Every significant change in a business affects people who do not report to whoever is leading it: customers, suppliers, landlords, lenders, regulators, neighbours, other managers and staff in other parts of the business. They can help, delay, change or stop the work. They cannot simply be assigned tasks. Yet stakeholder management is often treated as a communications job: list the people, rank them by power and interest, and decide how often to send each an update.
That approach misses two things. First, many persistent conflicts between stakeholders are not communication problems at all. They are disagreements about who gets a scarce resource, and more communication cannot make one specialist available in two places at once. Second, the people with the least formal power often hold the knowledge that decides whether the change will work, or carry the heaviest consequences of it.
This article explains how to tell different kinds of stakeholder conflict apart, how to weigh stakeholders by knowledge and exposure as well as power, why engagement must be able to change something, how to think of support as an exchange, and how to recognise genuine commitment.
Four kinds of conflict
When people disagree about a change, it helps to ask what kind of disagreement it is:
| Kind | What is happening | What helps |
|---|---|---|
| Understanding | People have different information or interpretations | Shared evidence, better analysis, clearer communication |
| Allocation | People want incompatible uses of the same scarce person, budget, equipment or attention | A priority decision by someone with authority |
| Authority | People disagree because nobody is sure who decides | Clear decision rights |
| Values | People genuinely prioritise different things, such as growth versus quality | An explicit trade-off, made and explained by those accountable |
Treating an allocation conflict as a communication problem is common and costly. If the sales manager wants the business’s best estimator to protect existing customers and the owner wants the same person developing a new market, workshops on collaboration will not help. Someone has to decide how that person’s time is divided, and then measures and expectations have to change to match. Otherwise the conflict simply returns.
Legitimate tension is not dysfunction
Different parts of a business are meant to care about different things. A manager protecting existing customers and a manager chasing new ones may both be doing their jobs well. Conflict between them is not necessarily a sign of poor culture. It may be a sign that the business has reached a real trade-off it has not yet made.
When such trade-offs stay unresolved, informal power fills the gap: the loudest voice, the strongest relationship or the most senior person becomes the real way priorities are set. Making allocation decisions explicit is fairer and more effective. Options include:
- clarifying the priority for the current period;
- separating the resource, for example by training a second person;
- sharing it with a transparent rule for how time is split;
- changing who the person reports to;
- sequencing the demands, so both get attention but not at once.
The where strategy is really decided article looks at how resource allocation reveals a business’s real priorities.
Weigh knowledge and exposure, not just power
The familiar power-interest grid is useful but incomplete. Four attributes give a fuller picture:
- Authority: formal power to approve, fund, regulate or stop.
- Influence: practical ability to shape opinions, resources or how the change is adopted.
- Knowledge: insight needed to understand how things really work or what could go wrong.
- Exposure: how much the person or group gains, loses or bears risk.
A maintenance technician may have little formal power but understand exactly why a new machine will fail. A group of neighbours may control no funding but bear years of noise and traffic. A long-serving customer service officer may know what customers will actually do with a new system. Leaving these people out because they rank low on power is how businesses miss what matters.
The aim is not equal say in every decision. It is giving people a voice in proportion to their knowledge and exposure, using reliable evidence and being clear about who decides.
People are connected
A list of stakeholders treats them as separate. In reality, they influence one another. A message from the owner is interpreted through the credibility of the supervisor who passes it on. A supplier’s delay changes staff confidence. Informal leaders often shape adoption more than formal managers. A simple map of who influences whom, who trusts whom and where the points of friction are can be more useful than a ranked list. Revisit it at key points, because positions change as a change unfolds.
Engagement must be able to change something
Consultation becomes empty when the decision is already made and feedback cannot alter anything. It damages trust and wastes what people could have taught you. Before engaging, be clear and honest about what is open:
- Is the goal fixed but the method open?
- Can the timing or sequence change?
- Could concerns raised change the decision itself?
- Which constraints, such as legal or safety requirements, are not negotiable?
- Who decides when interests conflict?
Being transparent about these boundaries is more credible than promising consensus. People generally accept limits on their influence far more readily than being misled about it.
Resistance can be information
Resistance may reflect self-interest, but it may also contain important evidence about safety, workload, feasibility or effects the plan has missed. An operations team that pushes back on a new process may have spotted a risk the planners did not. Treating all opposition as a communication problem can suppress exactly the information the business most needs. The helping people accept change article explores how different groups respond to change.
Support is an exchange
Change leaders often approach stakeholders with requests: approve this, attend that, give us your people, support the change. That is incomplete. People support a change when it also serves something they care about: it removes a problem they have, protects a service they are responsible for, or shapes a decision that affects them.
For each critical stakeholder, ask:
| Question | Purpose |
|---|---|
| What outcome depends on them? | Focus on what matters |
| What do we need from them: a decision, resources, support or a change in behaviour? | Be specific |
| What matters to them? | Understand the exchange |
| How should we engage: inform, consult, involve, negotiate or decide jointly? | Match the method to the need |
| What would genuine commitment look like? | Know whether it is real |
Where a change keeps asking for attention without showing relevance, people disengage. Where consultation happens but decisions ignore all input without explanation, trust decays. Engagement is credible only when the business can consider what it hears and explain what it will do.
Commitment shows in behaviour
Attendance is not commitment. Positive words are not commitment. A stakeholder is committed when their behaviour matches the agreed outcome: resources are made available, decisions are taken on time, risks are raised early, actions are owned and the change is supported when it becomes inconvenient. Watch for that evidence, rather than for agreement in meetings.
This also helps decide where not to spend effort. Engagement should be proportionate to importance, exposure and the level of commitment genuinely needed. The getting commitment, not just compliance article covers influence approaches in more detail.
Keep messages consistent across changes
People experience the business as one organisation, not as a set of separate projects. When a customer hears about a new ordering system from sales, a delivery change from logistics and a price review from the owner in the same month, each message may be reasonable while the combination is confusing or alarming. Where several changes affect the same customers, suppliers or staff, coordinate the timing and the message, and make one person responsible for the overall relationship during the change.
Handle stakeholder records with care
Notes about stakeholders’ attitudes, influence and likely behaviour can be sensitive. Labels such as “resistor” or “blocker” can be unfair and, if seen, can damage relationships. Record the concern, its source, its consequence and what engagement is needed, rather than characterising people. Keep such notes appropriately private, and follow privacy obligations where personal information is involved.
Recognise, too, that not everyone has equal capacity to engage. A large customer can send people to every meeting; a small supplier or a group of neighbours may not. A process that is formally open can still produce an unbalanced result.
A worked example
This is an illustration. A food manufacturer with 70 staff is introducing a new production planning system and changing its delivery schedule to customers. The operations manager leads the change and has a stakeholder list ranked by power: the owner, the sales manager, two major customers and the system vendor.
Six weeks in, the project is stalling. The operations manager diagnoses the conflicts:
- The sales manager and the operations manager keep arguing about the new delivery windows. On examination, this is an allocation conflict: both want the same planner’s time, sales to handle urgent customer changes, operations to build the new schedule. The owner decides the planner will spend three days a week on the new system for the next two months, and a second person is trained to handle urgent changes.
- Production supervisors are resisting the new system. This turns out to be partly understanding and partly real information: they have spotted that the system’s standard changeover times are wrong for two product lines. Their correction is adopted, and their support follows.
- Night-shift staff, absent from the original list, carry significant exposure: the new schedule moves some work to nights. They are consulted on shift patterns, which are genuinely open, while the delivery windows, which are fixed by customer contracts, are explained as non-negotiable.
- A major customer’s warehouse manager, who has no purchasing authority, turns out to hold the knowledge that matters: their dock can only accept deliveries before 10 am. The delivery schedule is adjusted before launch.
The operations manager replaces the ranked list with a short map of who needs what, what each person needs in return and what genuine commitment would look like. The project restarts, and the launch goes ahead three weeks later than planned but without the disruption that would have followed the original design.
How this applies to a small Australian business
In small businesses, changes often affect a few key people heavily, and the owner may be both the decision-maker and a stakeholder. Practical steps:
- Identify the kind of conflict: understanding, allocation, authority or values.
- Make allocation decisions explicitly rather than leaving them to informal power.
- Weigh knowledge and exposure, not just power and interest.
- Be honest about what is open before consulting.
- Treat resistance as possible information.
- Think of support as an exchange.
- Look for commitment in behaviour.
- Handle notes about people respectfully, in line with privacy obligations.
Signals worth watching
- The same people arguing about the same resource repeatedly.
- Conflicts treated with communication when they need a decision.
- Important knowledge holders absent from the stakeholder list.
- Consultation with no visible effect on decisions.
- Agreement in meetings followed by inaction.
- Groups carrying heavy consequences with no voice.
Common mistakes
- Treating every conflict as a relationship problem.
- Ranking stakeholders only by power.
- Consulting when nothing can change.
- Labelling resisters instead of understanding them.
- Asking for support without offering anything in return.
- Mistaking attendance for commitment.
Frequently asked questions
How many stakeholders should we actively engage? Focus on the few whose decisions, knowledge or exposure matter most in the next few months. Keep others informed proportionately.
What if two managers keep fighting over the same person? Recognise it as an allocation conflict and make an explicit decision about how that person’s time is used, with changes to measures and expectations to match.
Should stakeholders see our stakeholder map? Usually not in raw form. Share what is open, how decisions will be made and what you have heard and changed, rather than your internal assessments of people.
How do we engage people who cannot attend meetings? Go to them: short conversations on site, at shift changes or by phone, and written summaries they can respond to.
What if a stakeholder’s demands are unreasonable? Listen for the underlying concern, explain what is and is not open and why, and make the decision clearly. Not every demand can be met; every concern deserves a hearing.
Questions to ask
- Which of our current disagreements are really about scarce resources?
- Who knows the most about what could go wrong, regardless of their position?
- Who bears the heaviest consequences of this change?
- What is genuinely open to influence, and have we said so?
- What does each key stakeholder need in return for their support?
- What would genuine commitment look like from each of them?
Bringing it together
Stakeholders are not resources to be managed but participants with different authority, knowledge and exposure. Identify what kind of conflict you are facing, and make allocation decisions explicitly rather than treating them as communication problems. Give voice in proportion to knowledge and exposure, be honest about what can change, treat resistance as possible information, think of support as an exchange and look for commitment in behaviour. Engagement earns its place when it changes the decision, not just the mood.
Source: KEVOS notes, drawing on teaching material on program stakeholder engagement and on The Stakeholder Engagement Manual (AccountAbility, UNEP and Stakeholder Research Associates, 2005). Examples and figures in this article are illustrations.
