The management of business transformation programmes necessarily implies the management of relationships with different interlocutors involved in the project, or stakeholders, who have different positions, attitudes, and interests towards the programme itself.

Among them are, for example, investors, top managers, project sponsors, function managers, project team members, employees, R&D partners, business partners, suppliers, and others. All these stakeholder groups will evaluate the business transformation programme in different ways, considering that they have diverse backgrounds and conflicting interests.

Some of them will support the transformation, while others will try to hinder it; we may define them as positive and negative stakeholders, respectively. The level of influence that derives from them can increase or decrease during the programme life cycle, depending also on how relationships are managed.

I would mention investors who will consider, for example, whether the business transformation programme has been clearly explained to them, if the resources have been wisely used, if the quality of reports has been good enough, and the investment performance.

Top managers will evaluate the business transformation programme according to how it has contributed to strategic objectives, whereas function managers will probably consider the programme according to how their resources have been used and whether the resources have been committed to managing issues that have negatively impacted their contribution to functional objectives (e.g., in the case of a matrix organisation).

Programme sponsors will pay greater attention to other aspects such as the depth and frequency of their involvement in the business transformation programme, also considering if certain issues could have been managed autonomously by the transformation management team.

Project team members will consider more if the responsibilities have been managed correctly, transparently, and honestly, or if the transformation management team has tried to pass the buck to the team members.

In contrast, employees who are not part of the programme team will evaluate more carefully the impacts that the programme will have or may have on their area of activity, workload, or organisational responsibilities.

Suppliers and business partners will consider the level of clarity in instructions and communications, the quality of coordination, the level of collaboration, and the compliance with contractual agreements.

All these stakeholder groups are part of the transformation programme ecosystem and they have to be adequately considered and managed to create value for all of them.

Stakeholder management is fundamental for the success of business transformation initiatives in modern organisations, and it is not a secondary aspect compared to technical specialist management.

However, in many business transformation programmes, stakeholders management is considered only in the preliminary stage of the initiative (set-up phase). By following this approach, transformation management excessively focusses on the operational planning phase, increasing the risk of losing strategic vision and awareness of the context in which the programme operates.

This fact is often underestimated and is one of the most common causes of failure in business transformation programmes.