Business owners surely know how much planning, preparation, drafting, and forethought it takes to kick off, manage, supervise, and successfully deliver a project. Amongst endless things to consider is the stakeholder mapping and a list.
Who are the stakeholders?
These are any people or institutions who may have any interest in your business, or whose opinion may impact it in any way. This includes people who might become your customers in the future, any regulatory body you must stay compliant with, industry enthusiasts, or sceptics.
It can also be anyone from the “outside” who may not necessarily be directly involved in a project's undertakings and yet still play a vital role in its development. Whether they work in one’s favor or could potentially block certain actions, one should identify these key outsiders: their strengths and weaknesses; how much influence/power do those have over us? What can we use them for if anything else would suit better given time constraints etc.? How often should the company communicate back?
How to identify stakeholders relevant to a business/project?
Proper identification of relevant stakeholders may be a daunting task, especially if you lack experience. However, a good, old brainstorming session comes in handy here.
It’s worth gathering all employees directly involved in the project to ensure no potential stakeholders are missed. While selecting a list it’s also worth going beyond the most usual patterns of thinking such as the obvious - CEO, working team, first-line regulatory institutions and, instead, create a separate part of the list dedicated to secondary stakeholders - that is anyone who at first glance in not directly involved and yet may have an impact (find more about that in our PDF).
How to understand stakeholders’ needs and their position?
Similarly to the identification process, it’s important to brainstorm all possibilities. There are many questions that one can ask oneself to group the potential stakeholders clearly and transparently:
- What’s in it for them? Would they have any financial interest, and if so, is it positive or negative?
- Do they have any emotional interest and may want to interfere in a project or its outcome in any way?
- Knowing that they may come in with a negative approach or means to block the development, what can be done to minimize negative impact and manage the potential opposition?
- Is there a chance that if not now, then maybe in the future they may become your customers, and it’s worth considering them from the start?
- What has the utmost impact on their decisions and opinions? How are they shaped? Are there any particular factors that may influence them?
- How has the general opinion changed in recent years, and what motivated the changes? Is there maybe a person/institution that led the changes?
- What’s the government's stance, is there maybe a political figure that could potentially get involved?
- What’s the customer base, and what makes the products/services popular with them? What are their main pain points?
- What/who poses the biggest threat to the industry, and how can it/they be addressed to win them over?
- Are there any third-party companies that may want to get involved in the project and nourish it?
- In terms of regulatory institutions, how often and at what scale should they be addressed to keep them satisfied?
Stakeholders list vs. mapping
There are two ways in which all relevant stakeholders may be presented.
A stakeholders list presents all the relevant figures in a clear catalogue. It’s a place where one can record all the stakeholders along with a short description and any additional information that may be useful.
Stakeholders mapping - being a quadrant diagram, it shows the level of interest and correlation between certain figures. It aims to group the above list in influence-involvement levels from the most to least significant. It helps to keep a good track of how often and at what scale one should communicate with particular stakeholders.
Crucial stakeholders for E-mobility Service Providers
Naturally, some of the EMSP stakeholders will overlap with any other typical business. Namely, there will always be a CEO, working team, security department, etc., but within e-mobility, there will also be figures specific only to the industry.
We prepared a walkthrough of EMSP stakeholders for you to download. It includes a list and mapping, along with tips and things worth considering while creating such a list for e-mobility projects.
Download your PDF now!