What is the Stakeholder Onion?
This tool allows us to brainstorm who our stakeholders are at different levels of the project.
Layers further from the core have more indirect influence and impact on your success, while layers closer to the core have more direct influence and impact.
It encompasses stakeholders of varying impact and influence levels, which means that we can map out all the stakeholders we can conceive of, and prepare better to get their buy-in.
It is also used as starting point to figuring out how to prioritise stakeholder buy-in.
Lack of buy-in at every stage is an issue
- Lack of buy-in from senior executives can doom a project from the start.
- Lack of buy-in from middle managers prevents them from generating enthusiasm for the change among those they manage
- Lack of buy-in from the project team causes delays in the timeline.
- Lack of buy-in from employees on the front line can disrupt adoption and create long-term obstacles.
Having many stakeholders can make managing them a complex task. Thus, it is important to develop an effective and repeatable approach to stakeholder management.
