Client Stakeholder Analysis

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Question: How important is it to understand the team dynamics of the client during a consultancy project?

Answer: We believe that it is critical. Even the most innocent-seeming projects have hidden agendas which you have to address during the project in order to provide a result that is satisfactory to the client

Key points

The fundamental tool of our “Outsider Insider” process is the stakeholder analysis.

The format of this tool will come as no surprise to anyone, but how often do we formally assess:

• whom the results of our projects are impacting beyond the known client team?

• the inter-relationships between the client stakeholders:
  • Who is whose friend?
  • Who is whose ally?
  • Who stands to gain most?
  • Who stands to lose most?
  • Who has a network of influence that stretches above and beyond the known team?

Knowing the answers to these questions is not critical to our getting out of the door alive at the end of a project, but they are critical to our being invited back into the building with open arms for the next project.

Remember: in corporate politics, no-one forgives a smart-arse for outsmarting them, and that the only technician who is appreciated by top managements is an accountant.

At the end of the project, yes we want to be proud of its honesty and integrity, but for it to have been worth paying for by the client, the results must be acceptable, and preferably enthusiastically supported, by the client organization.

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