Zoo Relocation Project—Part 2: Stakeholder Power and Engagement

Part 2 of our Zoo Relocation case study walkthrough builds a full power/interest grid, engagement strategy, and communications plan — including the hardest stakeholder group of all.

Series recap. Part 1 produced a signed Project Charter and initial stakeholder register with twelve entries. Part 2 turns that raw register into a controlled Stakeholder Engagement Plan.

The Challenge

There is a common instinct to treat stakeholder analysis as a tick-box exercise filed away after initiation. In reality it is the most politically sensitive workstream a PM runs, and on the Zoo project it is where most of the failure risk lives.

Consider the human geometry: a board expecting A$20M profit; a CEO whose name is on the brief; a large workforce whose jobs are threatened; a regulator with unilateral authority to block animal transport; a Crown lessor who can refuse the lease; a site buyer whose timing controls the funding; adjacent residents who may mount planning objections; media already sensitised to welfare issues. Any one of these parties, acting adversarially, can delay or cancel the project. The technical work is often the easiest part of a project like this. The political work is where it is won or lost.

The PM Framework Applied

PMBOK 6th Edition treats stakeholder management as its own Knowledge Area (Chapter 13) containing four processes. This article focuses on Plan Stakeholder Engagement.

Step 1: Power/Interest Grid

The most widely-used tool (Mendelow 1991) classifies stakeholders into four quadrants:

⬆ HIGH POWER

MANAGE CLOSELY — High Power, High Interest

Executive Board

CEO (Sponsor)

Environment Regulator

Crown Land Lessor

Site Buyer

Vet Consultants

KEEP SATISFIED — High Power, Low Interest

Grant Funder

Contractors

Media

⬇ LOW POWER

KEEP INFORMED — Low Power, High Interest

Existing Staff

Members & Donors

Visitors

Adjacent Residents

MONITOR — Low Power, Low Interest

General Public

Why flowchart LR and not quadrantChart. Ghost CMS does not render Mermaid's quadrantChart reliably. The flowchart pattern with colour-coded subgraphs reproduces the same information in a format that renders cleanly.

Existing staff are classified as low power, high interest — a provocative placement. Individually they lack formal authority to stop the project. But collective action (industrial dispute, coordinated media engagement) can shift them into a higher-power position overnight. The PM's continuous job is monitoring for such mobilisation.

Step 2: Engagement Assessment Matrix

PMBOK scores each stakeholder on a five-level scale (Unaware → Resistant → Neutral → Supportive → Leading), tracking current (C) and desired (D):

The gaps reveal the workload. Staff are currently resistant and need to be moved to neutral — that is an HR campaign, a transparent retention package, and town-hall meetings with the CEO personally.

Step 3: Quadrant-specific engagement strategies

Manage Closely. Face-to-face meetings, formal written reports, early involvement in decisions. For the Zoo: fortnightly board reports (mandated by CEO), weekly CEO check-ins, monthly regulator meetings, dedicated legal-commercial interface with the site buyer.

Keep Satisfied. Maintain comfort without overwhelming. Grant funder receives quarterly acquittals; media receives controlled disclosure via a designated spokesperson.

Keep Informed. Consistent, honest flow of information. Staff get a weekly internal bulletin and a named HR contact; members receive a monthly newsletter with progress photos and honest disclosure of delays.

Monitor. Public information channels only. The goal is ensuring nothing in this quadrant migrates upward without the PM noticing.

Step 4: Communications cadence

Workstream	Activity	Type	Timing / dependency / duration
Executive	Fortnightly Board Report	Activity	active · br · 2025-01-01 · 540d
Executive	Weekly CEO Check-in	Activity	active · ceo · 2025-01-01 · 540d
Regulatory	Monthly Regulator Meeting	Activity	reg · 2025-01-15 · 540d
Regulatory	Quarterly Grant Acquittal	Activity	grant · 2025-04-01 · 540d
Internal	Weekly Staff Bulletin	Activity	staff · 2025-01-01 · 540d
Internal	Monthly Town Hall	Activity	town · 2025-01-15 · 540d
External	Monthly Member Newsletter	Activity	mem · 2025-01-01 · 540d
External	Quarterly Media Statement	Activity	media · 2025-03-01 · 540d
External	Community Consultation	Activity	crit · comm · 2025-02-01 · 90d

The Q1 is front-loaded with community consultation (a regulatory prerequisite) and the initial internal town halls. A PM who builds the plan without visualising the cadence will routinely under-resource the early months.

Step 5: The staff problem

The hardest stakeholder group is the existing workforce. The CEO's letter makes this explicit: "a focus will need to be placed on the needs of the Zoo's large existing staff with an emphasis on achieving maximum staff retention." Without the workforce, the project fails — specialist knowledge needed to safely relocate animals lives inside the heads of individual keepers and vets. You cannot hire it in six months.

A defensible staff engagement strategy:

1. Early honest announcement by the CEO within the first week — rumour is the enemy.
2. Named retention packages within the first month, with individual briefings.
3. Operational involvement — curators join the relocation planning team as SMEs, transforming them from subjects into agents.
4. Ethics alignment — the zero-casualty commitment is the one project commitment that perfectly aligns with the workforce's professional values. Leverage it.
5. Escalation pathway — a named HR representative with direct CEO access handles grievances.

Project Manager

Manage Closely

Sponsor

Regulator

Keep Satisfied

Senior Management

Client

Keep Informed

Engineering Team

Suppliers

Monitor

Community

Observers

Relationship details

From	Relationship	To
Project Manager	leads to	Sponsor
Project Manager	leads to	Regulator
Project Manager	leads to	Senior Management
Project Manager	leads to	Client
Project Manager	leads to	Engineering Team
Project Manager	leads to	Suppliers
Project Manager	leads to	Community
Project Manager	leads to	Observers

The Result

Four controlled artefacts:

1. Updated Stakeholder Register — classified by quadrant and scored against the engagement matrix.
2. Stakeholder Engagement Plan — strategy, cadence, channel, and responsible party for each quadrant.
3. Communications Management Plan — every recurring communication event with audience, format, escalation.
4. Staff Engagement Sub-Plan — dedicated document for the most politically sensitive group.

These feed directly into every subsequent planning artefact.

The Pitfalls

• Quadrant classification as destiny. The grid is a snapshot, not a life sentence. Stakeholders move between quadrants constantly.
• Conflating engagement with broadcasting. A newsletter is not engagement. Engagement is two-way.
• Underestimating the media. Media moves from "Monitor" to "Manage Closely" within hours of a crisis. Pre-build the crisis comms protocol.
• Skipping the regulator. Frequently misclassified as "Keep Satisfied" by PMs who assume they are a rubber stamp.
• Treating staff as passive. Engage them with Manage-Closely-level intensity regardless of their formal power classification.
• Forgetting the assumption log from Part 1. Every assumption is implicitly a stakeholder hypothesis awaiting validation.

Knowledge Check

1. Six months in, a newspaper runs a front-page story alleging that a relocated reptile exhibit lost animals in transit (the story is false). Describe your first 24-hour response and which stakeholder groups require direct outreach immediately.
2. The lead curator — a 22-year veteran — has just resigned citing concerns about new enclosure design. Which quadrant was she in, and what does her resignation tell you about the plan?
3. The CEO asks you to stop the fortnightly board reports because "the board is happy." Do you comply?

Key Takeaways

• Stakeholder analysis is continuous, not a one-off exercise.
• The Power/Interest grid classifies stakeholders into four quadrants, each with its own engagement strategy.
• The Engagement Assessment Matrix tracks current-to-desired gaps, which drive workload.
• Collective action can move low-power groups into high-power positions rapidly.
• On projects with sensitive workforce dynamics, engage staff with Manage-Closely intensity regardless of formal power.
• Every assumption in the charter is implicitly a stakeholder hypothesis.

---

References

• Project Management Institute 2017, A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK Guide), 6th edn, PMI, Newtown Square, PA.
• Mendelow, AL 1991, 'Environmental scanning: The impact of the stakeholder concept', Proc. 2nd Int'l Conference on Information Systems, Cambridge, MA.
• Bourne, L 2015, Making Projects Work: Effective Stakeholder and Communication Management, CRC Press, Boca Raton.
• Freeman, RE 2010, Strategic Management: A Stakeholder Approach, Cambridge University Press.
• University of South Australia 2015, MPM411 Zoo Relocation Project Brief, UniSA, Adelaide.