Manage the 'inner' stakeholders

Stakeholder management, like most things in popular literature, is often reduced to a set of rules of thumb. Often good as far as it goes, but there are some stakeholders that need extra care.

I call them the inner stakeholders.

Who are they, and how do you find them?

Easy.

First, find the project sponsor. That's probably easy, but not always. The real sponsor.

Next find who the sponsor has dependency or supply relationships with.

That's them, then. These are the 'inner' stakeholders.

Because of their relationship with the sponsor, they have a stake in the project in some way. Maybe even a way they don't see or fully appreciate.

It's your job as the PM to find out what their stake is and how they conceive it.

You need to meet them and ask about the links to the project, and the links to the things and people, functions and customers, the project is linked to. The relationship of the 'stake' to the 'holder' can be a second or third-order relationship, and those relationships might then have similar links to other inner stakeholders. They all need to be found, named, and analyzed.

This is the group you need to get in a room and identify the interconnections and how their influence can be useful to the project (and therefore to them). A 'rich picture' can help do this.

Then keep them updated. Maybe weekly sometimes, maybe monthly or quarterly at others.

But keep them updated somehow, and keep your sponsor in the loop as an ally, a facilitator and a power and information broker.

No matter what. Do it.