the organization or project. It is still important to keep them engaged and informed but they are not as critical as high-power, high-interest stakeholders.
Low Power, High Interest Stakeholders:
Low power, high interest stakeholders are individuals or groups with a significant interest in the organization or project but do not possess considerable influence or decision making authority. These stakeholders can still be good source of information and data.
Low Power, Low Interest Stakeholders:
Low power, low interest stakeholders have minimal influence and interest in the organization or project. While currently their involvement may not be crucial but their power and interest may change over time, so keep tracking them and keep them in the stakeholder register.
