Directly impacted stakeholders are critical to a successful project and building a successful community.
Basically, this is a way to create a niche or group of people who require different and more communication than others. This group of people will actually require two-way communication and at times they will need to be involved in decision making as well as creating solutions, called "co-design."
Let's go back to basics. Who is a stakeholder?
To understand who a stakeholder is, we also need to step back and understand a project goal:
- Stakeholders are people, or organisations who have touch points into your project, organisation, or who will be impacted as a supplier, employee, user or community member.
- Project goal(s) influence and help define who a stakeholder is. The project goal is the outcome a project is aiming to achieve and is also critical to the main goal in a project plan. A goal could be to change a law, build a bridge, remove a carpark or change the way an organisation communicates - such as moving the location of an ATM or closing branches of banks.
Example: Who is a directly impacted stakeholder in moving a bus stop?
Another simple example is moving a bus stop to a different location in a local community by a city council or state government transport department or private bus company.
If you were the project manager on this project, and you needed the residents to be happy so your project is a success and finished to completion, you would look at who are the people who are directly impacted by moving the bus stop?
Some sample and typical directly impacted stakeholders in this scenario include the following categories of people or groups of people:
Internal to the bus organisation:
- Executives
- Bus drivers
- Employees who coordinate timetables and bus planning
- Other employees who have something to do with the bus fleet
External to the organisation:
- People who ride the bus
- Passengers who ride the bus who get on at that stop
- Surrounding residents immediately within a catchment of the bus stop (people who could ride the bus
- Surrounding shops and businesses
- Schools - parents, teachers and children
- Local community groups
- Government and local agencies
- Emergency services
- Nearby connecting services (such as trains and train passengers or airports)
- Organisations who may be impacted by moving of the bus stop - in the category of construction, noise, time of work and impact of work
This is a very simple example of who may be a stakeholder and a directly impacted stakeholder for a small project such as moving one bus stop.
A sure way to know residents and stakeholders will not be happy about the change your project is doing is to not identify who is directly impacted and not communicating or engaging.
As you can imagine, the larger the project the greater the complexities.
If you need help in determining who is a directly impacted stakeholder on your project and designing a communication and engagement strategy, please contact us to find out more how we can help you.