Most common pitfalls for stakeholders and PI grid

Hello everyone, thanks for watching this reflection video. Great that you worked on your
own case.

The moment you start positioning stakeholders, a lot of people forget to position
themselves in the Power Interest grid. As you are analyzing the situation it is not so strange
that this happens. You, literally, oversee the whole complex situation and you want to learn
from stakeholder about that situation and get their ideas.

If nobody is feeling the urge to do something, nothing will happen. So, as you have chosen
this case to analyze, somehow you feel the urge to get to know that complex situation
better and generate ideas for how to change it for the better.

Therefor, it would be logical to see yourself in the diagram. Because you are also a
stakeholder. You also have a perspective on that complex situation and you also have ideas
about how to change it. So, at least I would expect to see you in a position in the grid that
states ‘high interest’.

If you are assigned to a certain task by your boss, your manager or the CEO, it might be that
for that reason you have interest in the situation. But then, also, you should have received
some form of mandate to act. Either only to analyze and present the results to your boss so
that she can use it in her decision making. Or, if you are assigned ‘to solve that safety
problem’ or ‘to improve the efficiency of that production line’, you should have been given
the mandate to make changes. If not, make somehow sure that you get it, otherwise nothing
will happen.

The second pitfall I see a lot is that people represent the situation as two camps of
stakeholders fighting over who is right. I mean, many problems around for instance
construction plans for highways, large buildings or airports are put forward as ‘we have the
great idea to build this and that, but those stupid people who know nothing about it hold up
the work’. More abstractly speaking, it is not very practical if you categorize your
stakeholders in a group of people who support your idea and a group of people who
disapprove it and try to block it. That does not give you any new perspectives or new ideas.
It only generates frustration. And delay. And no decision making.

To avoid it and get the best out of your stakeholders, try to force yourself to come up with a
wide variety of different people, organizations, different groups, different teams, etc.

What helps a lot is if you ask yourself the question who might have an opinion about that
complex situation. That might include all kind of people who maybe have no power, but
certainly have interest. They might enrich you with all their thinking about the situation and
you might pick up some new ideas from them.

What also helps is to think about what kind of stakeholders you already have identified. Are
they all CEO’s or representatives of large organizations? OK then, force yourself to include
single civilians, teachers, volunteers, academic experts, bloggers, opinion leaders,
whomever, as long as they give you new perspectives or new ideas it’s great!

OK, that’s it for this week. Thanks so much for watching. And I see you in the next video.