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Uncovering the benefits of PESTLE analysis for informed decision-making

PESTLE business analysis technique

Change management skills
Simon Buehring19 Feb 2026

Discover the essential skills required for effective change management and how they apply to unique organizational contexts. Read further for detailed insights.

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t what we call lessons learned. So, these are all techniques for identifying stakeholders. Now here’s the exercise I’m going to get you to do. If you want to just grab a plain piece of paper, or you can do this in a Word document or some other note-taking solution, doesn’t really matter what. I want you to think about a current project that you’re involved with. If it’s one that you’re just starting, might be even better still, or if you can’t think of one that you’re just starting, maybe think back a little bit, you could think to a recent project.

The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes.00:08:58 David Longstaff : Do you know, in some ways, this even works just as well for home life? So, you could also think of a personal project that you’ve been involved with. If you can’t think of any, then could I ask you just, how about I give you a scenario to consider? Imagine you’re the project manager for a housing construction project in a major town. So, I’m going to go quiet now for a moment. Can I just get you to identify as many stakeholder individuals, groups, or organisations that you can come up with. You don’t have to share this, but if you want to, just identify as many as you can come up with, write them down on paper or whatever note-taking app you’re using. And this would typically normally be done as a collaborative workshop or brainstorming session.

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: I’ll give you a couple of minutes for this exercise. I may witter on in the background. It’s purely just so that you know you’re still connected, and I’m still connected. If you are happy to share and there’s nothing confidential, then feel free to share in the chat box which project that you chose. Feel free to anonymise it if it’s a little bit more sensitive. And if you’re happy to share, you could maybe even pop into the chat box some of the types of stakeholders. You don’t need to put in individual names and organisations, but you could kind of broaden it out a little if you want; that is all optional. By the way, I don’t want you to share any confidential information, of course.

00:11:51 David Longstaff : So, it was a little bit tricky for me to know just how long to give you, because the reality is this would probably take, but it could be an hour’s workshop. I mean, this is an exercise you would come back to multiple times throughout your project, because you may identify new stakeholders in the definition stage, if you’re used to project management terminology. You’ll come across more stakeholders throughout deployment, still more in the transition phase, and then on into the extended life cycle, such as in the adoptions phase, the benefits management phase. And frankly, even if you’re using an agile project management methodology, you’ll come up with more stakeholders still, even in the evolutionary development phases, the transition phases, the even early on in the pre-project feasibility foundations, there’s all sorts of different terminology, but almost every stage of project life cycles, you’ll identify new stakeholders. Okay, if you want to share and you’re happy to share, feel free to type into the chat box. But no need, I don’t. Okay, excellent, so we just had a quick look. Is that right? So, Paula, NPD project refreshing an established and very successful product. Stakeholders are so, the team, you’re absolutely right, Paula. I don’t know anything about your project, but do not underestimate that your team members are clearly going to be involved. They’ll have a role, but they will also be impacted, and that links to some of your other comments, Paula, their colleagues and managers, the customers, our group who own the CO. And then everyone else in the business has a stake or an interest in the success of this product’s evolution. Nice points. Thank you, Paula. 00:13:59 David Longstaff

: If anybody else wants to share, feel free to do so, but it sounds like you’ve already identified that in your project, almost everybody in the organisation is, and you’ll probably come up with, depending on the nature of your project, plenty of external groups as well. Some may be more impacted; some may be less impacted, but this is the very first part of stakeholder engagement. It’s identifying who they are and actually not limiting this list. There is sometimes a bit of a tendency to identify some key stakeholders early on, and then we sort of miss out others. So, it’s good to almost, it doesn’t matter how crazy the ideas are that come, let people in a brainstorming session feel comfortable at throwing in groups and individuals as well, that you may not automatically think of. So, I’ll just give you a moment longer; you’ve got some obvious ones. Do you also have some perhaps less obvious stakeholders? You’ve got to go back and think about these ones. Quick look at the second comment, an event, organisation, some big conference. The delegates are obviously stakeholders, excellent, thank you for that help. Speakers definitely are, yes. Suppliers, facilities, staff, catering. My goodness, these are wide groups, aren’t they? Thank you for that help. It’s much broader than we might initially think, and first part of this is just get them down. Now, at this stage, we haven’t done any analysis of them. All we’ve done is listed them, identified who they are. Let’s move on, so we also need to understand what’s their interest and relationship to the project, it won’t be the same for everyone. So, for some people or some groups, they may be particularly interested in the finance side of the project.

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: What’s it going to cost? It might be that they’re more interested in health and safety aspects of your project in the top middle box there. It could be some sustainability factors that they’re really interested in, environmental issues. It could be even kind of very much on an individual level, a local level, it could be things like traffic and congestion. How is this project going to affect that? Amenities? What about schools? Are there going to be schools that will support this project? Medical facilities? What about shops? So now this is probably particularly in the example I gave regarding the housing construction, but this is just as relevant to other types of projects as well. So, can I just again, I’ll stop for a moment. Can you just next to all the various groups that you’ve listed and individuals that you’ve listed, just kind of identify what’s their sort of particular interest in the project? It won’t all be the same. AGILE COURSES

: Okay, and now I’m going to bring up a matrix that’s designed to help you further carry out an analysis. So, the early analysis was just to analyse what’s their area of interest but another element that is covered by APM’s material, and indeed PMIs, if this is pretty global, is understanding a stakeholder’s both level of interest and level of influence or power. So, you’ll see on this kind of typical two by two matrix, we’ve got those who have low interest in the project, low power. And down in the bottom left box, top right orange box, you’ve got high power and high interest, and then variations within there. Actually, we can just mirror that, because we might say, well, how about their attitude towards the project? We’ve got those who are very much for the project, but actually, if you were just to kind of replicate it, you might have just the same boxes for those who are against the project. And again, they will have a degree of power and influence and a degree of interest in your project. So, if I was to put just some terminology around these levels, you’ll see we’ve got backers and blockers. So right-hand side are all backers, the left-hand side are all blockers. We’ve got their power level, so highly influential in the top boxes. And then in the lower boxes, we’ve got those who are what are referred to as insignificant. I don’t want to kind of diminish their role, but that’s how they are mapped in APMs and PMIs and most matrices for stakeholder engagement and analysis. We’ve also got then their interest level mentioned in the middle option, which is whether they’re active, highly active, or whether they are actually quite passive towards this. Now, if you just think about some of your stakeholders, you might think about your project sponsor.

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: So where would you want your project sponsor to be? Well, clearly up in that top right box. You want your project sponsor to be for your project, obviously, but you also want them to have a high degree of interest and a high degree of power or influence. You could ask, How influential does your project sponsor need to be? The answer tends to be high enough, but there is a balance because if they are too senior in the organisation, what you may find is that they lose activity. In other words, they’re not that interested because they’re being pulled in so many other directions. One factor around an effective sponsor is making sure that they have enough time to commit to your project. So, project sponsor, you want them to be very active, highly influential, and we’ll talk about why that’s a benefit a little bit later on. But yes, you want your project sponsor to be up there in the top right. You can also plot your other stakeholders. So, for example, if this were the housing construction project, or actually, frankly, Alpa, I know from my background in, I did have a role not too long ago in managing a major annual conference that the health and safety executive may well have quite an important part to play. Now, where would they appear on this stakeholder matrix? Are they that interested in whether your project actually succeeds or fails? Not particularly. So, you might find them slightly towards the middle of that vertical red line, but how influential are they? Incredibly. They can close your project down in minutes if you have a major failing in health and safety, and this can be all sorts of projects. So that’s just a couple of examples. I’m wondering if I can now just get you to go back to your exercise, and I’ll go quiet again for a few minutes while you do this. Can I get you to map out the stakeholders for your project? Just pop them into those boxes. Select your preferred training course below: 00:23:26 David Longstaff

: And just while you’re doing that, yes, thank you, Sevcan. Please feel free to write your questions in the chat box at any time. Sevcan will kind of keep an eye on the questions, but also, I’d be interested in any of your comments, questions or observations. If you haven’t got any observation doing this type of exercise, is this something that you regularly do as part of your project initiation? Is it something that works well initially in the project? But perhaps drops off a little bit later on, often-what people find is that they do a really good initial exercise when they’re starting the project, but sometimes this can fall away. Still, others haven’t considered using this model. So, I’ll be interested in your observations about doing stakeholder, not only identification, but also analysis. PRINCE2 AGILE COURSES

00:24:44 David Longstaff Select your preferred training course below:

: Diane, yeah, great comment. Thank you. It’s true, we tend to see this as a two by two, whereas actually it is mirrored. Thank you, Diane. And Paula, first time doing this, realising I’m concerned that some might fall into influential active blockers. Wondering if you can move people into new sections with management. Paula, it’s a wonderful point that you’re making there, and the answer is, yes, to an extent or rather, I would probably suggest we can help them to an extent move into a different box. I don’t know what you feel, but I think managing stakeholders sounds like it’s been like being able to move pawns on a chessboard, and it’s not that easy. If I will comment on that in just a little moment, but yes, there are things that you can do to help, and actually, that’s the purpose of this session today. Thank you, Paula, a great point, and I as well. 00:25:46 David Longstaff SCRUM COURSES : So that’s the first part of this, and now we move into APM’s 10 principles of stakeholder engagement. Now, in most cases, all I’m going to do is bring up just a single sort of slide, which is a kind of just a summary of what you’ll find if you go to their website, and we’ll just expand a little bit on it. But the first one, communicate, I just want to just take that a little bit further by going back to our chart, and this links in nicely to Paula’s point. So, you could overlay these eight boxes with some additional terminology. In other words, how do you deal with a particular group that may be in one of these boxes? Now, up at the top left and top right, where we’ve got people who are highly interested and have a high degree of influence, you’ll want regular engagement with these, intensive engagement. In the top middle boxes, so where they have less interest, you might simply need to keep these satisfied. In the bottom boxes there, you’ll want to keep them informed if they are highly interested but of low influence. And if they’re not terribly interested, so quite passive and don’t have a huge, and they are insignificant as opposed to influential, you might simply need to monitor these. So those are the terms that are used, you’ll see very slightly different terms between high power, high interest for, as opposed to those against, regular engagement versus intensive engagement. So, can I just ask you here, how would you translate some of these boxes into actual, practical actions? What would you do on a day-to-day basis? What would you do for each of these boxes or any of them, if you wish to comment? Select your preferred training course below:

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00:34:04 David Longstaff BUSINESS ANALYST COURSES

: By the way, just as an aside, I know there’s quite a lot of content on the screens. Don’t worry, because this is going to be available for you afterwards, you can go back and review and use in the future. So, there’s a real key, the second one there. Consult early and often, don’t do it all yourself. No problem, Paula, yeah good. Don’t just do it, take it all on yourself, use other people within your team. And as well, leverage that usefulness of the project sponsor, and that’s why, again, that comment we made earlier on about the project sponsor, if they are too senior in the organisation, they might not realise that actually there’s quite a bit of commitment to the role of being a project sponsor. So, leverage their ability to support you with those highly influential, highly active and interested parties, and particularly those who are against. So that needs intensive engagement, a nice comment as well. So, donors, government officials involved in my project, beneficiaries, there can be lots of people. So, I don’t know what your project is, and I don’t need to, but it’s just a great point. Thank you there that we can, there are lots of different stakeholder groups and individuals, and we’ve also got lots of people in our team that can support you. Here’s the next principle, which is, do remember your stakeholders, they’re people, they are human. And as a result, they don’t always think in a logical way, I don’t know if you’ve ever found this. Sometimes, to you, this seems so reasonable; it stacks up surely, why would anybody have a disagreement with this view? And you find that human feelings get somehow feel like they get in the way. I had an example of this just this week I was working with, I’m delivering a PMQ this week, actually. Somebody said, do you know we have a project which is involved with electrical power lines and putting them under landowners’ farms and so on. And so, they get quite a bit of money offered to allow us to do this, and you would think that the logic surely is that they would have no problem with that. And then you find that they comment, but, there’s a dog’s graveyard in this field. So, you have to try and think beyond your perspective and have empathy and understand their issues. Select your self-paced training course topic.

00:36:54 David Longstaff : You’ve got to try, and that takes a little bit more deep, deeper relationship building with them. You’re absolutely right, Di. It’s like political views on the same subject. Yeah, thank you. So, remember, people are only human, do watch for changes in their attitude. So, this is why a good project manager, project professional of any level, will keep their ear to the ground and particularly identify the ones that might be at risk of moving from positive and towards one that might be against your project or suddenly become indifferent towards it. So, keep that stakeholder approach that we looked at earlier on in this workshop relevant to you. Show them that you’ve listened and that you’ve heard, and how you’re going to try to input their ideas into your action plan. It may not always be possible, but if you can, try to make that accommodation, and then you’ll have a wider stakeholder group that are in favour of your project. Number 4, plan it, don’t leave this to chance; careful planning is required. How might you do that? Well, it’s pretty much through the steps that we’ve been taking you through. But you remember we said that quite often this early analysis is done once, right at the start of the project and then often gets forgotten. So, remember, that heat map that we showed, you know, the kind of for and against influence activity, keep that updated, review it frequently, build a plan to ensure that people feel that they’re being heard and that their concerns are being addressed. Oh, little aside, and I’ve just brought up on the screen now a QR code. Now, this QR code takes you straight to the 10 principles of stakeholder engagement from APM site. You can just search for it in the web browser as well, that’s a direct link if you want to use your mobile phones. On there, you’ll find they’ve also got some really good case studies, and it will be worthwhile just going back and having a look at some of their case studies. They’re from quite a variety of industries. So, I’m sure you can find something that’s really helpful there. BCS BUSINESS ANALYST COURSES

00:39:16 David Longstaff Select your preferred training course below:

: They talked a bit about the background, the issues, and the solution that they came up with, particularly around the topic of stakeholder engagement and stakeholder communication. So don’t give it a chance, plan this. Number 5, relationships are key, absolutely. Just think about the network and building trust within your within your stakeholder groups. Understand how they all link to each other, map relationships about who you would want various stakeholders to engage with. You might actually just want to reverse that as well. If it’s possible, other stakeholders who maybe shouldn’t engage with other particular stakeholders? Sometimes it’s worthwhile keeping your eye on that as well, but do always act professionally, authentically to build that trust. Building that trust is so key, I heard a great illustration recently was that to build trust is like growing a coconut tree. To lose that trust is like the coconut falling off the tree in terms of time. So, it’s very quick that with some mistakes, you can really quickly lose relationships. Any comments from you? Can I just widen it out? And do you have any advice? What’s your advice? What have you found works in building relationships with your stakeholders?

00:40:53 David Longstaff CHANGE MANAGEMENT COURSES: Thank you, Helen. You cannot get away from that, transparency. People will see beneath it, won’t they, if we’re being dishonest. Find common ground, that’s a nice example. Thank you, Thor. Demonstrate your, that you value and recognise their viewpoints, there’s so many comments, great comments coming in here. Regular communications, so keep it regular, thank you. Spend time, there’s no shortcutting that, is there, Lucy. Thank you. Cecilia, establish trust through common goals, that’s great. Yeah, we may have differences, we may have some conflicts. What are our common goals? Building time on that, Cecilia, great point. Thank you. Belinda, give them your time to help facilitate their issues and accountability. What great comments. Thank you so much, everyone, for those inputs. If I did miss your comment, it was just because quite a few came through there. Excellent, thank you for that input. So, relationships are key. Number 6, it sounds simple, but it’s not easy. The comment that they make in APM make regarding this topic is that although it does feel like it’s advanced common sense, in practice, it’s often done very poorly. So, it might seem simple, but it’s not always easy. So just quick reminders, listen to your stakeholders, do plan ahead, try and think from their perspective what’s coming next. Enable the team as well around you to move quickly, keep your ear to the ground, try and anticipate these shifts. There was a reference there to risks, we’ll come back to risks in just a moment. Lead authentically, but it also mentions there, understand your own leadership style. So, if you try to use a leadership style that is just not yours, again, it loses that authenticity, perhaps links to some of your comments in the last few moments and people will see through that. So great points, thank you everyone. Select your self-paced training course topic.00:42:58 David Longstaff

: Number 7, it is just part of managing risk, say APM, and it is absolutely. Now we could almost run another topic, a very similar exercise on managing risks. And risks, APMC, are not just threats I don’t know about you, but I always, whenever I think about the term risk, and we do risk management practices, and we do risk assessments and analysis of the risks, we always focus on the negatives. What are the things that can go wrong with our project? What are the challenges, the problems? But actually, risk in APM’s definition also refers to opportunities, things that could go right. So, think about your stakeholders as being risks. They are absolutely very sure they are part of the threats to your project, but they also bring opportunities to your project. What are they? And log those. Now, how do you log them? Just a bit of a comment that’s made there in this second statement about putting the, creating a risk management plan. Now in your risk management plan, you don’t typically list every single risk. That’s more a risk register which accompanies the plan and supports the plan, but it also makes reference there to the PBS and the WBS. If you are in the project management world, then the product breakdown structure, these stakeholders will have an influence on both what products that you’re delivering, the scope of your project, and also the work that’s going to be involved too. So, the work breakdown structure and then, funnily enough, another breakdown structure that’s covered in APM’s material is the OBS, the organisational breakdown structure. APMG CHANGE MANAGEMENT COURSES

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: Now, if any of that sounds a bit vague and you haven’t come across that before, I’d probably recommend get in touch with Knowledge Train and join the next APM courses that we’re running, either the PFQ or the PMQ. By the way, I do promise this is not a marketing exercise. So, let’s keep to the material around these 10 topics. Topic number 8 is you may need to compromise; it’s unlikely that all stakeholders will get everything that they want. So, what you need to understand is what’s most important to them. What are their MoSCoW elements? MoSCoW, by the way, is an acronym used in project management for must-haves, should-haves, could-haves and won’t haves. So, what are the must things? What are the things that they will not compromise on? But what are the things that they would like to have, see happen about this project? And what are the could-haves? And what you want to do is try and find other areas that you could compromise on. But you do need to dig deeper because what you’ll find is that a stakeholder will almost put everything in the must-haves of MoSCoW. And then they’ll have nothing in the should-haves, and the could-haves, where if you dig deeper and work with them closely, again, that requires time. I think Lucy’s point there is that you may be able to then find compromises that make a workable solution. So, although we won’t do it in today’s exercise, what you may want to come back to in your stakeholder exercise is looking at what compromises could we make to provide a workable solution for some of our stakeholders who are maybe not as for our project.

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00:58:26 David Longstaff

: Excellent, thank you. Thank you very much, everyone, for your input tonight, because it’s actually, it’s kind of your input that makes these sessions a success as much as anything. So, thank you for that, particularly given it’s the end of the day, probably a long day for many of you. So, thank you for joining us. Enjoy your evenings as well.

00:58:47 Sevcan Yasa : And those who are just about to exit, Merry Christmas, definitely a festive season.

00:58:53 David Longstaff

: That’s early.

00:58:54 Sevcan Yasa : I’m going to pop down our website as well, just because the slide is not up. If you have any questions, please jot them down. 00:59:39 David Longstaff

: Thank you, Thor. Thanks for all your comments, I appreciate that.