Back to the Future for tips on stakeholders and other puzzling influences!

In 1985 I left the British Army to start a new civilian career in a recession hit UK (I am known for taking a risk). I managed to get re-trained as a computer programmer (COBOL) and so began my second career in the IT world.  I moved quickly through up to leading teams and then to Project Management. I was fortunate enough to be introduced to the Open University (OU) to gain a civilian education (I joined the Army aged 16). 

In 1991 I enrolled on one of the best OU courses I ever undertook. It was titled "PT621 Introducing New Technology", it introduced me to the concept of change management and stakeholders / Influences on the project / programme of change.

In this blog entry I want to look to back to remind myself, and present to you of some of those ideas around identifying stakeholders and other influences on the project environment that are still relevant in this the future.

External Influences

These two figures recreated from the course material clearly identifies the external and internal influences on an initiative. These types of diagrams are typically much broader than we now think. Today we primarily focus on stakeholder groups, who they are, and how they influence or could potentially impact on our initiatives. 

Figure 1 - External Influences on a Programme / Initiative

I like the way the diagram (Fig1) links stakeholder groups with other overlapping influences in the external environment to help build a rich picture of what the situation is really about. 

Working with the team to identify this influence mapping of external influences will help them gain a richer understanding of what the potential risks could be around. It also helps them to start thinking about stakeholder engagement and how this knew knowledge will impact our stakeholder engagement plan.

Explore the strength of the influence in terms of how it could impact our programme or projects. Add the identified negative and positive influences into your risk register, and work on mitigation activities or activities designed to ensure the positive influences are enhanced.

Internal Influences

Once you have identified the external influences you can switch the team into examining the internal influences in a similar way.  The team will start to think broader than stakeholders as just simple lists of groups of people who might impact the project. I like the way the diagram in Figure 2 links those stakeholder groups from the external environment as overlapping and influencing the internal environment. 

I also like the way it includes other influences on the project from other business activities such as feasibility studies, training, new technology etc...

Again this builds a richer picture of what the situation/environment the project is going to exist in. 

Figure 2: Internal Influences on the Programme / Initiative

I am sure you are looking at both these images and thinking of even more groups or external influences on your project. Use them with your team to identify those influences, and identify the activities to reduce risk, or enhance the opportunities of success. 

So What?

In today's world our project environments are more daunting than ever. There are more interdependencies than ever before. More risk, more complexity in stakeholder engagement, more potential impacts by different aspects of the environment your project is sitting within.

While it is impossible to prepare for every eventuality, perhaps this revisit to a past style of Influence Diagramming will help your team be better prepared with an increased understand of the potential impacts on the project. It could help to improve your stakeholder engagement and risk planning reducing the chances of project failure.