Well, today, we're going to talk about stakeholder analysis. And basically, what we're going to be doing is take you through the idea of what is a stakeholder analysis, and methodology for doing the analysis. Apply the concept to an actual case, so you can see how it plays out. And then talk a little bit about how to take a stakeholder analysis, and convert it into what we call a Stakeholder Impact Table. What do we mean by stakeholder analysis? Well, think about it, if you have a successful project, whatever you do, those successes are going to wash over and impact other people. And some of those people could play a major role in whether you're going to be successful or not. So there are people that are going to be harmed or disadvantaged by what you're doing. There are people who are really going to benefit by what you're going to do. And there are people whose support you're going to need, but maybe totally indifferent to whether your project is successful or not. And if we can't find some way of mobilizing what we call those needed indifferents, your project is going to go nowhere. The whole concept of stakeholder analysis is absolutely mission critical. Just about everybody that we've worked with has said that they have benefited greatly from taking the time and the effort to do a stakeholder analysis. So let's have a look just to illustrate the concept at a program which we'll call AidsAid. And this was a young man called JT, who's going in to developing country. And what he wanted to try to do is bring in a new electronic medical record system to be in public hospitals and private hospitals, who would make the efficacy of handling the vast numbers of people who age infected more effective. And in particular, he was interested in permeating the public hospital system with electronic medical record, which much, much more efficient, much more accurate, much more liable, and much more analyzable in paper and pencil systems. One of the background program to this is that he started it originally was the public hospitals. But in this particular country where he started, the public hospitals have gone through what was basically an awful experience. They had, had their Department of Health, impurge on them an electronic medical record system that was done by an outside consulting firm, and it was a disaster. The hospitals were forced to spend a huge amount of energy and effort trying to install these systems. And when they eventually failed, because they had not been adequately designed, they then have to do a huge amount of work to rework back to the old paper and pencil system that they've been using. And when JT arrived with his great idea of coming and installing a new medical record system, you can imagine what the response was. He faced huge resistance from the public hospitals. However, as he started to look around, he found that there were a few private clinics, particularly a major, major clinic in the capital city where they were so overloaded and so inundated with AIDS patients, that they were simply unable to cope. And they had not been forced to go through the implementation of the earlier poor medical record system. So the attitude towards the record system itself was basically pretty positive. So you can see here that already, there are two major players. There's public hospitals, and there are the private clinics. And the first step in the process of developing a stakeholders analysis is of course to identify the key stakeholders. And basically, what you have is a three-step process. You identify the key stakeholders. You start to categorize them into possible allies, people you think might be willing and able to help you. Opponents, these are people who are going to be resistant to you. And then as I already mentioned, this interesting category called needed indifferents. These are people whose support is needed, but could care less about you and your success as an enterprise. And often, these are people like bureaucrats and government systems and so on. And I had better things to do than care about what happens to your project. After your stage two categorization of the stakeholders, you need to then develop a stakeholder mapping. Where you put your stakeholder's potential opponents, your potential allies, and the expected needed indifferents. So, the next step in the process, is once you've identified your stakeholders, is to do an impact table. An impact table is very simple as you can see. What we're basically doing here is you putting up a three-column table. The first column is the stakeholders, the second column is the possible negative impact on that stakeholder of your success. And we try to separate that out in to short term and long term, because sometimes people have to put up with short term inconvenience, which obviously they don't like in exchange for the longer term benefits. And then the third column is what positive impacts this stakeholders might experience. And once again, they can be broken down in to short term or long term. So going back to our original discussion, here, what we have is a list of stakeholders, we'll pick four of them. There were many more, but in this particular case, we'll take the four most important stakeholders is the Health Department of the government involved, is the doctors who are going to implement this electronic medical record system. There's the nurses who are going to be even closer to the implementation. And then finally, there's a medical analysis lab who did all the analytics and all the reporting of the data that were collected paper and pencil, and then sent back to the hospital. And the problem with this medical analysis lab is that they have never done electronic record systems before. So there was a lot of learning that they would have to do in order to be able to implement the system on behalf of the hospital that was their customer. So in the next table, what we see is the Heath Department, and now what we're starting to do is fill out the negative and positive impacts. So if you think about the Health Department in the short term, what you had was a problem that if JT installed a successful system, they would have to write off the existing program with huge potential embarrassment. So they're not about to very easily go back, and basically indicate to the world at large that they'd made a mistake. The positive impact is longer term. If the systems are installed, what you're going to see is a major increase in the efficacy of treating patients in the system. So as you can see, what short term negative and long term positive impacts for the health department. And as JT starts to try to launch this project, he needs to be aware that these people could play a major role in whether he's going to be successful or not. Going down to the next row of the stakeholder impact table, we have a look now at the doctors. And here, the judgement was that in the short, medium, and long term, one of the problems was that the doctors would see the installation, not of just electronic records, but electronic analytics would begin to erode their professional influence in the medical system of the country. And the other problem might be that as the efficacy increased of using the medical record systems, they might see a reduction in the number of patients that they have to treat, and this would impact the income. So here, what you have is a negative short-term and long medium-term project. Longer term, however, the positive impact was that they'd be able to handle many, many more patients with these systems. Which would but much more efficiently handle these patients, and had the potential to increase the doctors' income. So a short-term pain for a long-term gain. Nurses are of course are going to have even more difficulties with the actual implementation of these systems. Because in order to be able to use these systems, they'd have to move off using paper and pencil, and to using electronics. And that meant a lot of additional training, and a lot of data entry work. And if you think about it, these nurses were already seriously overloaded, just taking care of patients. Once again in the long term, they would be a major reduction in their workload as the systems increase the efficiency of treatment, and they'd end up with patients that were cared for better. Now, let's have a look at the stakeholder which a needed indifferent. If this Medical Analysis Lab was not supportive, JT didn't have a project, because somehow. he needed to persuade them to change the way they were doing things today, to the medical record system methodology on electronics that he had intended to introduce. So, what you have now is a situation where the medical analysis lab has to incur short term negatives, and once you're going for the long term of being able to handle many, many more analytical tasks than was done with paper and pencil. And this is typically what happens when you do a stakeholder analysis, is that in the beginning, you may have a number of negative short-term impacts that eventually get compensated for by the longer-term. So what we can now begin to do is take those possible impacts, and start to think a little bit about which of these people might be allies. And which of them might be opponents, and which of them might be needed indifferents. And then the course of the allies, as you can see in this chart, the real issues how if I've got people who could be my allies, who're going to benefit if I win, then how I can I mobilizes support. And use them either to help me implement my strategy, or to help me with opponents and needed indifferents. Secondly, we have opponents. And here, what we have to do is think about how to disrupt the opponents. How to stop them from resisting me or if I have to, how do I accommodate to what their needs are? And then finally, with the needed indifferents, the real issue is what do I need to do to convert them from somebody who could care less to somebody who cares about helping me. Going back to the AidsAid class, let's have a look now at how we would fill this in. In the first row, what we see is that the potential ally is the private clinic CEO whose clinic was totally overloaded, and she would be now on JT's side in any implementation because she just saw there would be very quickly an effort to a whole clinic operation. Going across the road, the Health Department would be an opponent, and they are not going to be pleased about at being seen as ineffective by JT's electronic record sytems. And then finally, the Needed Indifferents would be the Medical Analysis Lab who somehow have to be persuaded that they need to change their ways of doing things in order to be able to accommodate electronic record systems. So in the second row, what we have as a potential ally, are the doctors and nurses. In the private clinic who would very rapidly see that a lot of their workload would be reduced by the installation of this much more efficient electronic medical record systems. On the other hand, the public hospitals would be seriously compromised by having to rework the rework. And you can expect a lot of resistance from them to the implementation of yet another electronic record system. So, that's basically now the stakeholder mapping pans out. So, remember once again what I'm trying to do is find ways to mobilize my allies. Find ways of managing potential opposition and find ways of converting the indifferents. So once you've done, your stakeholder analysis and your stakeholder mapping. It's time to begin to develop what we call a sociopolitical strategy. That's a strategy to handle the sort of politics involved. In creating a successful forward motion of your project. I can't stress often enough, that it's really important to do this analysis. Hardly, anybody that's done such analysis, has ever told us, that it wasn't worthwhile. So what are we trying to do here? We're trying to mobilize our allies. We're trying to manage opposition from my opponents. And we're trying to convert any needed indifferent from the indifferents to willingness to help. And the way to do this is to start off, and think about what responses you want from your stakeholders, so that's step one. Step two, is to identify the current major issues, the major problems that each one of these stakeholder is facing and what's occupying their attention. And here at the stairs, what you're trying to do is looking at what's occupying their attention, not your attention. You need to be able to get into their heads, and see what their cases and their problems are. Because then what you can do, step three, is to think about what knowledge and skills do I have, or my allies have, or anyone who has access to, and can be applied to this problem? And you can start to begin helping him solve their problem in a way that there's nothing necessarily to do with your project. But everything to do with building a positive attitude towards you, and then later, what you're trying to do. So you can take all your skills and training that you have and begin to focus it in ways that change the ballpark as it were of the players that you're trying to work on here. Third step in the process is to think a little bit about how can I deploy my allies, perhaps, to neutralize my opponents, or to mobilize my indifferents? Fourth step is to step back and say, can I do this? Can I control opposition? And can I get support and resources enough for this project and move forward? And if you can do that, you need to think about redirecting your venture, redirecting what you're trying to do in such a way that you can, or reconfirming what your objectives are. Change your objectives, and see if you can accomplish something else that's meaningful, and helps people that's not exactly how you started. Or finally, if you can't do anything at all, then you need to begin to think about disengaging and so, well, nice try. But before, I spent too much on the way of resources, and energy on effort that looks like this is going nowhere. So what are the key takeaways from this section? The first thing is that your venture and your beneficiaries are going to be impacted by what we call the sociopolitics of the project. People are going to be adversely or beneficially impacted by your success, and they're going to react in response to that. So the key thing is to begin to determine who benefits, and who's negatively impacted, and who the people who support is needed for your ventured work. And then having identified these people, assign them to being allies, opponents, or needed indifferents. And begin to strategize as to how to anticipate resistance or anticipate indifferents, and think about how you're going to handle that ahead of time before you launch a venture, and only find out that you're having this unanticipated resistance or indifferents. And in this way, what you'll be able to do is launch this venture more confident, that as you go out there, you're not going to be impacted by unexpected reactions of these key stakeholders who matter to you and matter to your project.
