FICHE OUTIL N°3
Stakeholders
Stakeholders are defined as a group of persons having an interest in the decisions of an organization.
These groups might be positively or negatively impacted by the association’s activities.
In order to maximize your chances of succes in your project, as project manager, you have to identify all of the stakeholers and their expectations, concerns requirements. Once this work done, you must analyze how they can positively or negatively impact the project. Some stakeholders have the power to undermine the project.
It is also necessary to distinguish the people on whom you can lean on to convince, to pass on a message, to obtain additional resources ... This kind of support is often decisive in the success of a project.
Différentes catégories de parties prenantes gravitant autour de l’association :
Stages of dialogue with stakeholders:
1. Identification and representation of stakeholders :
This step is essential to fully understand the ins and outs of the project. It is about clearly identifying all
the people, structures, institutions that will have an impact - positive or negative - on the project in order
to have an enlightened vision of the situation.
It is advisable to start from a first circle: those who are most involved / impacted such as sponsors, end
users, etc., to list them and then ask them who else can be impacted by the project. And for what reason.
When launching a project, the identification of stakeholders is also essential in order to define
the structures, companies, institutions that should be contacted first and those who will only
come later. Generally, we immediately think of funding, this is a bias because above all, when
launching a project, the stakeholder to contact first is the one who will effectively contribute to
the project.
For example in the context of the construction of a wind turbine, it is the company which will build,
assemble and install the wind turbine which will be to be contacted before the potential financers and
donors. It is only once an agreement has been reached with the company that will actually do the work
that it will be necessary to contact the funders.
To illustrate these remarks, let us take the example of the stakeholders identified by the Lagardère group
which chooses to rely on 4 spheres (spheres which can vary depending on the field of action of the project
leaders):
2. Relations and dialogue with stakeholders :
This step is essential since the methods of communication and the ways of interacting with stakeholders
will differ according to the nature of the stakeholders. We will not interact in the same way with civil
society as with a supplier, media or public institution.
In the entrepreneurial and sometimes associative framework, there are 3 levels of engagement in the
dialogue mode :
Information and communication
Dialogue and concertation
Agreement, partnership, collaboration and contractualization
In order to have a clear idea of the remarks exposed above, let us take the example of the dialogue modes
of the Bonduelle company :
3. As part of project development :
The modes of dialogue within the framework of the development of the project will be essential in order
to ensure the smooth running of the project but also to ensure the involvement and motivation of the
stakeholders to carry out the action started.
Obviously, some informations must remain confidential. The important thing lies in the pedagogy and
explanation of your choices in the face of expectations, but also in the contextualization of these choices.
We can distinguish 3 modes of dialogues in order to collect opinions, remarks and advice of
stakeholders :
Through stakeholders direct testimonies whom are directly involved
Through a synthesis of the opinions of the stakeholders, it is a question of collecting the opinions
and carrying out a synthesis in order to highlight the important points.
By the expression of a stakeholder spokesperson who will relate the opinions of his peers to the
projectmanagement
4. Identification of issues and expectations of stakeholders:
This step is essential in the context of a project in order to correctly identify the expectations and
challenges for the structures and institutions involved in the project that is in place. By correctly
identifying these expectations, it is easier to meet the expectations of the greatest number of
stakeholders, by responding to them in an order of priority which will be defined in advance (we will
prioritize, for example, the expectations of the final beneficiary over those of any media.
To illustrate the method for identifying the challenges and expectations of stakeholders, let’s take the
example of EDF’s sustainable development report. The important thing here is not so much the content
but the method; are listed : the expectations of the various stakeholders, the mode of dialogue by which
we have managed to collect these expectations, and finally the actions carried out or in progress to meet
these expectations.