---
name: stakeholder-analysis
description: Use when asked to run or explain a stakeholder analysis — identifying stakeholders and mapping their interest and influence (a power/interest grid) to plan engagement — as the analytical step that typically precedes formalizing responsibilities in a responsibility-assignment-matrix.
---

# Stakeholder Analysis

Stakeholder analysis identifies everyone with an interest in, or
influence over, a project or initiative, and maps them to plan how to
engage each appropriately — distinct from simply listing who's
"involved," since it explicitly considers both interest and influence,
which aren't the same thing.

## The power/interest grid

A common technique maps stakeholders on two axes:

- **High power, high interest** — manage closely; these stakeholders
  need active engagement and can significantly affect outcomes.
- **High power, low interest** — keep satisfied; enough engagement to
  maintain their support without over-investing their attention.
- **Low power, high interest** — keep informed; they care about the
  outcome and can provide useful input, even without significant
  influence over decisions.
- **Low power, low interest** — monitor with minimal effort.

## Process

1. **Identify** — list everyone with a stake in the outcome: sponsors,
   users, teams affected, regulators, partners, and others.
2. **Assess** — for each stakeholder, estimate their level of interest
   and influence/power.
3. **Map** — place stakeholders on the power/interest grid (or a
   similar framework).
4. **Plan engagement** — decide the appropriate communication frequency,
   channel, and depth for each quadrant.
5. **Revisit** — stakeholder positions can shift as a project
   progresses; the map should be updated, not fixed once at the start.

## Relationship to formal responsibility assignment

Stakeholder analysis identifies *who matters and how*; a
[[responsibility-assignment-matrix]] (or its common RACI variant, see
[[raci-matrix]]) then formalizes *who does what* for specific tasks.
Stakeholder analysis is often the earlier, broader exercise that
informs which stakeholders need to be explicitly named in the later,
more granular responsibility assignment.

## Common pitfalls

- **Treating the stakeholder map as static** — stakeholder power and
  interest can change significantly as a project evolves; a map drawn
  at kickoff and never revisited can miss important shifts.
- **Engaging every stakeholder identically** — the whole point of
  mapping interest and power separately is to differentiate engagement
  approach; uniform engagement wastes effort on low-priority
  stakeholders while potentially under-serving critical ones.
- **Missing stakeholders with low visibility but real influence** —
  informal influence (a respected team member, an external advisor)
  doesn't always show up on an org chart but can matter as much as
  formal authority.

## Learn more

- [[responsibility-assignment-matrix]], [[raci-matrix]] for formalizing responsibilities once stakeholders are identified.
- [[statement-of-work]] for a document that often names key stakeholders explicitly.
- [[crucial-conversations]] for engaging a high-power, high-interest stakeholder in a difficult conversation.