To run a change management stakeholder analysis, list every person and group the change touches, gather facts about each one, score their influence, impact, and support, plot them on a grid, and assign an engagement approach and an owner to each. Then repeat the exercise at each major milestone. The result is a short, ranked register that tells you who to talk to first, what to say, and who is likely to push back.
Most teams skip this work or do it in an hour from memory. They brief the executives on the steering committee, send an all-hands email, and discover at go-live that the shift supervisor who controls the schedule never bought in. Gut feel favors the loudest voice. Evidence favors the right one, and the right one is often quiet.
This guide covers what stakeholder analysis is, then walks through six steps with scoring scales, grid options, and engagement tactics. It ends with a worked example and a template you can copy into a spreadsheet. We built it around the engineering-based, data-first approach we use on improvement projects at Lean Six Sigma Experts, where people-side risk gets measured like any other risk.
Why stakeholder analysis comes before the change plan
Change management stakeholder analysis is the structured process of identifying everyone a change affects or depends on, then assessing what each party needs, fears, and can do to help or block the work. It comes first because every later decision, from the communication calendar to the training budget, depends on knowing who you are dealing with. Skip it and you plan for an average employee who does not exist.
What stakeholder analysis is and what it is not
R. Edward Freeman’s stakeholder theory, published in 1984, defines a stakeholder as any group or individual who can affect or is affected by the achievement of an organization’s objectives. The definition runs both ways, and that matters for change work. A person who will never touch your new system but controls the budget, the shift schedule, or the union relationship is a stakeholder just as much as the operator who uses it every day.
Analysis is easy to confuse with the documents around it. Each one answers a different question, and the analysis feeds all the others.
| Tool | Question it answers | When you build it |
|---|---|---|
| Stakeholder analysis | Who matters, how much, and where do they stand? | First, before planning |
| Stakeholder register | Who are they, and what are their details and roles? | Alongside the analysis, which fills it in |
| Engagement plan | What will we do with each group, how often, and who owns it? | After the analysis |
| Communications plan | Which messages go out, through which channels, on what schedule? | After the engagement plan |
Why it pays off in a change initiative
Adoption is decided by people, not by project plans. A new process can pass every technical test and still fail because the people who run it daily ignore it, work around it, or drift back to the old way. Stakeholder analysis finds those risks while you can still do something about them.
It pays off in three practical ways. First, it focuses scarce effort. You rarely have time to run a workshop for every group, so the analysis shows where an hour of your time buys the most support. Second, it surfaces resistance early. A skeptic you know about in week two is a design input. A skeptic you discover at go-live is an escalation. Third, it replaces opinion with evidence. A scored, documented assessment can be challenged and corrected, while a hunch in someone’s head cannot.
That third point is how we treat it at Lean Six Sigma Experts. Stakeholder information is process data: define what you measure, record it consistently, and revisit it as conditions change.
The stakeholder you never identified is the one who stops your go-live.
What to have ready before you start
You can begin with very little, but five inputs make the first pass faster and more accurate:
- A one-paragraph change statement that says what is changing, from what to what, and why.
- A named sponsor who can open doors and break ties.
- The scope and timeline, meaning which sites, teams, and systems are in, and the key dates.
- An org chart and a process map, so you can trace who touches the process.
- A small working group of three to five people who know the operation and will speak candidly, plus a shared spreadsheet.
Block two hours for the first working session. The first pass is meant to be rough. Steps 2 and 3 are where it becomes reliable.
Step 1. Identify your stakeholders
To identify stakeholders, write a one-sentence change statement, then trace everyone who touches, funds, approves, regulates, or is changed by the process involved. For a mid-sized initiative, a list of 15 to 40 names or groups is a reasonable rule of thumb. Far fewer usually means you are missing people. Far more usually means you are splitting groups too finely.
Start from the change, not the org chart
Write the change in one sentence, such as "We are replacing paper travelers with digital work instructions on lines 1 to 3 by March." Everything on your list must connect to that sentence. An org chart shows reporting lines, but a change moves through workflows. So walk the process from supplier to customer and note every person or team at each handoff.
Then run the working group through a set of prompts. They catch the people a process walk misses:
- Who will do their work differently on day one?
- Who gives something up, such as authority, headcount, a tool, a habit, or budget?
- Who approves, funds, or can veto the change?
- Who supplies inputs to the changed process or receives its outputs?
- Who must support it afterward, such as IT, HR, maintenance, quality, or finance?
- Who outside the company is affected, such as customers, suppliers, regulators, unions, or contractors?
- Who is not on the list but would be upset to learn they were left off?
Sort them into useful categories
Two sorting schemes help, and they answer different questions. Internal and external describes where a stakeholder sits relative to your organization. Primary and secondary describes how directly the change lands on them. A key customer can be both external and primary. A senior executive can be internal and secondary if the change never reaches their daily work.
| Category | Definition | Typical examples |
|---|---|---|
| Internal | Inside your organization | Operators, supervisors, plant manager, IT, HR |
| External | Outside your organization | Customers, suppliers, regulators, contractors |
| Primary | Roles, tools, or behaviors change directly | Line operators, schedulers, quality inspectors |
| Secondary | Affected indirectly but can shape the outcome | Finance, senior leaders, support functions |
Secondary stakeholders are the ones teams forget. They do not live with the change, but they approve the budget that sustains it.
Decide the right level of detail
Name individuals when one person holds high influence alone, such as the sponsor, the plant manager, a union steward, or the head of IT. Group people who share the same impact and will need the same message, such as "line operators, second shift." The test is simple: if two people in a group would need different messages, split the group.
Add the change team itself to the list. Project teams are stakeholders too, and they are often the most overloaded group in the initiative.
Walk the process, not the org chart, and the hidden stakeholders show up.
Step 2. Collect data on each stakeholder
Collect the same short set of facts about every stakeholder, from at least two sources, so the scores in the next step rest on evidence rather than impressions. In a change management stakeholder analysis, the facts that matter are how the change affects them, what they gain or lose, how much formal and informal power they hold, what they currently know and believe, and how they prefer to communicate.
Decide what to capture
Keep the field list short enough that you will actually complete it for everyone. Use these eight:
- Role and location, including headcount if it is a group.
- How the change affects their daily work, in concrete terms: tasks, tools, schedule, authority.
- What they stand to gain.
- What they stand to lose, including status, control, overtime, or familiar routines.
- Sources of influence, such as formal authority, budget control, expertise, or credibility with peers.
- What they know about the change and where they heard it.
- Their stated attitude, in their own words where possible.
- Preferred channels and timing, such as shift huddles, email, or one-to-one conversations.
Gather it with interviews, surveys, and observation
Use the method that fits the size of the group. Interview your top 10 to 15 stakeholders one-on-one, because that is where candor happens. For large groups, send a short pulse survey of five to eight statements rated on a 1 to 5 agreement scale, such as "I understand why this change is happening" and "I know how my job will be different." For operations, spend time on the floor and watch how the work really gets done, which is often different from the documented process.
Existing records help too. Check past project debriefs, engagement survey results, attendance at earlier training, and escalation logs. They show how each group reacted to the last change, which is the best predictor of the next reaction.
Six interview questions cover most of what you need:
- What do you understand about this change so far?
- How do you think it will affect your day-to-day work?
- What would make it succeed from your point of view?
- What worries you most about it?
- Who else should I talk to?
- How would you like to hear updates, and how often?
Handle the data with care
An assessment of a named person is sensitive. Store the sheet in a restricted location and share it with the sponsor and core team only. Write down observable facts and behaviors, such as "missed the last three design meetings" or "asked for a pilot before agreeing," instead of character judgments like "disengaged" or "difficult." Facts can be checked and acted on, but labels harden into reputations.
Record what people do and say, not what you assume they feel.
Step 3. Score influence, impact, and support
Score every stakeholder on three scales: influence (1 to 5), impact (1 to 5), and support (-2 to +2). Write one line of evidence beside each number. Then multiply influence by impact to get a priority score from 1 to 25. This turns the information from Step 2 into something you can sort, compare, and defend in a steering meeting.
Score influence
Influence is the ability to affect whether the change succeeds, through formal authority, control of resources, expertise, networks, or informal credibility. Use this rubric so everyone scores against the same definitions.
| Score | Meaning | Example |
|---|---|---|
| 5 | Can approve, fund, or stop the change | Sponsor, plant manager |
| 4 | Controls key resources or shapes the opinions of many | Supervisors, union steward |
| 3 | Can delay the work or shape technical decisions | Maintenance lead, IT owner |
| 2 | Influences only their own team or peers | Experienced operator |
| 1 | Little ability to affect the outcome | Occasional contractor |
Informal influence deserves a real score. The veteran operator everyone asks for advice may outrank a manager on the org chart when it comes to shaping opinion.
Score impact
Impact measures how much the change alters their work, status, or situation. A 5 means their job, tools, location, or authority change fundamentally. A 4 means major changes to daily tasks. A 3 means moderate changes, such as a new step in a familiar routine. A 2 is minor, and a 1 is negligible. Count what people lose, not only what they do differently. A supervisor whose approval step disappears may score high on impact even though the task list barely changes.
Score support and the gap
Rate current support and the support you need, both on the same scale: +2 champion (advocates actively), +1 supporter, 0 neutral or unaware, -1 skeptic, and -2 blocker. The gap is needed minus current. Needed support varies. Finance may only need to be neutral, while supervisors need to be at least +1 because they carry the change to their crews.
For every stakeholder with a gap, name the ADKAR element most likely missing: Awareness of why, Desire to participate, Knowledge of how, Ability to do it, or Reinforcement to sustain it. A supervisor at -1 who never saw the business case has an awareness problem. A supervisor who understands it but fears losing authority has a desire problem. The fix is different in each case.
Calibrate before you finalize. Have two people score independently, then discuss every difference of two points or more. The disagreement usually reveals something one of them knows that the other does not.
Score with evidence first, then argue about the differences.
Step 4. Map stakeholders on a grid
Plot stakeholders on a two-axis grid with influence on the vertical axis and impact on the horizontal axis, and treat a score of 3 or higher as "high." The map turns your scoring table into four groups, each with a default engagement stance. It is the picture you will show your sponsor, so keep it readable.
Build the influence and impact grid
Draw a square, split it into four quadrants, and place each stakeholder at their scores. Color each dot by current support: green for +1 or +2, yellow for 0, red for -1 or -2. Size the dot by headcount if you want. The colors matter more than the layout, because a red dot in the top-right quadrant is where your week goes.
| Quadrant | Influence | Impact | Default stance |
|---|---|---|---|
| Manage closely | High | High | Involve in design, frequent two-way contact |
| Keep satisfied | High | Low | Brief regularly, avoid surprises, do not overload |
| Keep informed and involved | Low | High | Communicate early, gather feedback, use as pilot testers |
| Monitor | Low | Low | Light updates, recheck at each milestone |
Swap in the power and interest grid when impact is unclear
Aubrey Mendelow’s power and interest grid uses the same layout but replaces impact with interest. It is the better choice early in a project, when impacts are not yet defined, and for external parties such as regulators, community groups, or investors who care about the outcome without being directly affected by it.
Pick the grid according to the question you can answer today. If you know how the change lands on each group, use impact. If you only know who is paying attention, use interest. Either way, remember that interest can be negative. A high-power, high-interest opponent is far more dangerous than a high-power neutral, which is why the support color-coding matters.
Use the salience model for contested or external groups
When claims compete, such as a regulator, a vocal customer, and an internal group demanding a say, add the salience model from Mitchell, Agle, and Wood (1997). It rates stakeholders on three attributes: power to influence, legitimacy of their claim, and urgency of their demand. The number of attributes they hold determines how much attention they need.
- Three attributes (definitive): power, legitimacy, and urgency. Act on these first.
- Two attributes: dominant (power and legitimacy), dangerous (power and urgency), or dependent (legitimacy and urgency).
- One attribute: dormant (power only), discretionary (legitimacy only), or demanding (urgency only).
Dormant stakeholders deserve a watch. Their power can become real the moment something changes. For most internal initiatives the influence and impact grid is enough, and salience is a useful second lens for politically complicated ones.
Color the dots by support, because the red dot in the top-right quadrant is where your effort belongs.
Step 5. Turn the map into an engagement plan
Turn the map into a plan by giving each stakeholder or group an objective (the support gap to close), an approach matched to the cause of resistance, an owner, and a cadence. Written down, this is your stakeholder engagement plan. A change management stakeholder analysis only pays off when every high-priority dot leads to a specific action.
Match the approach to the reason for resistance
Resistance has causes, and the cause should drive the response. Kotter and Schlesinger’s classic approaches map neatly onto what you find in the field.
| Cause of resistance | Approach | Example action |
|---|---|---|
| Missing or wrong information | Education and communication | Process walk-throughs, before-and-after maps, a plain FAQ |
| Feels excluded | Participation and involvement | A seat on the design team, leading a pilot |
| Anxiety about skills or job security | Facilitation and support | Coaching, practice time, floor support at launch |
| Has power and stands to lose | Negotiation and agreement | Adjust scope, agree trade-offs, redefine the role |
Kotter and Schlesinger also list manipulation and coercion. We advise against both. They damage trust, and people remember how the last change was handled when the next one arrives.
Choose senders and channels people trust
Who delivers the message matters as much as the message. In our experience, employees want to hear what a change means for their job from their direct supervisor, not from a project team they have never met. The sponsor owns the "why." Supervisors own "what this means for you." That is why supervisors usually land in the manage-closely quadrant and need to be briefed and equipped first.
Match the channel to the audience. Shift huddles work for the floor, email works for finance, and a one-on-one works for a skeptical manager with veto power. Build a return path into every touchpoint, with a way to ask questions and a visible follow-up such as "you said, we did."
Write it down, assign owners, and set a cadence
An engagement entry should fit in two lines. For example: "Production supervisors, current -1, target +1 by the design review on November 15. Approach: participation in co-designing the standard work sheets. Owner: operations manager. Cadence: weekly 30-minute session." That entry names the gap, the approach, the date, the person, and the rhythm.
Give every high-priority stakeholder a single named owner, not a team. When three people each assume another one is calling the plant manager, nobody calls. Then check your plan against capacity. If it needs 40 hours a week of sponsor time, trim it to what the sponsor can actually give.
Every gap needs an approach, an owner, and a date.
Step 6. Monitor and refresh the analysis
Treat the analysis as a living document. Review scores at every major milestone and whenever something material shifts, and watch a handful of signals in between. Stakeholder positions move as people learn more, as leaders change, and as the first results arrive, so a change management stakeholder analysis that is never updated goes stale within weeks.
Track signals between reviews
You do not need a dashboard of 30 change management metrics. Track the few that tell you whether the support gaps are closing:
- Participation: attendance at huddles, training, and design sessions, by group.
- Pulse survey scores: the same five to eight statements, asked at the same intervals.
- Questions and concerns raised, and how many were answered within a set time.
- Escalations: what supervisors are passing up the line, and from whom.
- Adoption data: system logins, standard work audit results, error rates, rework.
- Workarounds: the unofficial shortcuts you see on the floor, which are honest evidence of resistance.
Compare these against your scores. If a group scored +1 but attendance has fallen for three weeks, the score was too generous.
Know when to re-run the analysis
Re-score the full list at each phase gate, and re-run the whole exercise when any of these happens:
- The scope changes, adding sites, teams, or systems.
- The sponsor or a key leader changes.
- A reorganization shifts reporting lines or roles.
- A group reacts in a way the analysis did not predict.
- You approach go-live, and again about 30 to 90 days afterward to check reinforcement.
Avoid the common mistakes
Most failures come from the same few habits. Doing the analysis once and filing it is the most common. Scoring from a conference room, without talking to the people involved, comes next. Others include a register so detailed that nobody reads it, sharing the sheet beyond the core team, and forgetting middle managers, who carry most of the change. The last mistake is confusing activity with progress. Sending ten emails is not the same as closing a support gap, so measure the gap.
Measure the gap, not the number of emails sent.
Worked example and a template you can copy
Here is how the six steps look in one scenario, followed by a card you can paste into a spreadsheet or document. This example shows a change management stakeholder analysis for a plant moving to standard work and visual management on three production lines. The scenario and scores are illustrative.
Example: standard work rollout at a plant
Assume a 400-employee plant is introducing standard work on lines 1 to 3. The working group lists seven stakeholder groups and scores them as follows. Priority is influence times impact, and the gap is the support needed minus the support now, on the -2 to +2 scale.
| Stakeholder | Influence | Impact | Priority | Support now | Support needed | Gap | Quadrant |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plant manager (sponsor) | 5 | 3 | 15 | +2 | +2 | 0 | Manage closely |
| Production supervisors (6) | 4 | 5 | 20 | -1 | +1 | 2 | Manage closely |
| Union steward | 4 | 4 | 16 | 0 | +1 | 1 | Manage closely |
| Maintenance lead | 3 | 4 | 12 | -1 | +1 | 2 | Manage closely |
| Line operators (about 120) | 2 | 5 | 10 | 0 | +1 | 1 | Keep informed and involved |
| Finance controller | 4 | 1 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Keep satisfied |
| Key customer quality contact | 2 | 2 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Monitor |
The table tells the team where to spend its time. Supervisors have the highest priority score and a gap of 2, so they get the first effort: a seat in co-designing the standard work sheets, trained before anyone else, with a coaching session on how to explain the change to their crews. The maintenance lead has the same gap and a lower score, so the team involves them in the design review to address a likely concern about equipment access.
The union steward is neutral but influential. The team briefs the steward before any announcement and invites them to the design review. Operators are low influence but high impact, so they run trials on one line and give feedback at weekly huddles. Finance gets a short monthly summary of savings. The customer contact gets a note before go-live. Nothing in this plan took more than a day to work out once the scores were on the page.
The point of scoring is to decide where the next hour goes.
Template: stakeholder card
Use one card per stakeholder or group. Copy it into a document, or turn the field names into spreadsheet columns.
Stakeholder or group:
Role and department:
Headcount (if a group):
How the change affects their daily work:
What they stand to gain:
What they stand to lose:
Influence (1-5) and evidence:
Impact (1-5) and evidence:
Priority score (influence x impact):
Support now (-2 to +2) and evidence:
Support needed (-2 to +2):
Gap (needed minus now):
Likely concern or cause of resistance:
ADKAR element most at risk:
Quadrant:
Engagement approach:
Sender and channel:
Owner:
Cadence:
Next action and date:
Last reviewed:
Sort the finished cards by priority score, then by gap, and work from the top. Review the top 10 at every milestone.
Put your stakeholder map to work
A good stakeholder analysis is short, scored, and acted on. Identify the people the change touches, gather facts about each, score influence, impact, and support, map them, match your approach to the cause of resistance, and review the map as the project moves. The scoring is what keeps the work honest, and the owners and dates are what make it real.
Start with the stakeholders where influence, impact, and the support gap are all high. A few well-handled conversations with supervisors and key influencers will do more than any all-hands announcement.
If you want help running the analysis, or building the improvement roadmap, training, and talent that follow it, talk with the Lean Six Sigma Experts team about your change initiative.