An introduction to the Clarity Concept.

In all stakeholder management activities, the first essential is to identify the stakeholder groups.

This is what the Clarity Concept does.

It is based on three elements.

1) Well informed managers have considerable explicit and tacit knowledge about stakeholders

2) Most issues affect multiple stakeholders to a greater or lesser degree

3) People are very good at making comparative judgements especially when using visual aids

The methodology used by the Clarity Concept can be implemented with a white board but is more easily undertaken using a software programme (called Publigram) to assist in the process of establishing stakeholders and their relative significance.

This approach provides a capability to:

• Identify current stakeholders

• Establish the relative significance of stakeholder groups (importance, influence and attitude) to identify power/influence.

• Map future stakeholder significance

• Perform gap analysis to identify resource optimisation

The principle is simple.

An informed group is brought together to help identify stakeholders and their relative significance to meet the objective.

The group agrees on the issue/organisation to be investigated to meet the objectives to aid strategic decision making.

An icon is drawn to represent an issue (or an organisation).

Progressively, group members identify stakeholders and are added as named icons surrounding the issue.

The group is invited to make three decisions about each stakeholder:

The relative influence over the issue

The relative importance of the stakeholder to the issue

The positive/negative attitude of the stakeholder towards the issue.

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An Example

An example of such a Stakeholder 'Map' as it develops creates an environment for interactive engagement and careful consideration of relative significance of stakeholders.

Statistics as well

Using computers in this form of mapping has the advantage of generating relative statistical information to aid setting priorities (and budgets).

Depending on the objectives set for such stakeholder maps (current stakeholders; future stakeholders:

There are many other capabilities available using this technique but this is the basis for this approach to stakeholder mapping which can then be further informed using other techniques.

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