Achieving Improvement – SKILL Working with stakeholders – v1

Source: Warwick Business School: Programme Management module

SKILL Working with stakeholders

This document, along with ‘TOOL Working stakeholders’ has been designed to
support workshop task 2 in the ‘Achieving Improvement’ module.

1. First stage stakeholder analysis

One of your first stakeholder tasks will be to brainstorm as big a list as you can of
all the people or groups who might be classed as a stakeholder. You need to
define a stakeholder who is involved or affected by the programme, or someone
who can affect the success/failure of the programme. In large programmes you
will find that the list can be quite long, but the analysis can really be worth the
effort. Table 1 below shows how you might identify the role of each individual or
stakeholder group.

Programme Organisation External

Who wants your Succeed
team to:
Fail

Who is betting Succeeding

on your team:
Failing

Who is Visibly
supporting your
team Invisibly

Whose success Affects your

team

Does your
team affect

Who does your Benefit

team’s change
Damage

Who can your Happen

team’s change: without
Not happen
without

Table 1: First stage stakeholder analysis Source: Obeng1

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 Achieving Improvement – SKILL Working with stakeholders – v1
Source: Warwick Business School: Programme Management module

From this table you can identify key stakeholders who can affect the outcome of
your team’s programme. You should also be able to identify some gaps, e.g.
senior managers and clinicians who will provide visible support for the
programme. If you haven’t got many names in that box, your team will need to
find some more. The team will also need to make contingency plans in case your
visible champions leave. The analysis should help to devise communication
plans for the stakeholders whose help is essential. It should also provide a good
steer towards some team-building decisions.

2. Assessing Synergy and Antagonism

You will then need to analyse stakeholders for their role in supporting, opposing
and influencing change. This helps to answer questions of how the team works
with and sells ideas to stakeholder groups. For certain, you will not be able to do
this just by yourself or even within the programme team. You will need to develop
a critical mass of support externally. Before moving on, take time to think about
previous programmes that you may have experienced. Who was most useful and
least useful in changing opinions? One common answer is that technical experts
and core team members do not influence other peoples’ opinions, despite the
fact that they work very hard. Why should this be so?

The way that you can understand this is to look at the positive and negative
perspectives of a programme that different people possess. Some people are not
aware enough to understand the problems that others have and they do not carry
enough influence. Try to assess stakeholders according to how positive and
negative they are about your team’s programme. Remember that people can
have both positive and negative views. You are assessing the intensity of those
views:

Synergy
+ Unwilling to follow the initiative -1
1 (no obvious benefits)
+ Follows the initiative when -2
2 asked (minor visible benefits)
+ Takes up the initiative -3
3 independently but may give up
if not supported (obvious
benefits)
+ Gives unqualified support and -4
4 actively takes the initiative
(agrees wholly with the
objectives)
Antagonism
Has no personal negative point of
view
Will try to get compensation for
minor negative aspects of the
initiative
Significant negative aspects of
the initiative that need to be
addressed
Utterly opposed to the initiative
and does not care about the
consequences

Table 2: Stakeholder Assessment

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 Achieving Improvement – SKILL Working with stakeholders – v1
Source: Warwick Business School: Programme Management module

When you do the analysis, you will find that people tend to fit as clusters. Think
about how you are likely to rate the following people:

1. A front-line staff member who has not been on any training and has not
participated yet in any improvement work (PDSA cycles)

2. A core team member who is hoping for a promotion if the programme is

successful

3. A clinician who is being asked to double the number of ward rounds made
each week.

Each one fits a predictable profile depending upon the impact your team’s
programme has upon them. (The people might be rated [+1,-1], [+4,-1] and [+2,-
3] respectively). Figure 1 shows how the clusters can be mapped out on a chart.

Synergy

Schismatics
+4
Golden
Triangles

Zealots
+3 e rs
ver
a
W

+2 Mutineers

Opponents

Passives Moaners
+1

-1 -2 -3 -4 Antagonism

Figure 1 Stakeholder Clusters Source: Fauvet’s theory2

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 Achieving Improvement – SKILL Working with stakeholders – v1
Source: Warwick Business School: Programme Management module

3. Understanding stakeholder clusters

Table 3 contains a description of some of the stakeholder clusters.

Cluster Description
Passives Numerically often the most significant. These are the
people you have not reached and are difficult to reach.
They often refuse to read your communications and will
not fill in questionnaires. Involvement is achieved by
using more supportive peers to persuade
Moaners Very similar to passives. You will not make them happy
by yourself. Address their minor quibbles to make them
passive and stop the moaning!
Zealots Most of your core team will be zealots. Unfortunately,
they rarely see the negative aspects of what they are
doing. Therefore they are likely to upset a lot of people.
Don’t put them in situations where they have to
convince the hard-nosed skeptics – they will fail
miserably because they lack an empathy with people
who see the downside.
Waverers These people are really stuck. They see the positive
aspects of your team’s objectives, but is it worth the
pain? What will happen to the losers? If you can stop
them opposing you they will win over the passives
Golden These people are your most valuable resource. They
triangles support the team’s objectives, but have a lot of
empathy with those who are worried about the
changes. They have by far the best ability to win the
argument in your favour. If they also have seniority
(e.g. clinician, ward manager, senior nurse), even
better.
Opponents These people cannot see the positive side of your
team’s work. You are affecting them, possibly badly.
Can you remove the reasons for opposition without
compromising your team’s objectives?

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 Achieving Improvement – SKILL Working with stakeholders – v1
Source: Warwick Business School: Programme Management module

4. Stakeholder movement and influence

People’s attitudes to your team’s programme are dynamic. Over time you will
need to shift people towards support. In particular, if the team programme is to be
sustainable you will need to remove most opposition. Figure 2 shows stakeholder
movement and influence during a successful transformation.

Synergy

Schismatics
Golden
Triangles Influence

Zealots rs
e
ver
a
W Movement

Mutineers

Opponents

Passives Moaners

Antagonism

Figure 2: Ideal stakeholder influence and movement

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