Types of stakeholder

Disciplines > Change Management > Stakeholders in change > Types of stakeholder

Sponsors | Targets | Others affected | Partners | See also

It is important to manage stakeholders in change. In doing so, one of the things you will do is segment them according to their needs, their importance and how you will treat them.

Sponsors

Sponsors are people with power who have a direct interest in the project. As described elsewhere, you need to carefully manage your sponsors to gain support and avoid opposition, especially where they are also Targets.

There are four types of sponsor:

• Initiating sponsor: who kicks off the project.
• Key sponsor: who provides ultimate authority.
• Primary sponsor: who must be centrally engaged.
• Secondary sponsor: who needs to be kept informed.

Targets

These are people who will intentionally be affected by the change. You many want them to change what they do and think, or even what they feel and believe. Deeper change, is, of course more difficult.

Others affected

It is easy to focus on sponsors and targets and forget that there may be many other people who may unintentionally be affected by the change. For example when a process is changed, everyone who is connected with the inputs and outputs of the process may be affected.

Partner

You may work with a wide range of internal and external partners to effect the change, from the IT Department to external consultants and trainers. These people need to be fully on board.

In particular, if they will require any significant level of resourcing to be effective in the change, they must be allowed and encouraged to estimate what they will need to be successful and supported in their bids to acquire this resource.

Interested party

There are often a wide range of people who might have some more distant interest. For example if there are going to be job losses, then government and the media may have an interest.

See also

Sponsorship of change