Stakeholders
Work with conflict and resistance
Stakeholders will not always want the same thing. A funder may want measurable outputs, staff may want realistic workloads, service users may want flexibility, suppliers may need fair payment terms, and the board may want risk control.
The lazy answer is to call these trade-offs and pick a winner. Sometimes trade-offs are real, but often conflict is a sign that the project needs better design. Can reporting be simplified? Can volunteers be supported earlier? Can the supplier relationship be changed without damaging cost or quality?
Resistance is not always irrational. People may resist because they are scared, excluded, overworked, badly informed, or correct. Force Field Analysis can help by identifying what is pushing the project forward and what is holding it back.
The answer is not always to push harder. Often, the better move is to reduce resistance: provide training, simplify the tool, explain the purpose, involve users earlier, or phase the change more carefully.
Stakeholders are not obstacles to delivery. They are part of the delivery environment.
Engagement is not broadcasting
Communication is not the same as engagement. Sending updates is useful, but it does not mean people have been meaningfully involved.
Engagement can mean informing, consulting, involving, partnering or co-creating. The level depends on the project and the stakeholder. A local resident may only need clear information about event disruption. A service user group may need to shape the design of a new programme. A funder may need evidence, risks and progress updates. Volunteers may need involvement early enough that the plan reflects actual capacity rather than imaginary availability.
The dangerous version is late consultation, where people are asked for feedback after the real decisions have already been made. That is not engagement. That is theatre with a feedback form.
Don't meet people for the first time during the backlash
A stakeholder is anyone who can affect your project, or anyone affected by it.
That sounds simple. It is also one of the easiest things to underestimate. Small businesses and charities often know their obvious stakeholders: funders, customers, board members, staff, volunteers, suppliers, clients, service users. The problem is usually not complete ignorance. The problem is attention. Some stakeholders get listened to because they are powerful, loud or close to the money. Others are discovered later, usually when they are annoyed enough to become interesting.
Stakeholder management is not about keeping important people happy. It is about understanding who has power, who carries the consequences, who needs to be involved, and who can quietly make the project harder if they are ignored.
Stakeholders are connected
Projects do not happen in isolation. A decision made for one stakeholder usually affects another.
A charity may focus on funder reporting, but if volunteers are overloaded, service quality drops. If service quality drops, beneficiaries are affected. If beneficiaries are affected, the charity’s reputation suffers. If reputation suffers, funding becomes harder. Suddenly, the “volunteer issue” was not small at all. It was part of the operating system.
This is the useful idea behind stakeholder thinking: people and organisations are interdependent. Treating suppliers badly, ignoring local communities, excluding service users or exhausting staff may look efficient in the short term, but the cost usually returns through delays, resistance, poor delivery or loss of trust.
For small organisations, stakeholder relationships are often the real infrastructure. You may not have huge budgets or formal power, but you may have trust, goodwill, local knowledge and long-term relationships. Those are assets. Govern them accordingly.
Identify before you analyse
The first step is not deciding who matters most. It is noticing who exists.
A stakeholder onion map can help. Put the project at the centre. Around it, map the immediate team, then the wider organisation, then external groups: customers, funders, suppliers, regulators, community members, volunteers, partner organisations, media, local residents and anyone else touched by the work.
The point is to avoid the usual mistake: only mapping the people already in the meeting.
Quiet stakeholders are still stakeholders. So are people with low formal power but high lived impact. A local community group may not control your budget, but they may determine whether the project is accepted. Volunteers may not sit on the board, but they may determine whether delivery is possible. Service users may not speak in strategy language, but they are often the best test of whether the project makes sense.
Analyse power and interest
Once stakeholders are identified, analyse them. The power-interest grid is useful because not every stakeholder needs the same type of engagement.
High-power, high-interest stakeholders need close management. These might include funders, senior decision-makers, major clients or a project sponsor.
High-power, low-interest stakeholders need to be kept satisfied. They may not want detailed updates, but they can stop the project if ignored.
Low-power, high-interest stakeholders need to be kept informed and genuinely consulted. These are often the people most affected by the project: volunteers, users, local residents, staff or community partners.
Low-power, low-interest stakeholders should still be monitored, but they do not need the same level of attention.
This is not about manipulating people. It is about matching engagement to reality. A stakeholder with high impact and low voice should not be treated as irrelevant just because they cannot sign the cheque.
Strategy is not planning
Strategy, planning, implementation and governance are related, but they are not the same thing.
Strategy chooses the direction. Planning works out the route, resources, timeline and responsibilities. Implementation does the work. Governance checks whether the work still makes sense, still has authority, and still deserves support.
Confusing these creates trouble. A detailed plan is not a strategy. A busy organisation is not necessarily a strategic one. A project delivered on time can still be the wrong project. That is the uncomfortable part people often avoid: good execution does not rescue a bad choice. It just delivers the mistake more efficiently.
Choose what not to do
A useful strategy creates focus. It says yes to some things and no to others. This is where many small organisations struggle, especially charities and mission-led businesses. When the cause matters, every opportunity can feel morally important. Every grant looks tempting. Every partnership seems worth exploring. Every service gap feels like something you should fix.
But saying yes to everything is not generosity. It is strategic self-harm.
A charity that chases every available funding stream may end up running projects that do not fit its mission, confuse staff, exhaust volunteers and make the organisation harder to explain. A small business that copies every competitor may lose the thing that made it distinctive. A team that keeps adding initiatives without stopping anything is not becoming more ambitious. It is building a museum of unfinished intentions.
Strategy requires trade-offs. What will you not do? Which customer or beneficiary will you prioritise? Which projects will you pause? Which “nice idea” does not deserve resources right now?
The strategy is often hidden in the no.
Tools to use
Use to identify people and groups close to the project, inside the organisation and in the wider environment.
Stakeholder Onion Map
Use to decide who needs close management, who needs consultation, who needs updates and who should be monitored.
Power-Interest Grid
Use to clarify who is responsible, accountable, consulted and informed at key points in the project.
“The interest of shareholders is dependent on how well you deal with customers and suppliers and employees and communities.”
— R. Edward Freeman
Recommended reading & sources
Freeman, R.E. – “The New Story of Business: Towards a More Responsible Capitalism”
A readable introduction to stakeholder thinking and why organisations should create value through relationships, not only financial results.
Fassin, Y. – “Stakeholder Management, Reciprocity and Stakeholder Responsibility”
Useful for understanding stakeholder relationships as a two-way street, where responsibility does not sit only with the organisation.
Laasch, O. – Principles of Responsible Management
A practical guide to embedding stakeholder thinking, ethics and sustainability into everyday management decisions.
Rowley, T.J. – “Moving Beyond Dyadic Ties: A Network Theory of Stakeholder Influences”
A more advanced read on how stakeholders influence not only the organisation, but also each other.
Kujala, J., Sachs, S., Leinonen, H., Heikkinen, A. & Laude, D. – “Stakeholder Engagement: Past, Present, and Future”
Helpful for understanding stakeholder engagement as an active relationship-building process, not just communication planning.
Mitchell, R.K., Agle, B.R. & Wood, D.J. – “Toward a Theory of Stakeholder Identification and Salience”
Useful for understanding why some stakeholders get more attention than others, based on power, legitimacy and urgency.