10.5 Planning Stakeholder Engagement

APMG Change Management Foundation Exam

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1 Chapter 1: The v3 Foundation Exam and the Organisational Context

1.1 Exam Structure, the Five Syllabus Areas and the Certification Path 1.2 Scene Setting: External and Internal Factors Shaping Change 1.3 Change Management, Benefits and Dis-benefits

2 Chapter 2: Understanding the Change Context

2.1 Kelman's Three Levels of Adoption 2.2 VUCA and the Cynefin Framework 2.3 Planned Change versus Emergent Change 2.4 Systems Thinking in Change 2.5 Organisational Culture and Its Three Levels

3 Chapter 3: Diagnosing and Structuring the Change Approach

3.1 Lewin's Force Field Analysis 3.2 Co-Design 3.3 The ADKAR Model 3.4 Evolving the n-Step Process and Kotter's Eight Accelerators

4 Chapter 4: Delivery Strategy, Agile Practices and the Change Strategy

4.1 Delivery Strategy: Big Bang, Phased, Voluntary and Iterative 4.2 Agile Practices and Agile Change Practices 4.3 The Continuous Change Management Cycle 4.4 The Change Strategy

5 Chapter 5: People and Change — Individual Difference and Response

5.1 Differences in People and Personality Preferences 5.2 Neuroscience and Change: SCARF, Mindset and Insight 5.3 The Change Curve 5.4 Bridges' Transition Model

6 Chapter 6: Motivation, Resilience and Learning

6.1 Rewards, Punishment and Pink's Three Motivators 6.2 Positive Psychology, Resilience and Appreciative Inquiry 6.3 The Beckhard-Harris Change Formula and Schein's Two Anxieties 6.4 Competence, Learning and the Learning Dip 6.5 Learning Preferences: Kolb, Honey and Mumford

7 Chapter 7: Key Roles in Change Leadership

7.1 Key Roles in the Change Process 7.2 The Role of the Change Sponsor 7.3 The Change Agent's Role and Personal Influence 7.4 The Role of Local Leadership in Change

8 Chapter 8: Psychological Safety, Leadership and Culture

8.1 Psychological Climate and Psychological Safety 8.2 Carolyn Taylor: How Leadership Shapes Culture 8.3 Leadership Styles and Organisational Climate

9 Chapter 9: Teams and Change

9.1 Team Structures and Change Agent Networks 9.2 Tuckman's Stages of Team Development 9.3 Lencioni: Assessing and Growing Team Effectiveness 9.4 Harvesting the Value of Team Diversity

10 Chapter 10: Stakeholder Identification, Analysis and Engagement

10.1 Stakeholder Definition and Identification 10.2 Stakeholder Analysis, Segmentation and Empathy Mapping 10.3 Stakeholder Mapping and Sources of Power 10.4 Barriers to Engagement 10.5 Planning Stakeholder Engagement

11 Chapter 11: Communication Theory, Messaging and Emotional Connection

11.1 Communication Theory and the Communication Process 11.2 Barriers to Communication and Cognitive Biases 11.3 Messaging: Setting Context and the Tell, Sell, Include Approach 11.4 Appealing to Hearts and Minds

12 Chapter 12: Communication Channels and Planning

12.1 Ways of Communicating and VARK Language Style Preferences 12.2 Communication Channels: One-Way, Two-Way, Lean and Rich 12.3 Communications Planning

13 Chapter 13: Assessing Change Impact and Severity

13.1 Change Management as Risk Management and the Two-Step Assessment 13.2 Step 1: Categorising Impacts and Identifying Impact Areas 13.3 Step 1 Continued: Gap Analysis, Impact Profiles and Monitoring 13.4 Step 2: Change Impact Severity

14 Chapter 14: Resistance to Change

14.1 Causes of Resistance and Oreg's Four Neural Factors 14.2 Common Reasons for Resistance and How to Deal With Them 14.3 Building a Strategy to Manage Resistance

15 Chapter 15: Change Analytics and Exam Readiness

15.1 Measurement Types and the Change Delivery Scorecard 15.2 Building a Change Analytics Strategy 15.3 Exam Technique and Final Revision

10.5 Planning Stakeholder Engagement

Key Takeaways Explain This Topic AI

Smythe's commitment escalator describes the journey stakeholders experience and how the change effort can adapt communications accordingly

Know-feel-do sets outcomes for engagement: what the stakeholder should know, feel and do

A stakeholder engagement strategy covers how stakeholders will be identified, analysed, recorded and reviewed, and how effectiveness will be measured

For each stakeholder it records interest, power or influence, potential impact, potential resistance, desired outcomes, engagement approach and the roles involved

Confidentiality of stakeholder communication information is not part of a stakeholder engagement strategy
Last updated: September 2026

Having identified and analysed stakeholders, the change manager plans how to engage them. CM3 covers three elements: the commitment escalator, know-feel-do, and the stakeholder engagement strategy.

Smythe's commitment escalator

Smythe suggests a journey that stakeholders experience during change and how the change effort can respond and adapt communications accordingly . The model is often called the commitment escalator, and it describes a progression from initial unawareness through to active commitment and advocacy.

The central idea is that stakeholders move up in steps, and you cannot skip steps . Someone who is unaware of a change cannot be asked to advocate for it; someone who understands it but does not yet accept it will not act on it. Communications must therefore be pitched at where a stakeholder currently is, not where you would like them to be.

This is the same logic as ADKAR's sequence, the change curve's stages and Kelman's levels of adoption — and the practical error is identical in all four. Asking a stakeholder to do something several steps above their current position produces no movement, because the request does not connect to anything they currently hold.

It also explains the guidance in the hearts and minds material: leaders in their enthusiasm often try to sell the ideas of change too soon, causing even more resistance and anxiety. Selling to someone who is still absorbing the announcement is escalator-skipping.

Know, feel, do

A simple structure for thinking about outcomes for stakeholder engagement :

Element The question

Know What do you want the stakeholder to know or think about the change?

Feel What do you want the stakeholder to feel about the change?

Do What do you want the stakeholder to do ?

Know-feel-do is deceptively powerful because it forces engagement planning to start with the outcome rather than the activity. Most communication plans begin with what will be sent; know-feel-do begins with what should be true afterwards, and the activity follows from that.

The feel element is the one most often omitted, and its omission is why so much change communication is factually complete and emotionally inert. It is also the element that determines whether the do actually happens — a stakeholder who knows what is required and feels resentful about it will comply at best.

A worked example for a plant manager asked to introduce new safety reporting:

Know — the specific regulatory driver, what changes for his shift leads, when, and where support comes from

Feel — that the burden on his team has been understood and reduced where possible, and that he is trusted to implement it his way

Do — brief his shift leads personally, and feed back the first month's practical problems to the change team
The stakeholder engagement strategy

CM3 sets out the typical contents in two parts.

How stakeholder engagement will be carried out
How stakeholders will be identified and segmented
How analysis of stakeholders' influence and interest in change will be done
How stakeholder analysis information will be recorded and reviewed
How the effectiveness of stakeholder engagement activities will be measured
Stakeholder analysis and engagement strategies

A list of stakeholders or stakeholder groups identified and, for each of these:

Their level of interest, and level of power / influence
The potential impact of change on them
Potential level of resistance
Desired outcomes resulting from stakeholder engagement
High-level approach for engaging with this stakeholder or stakeholder group
Roles involved in engaging with stakeholders

Two items deserve attention. Potential level of resistance is recorded separately from power and interest, which is what fixes the limitation of the two-dimensional map — attitude is captured explicitly rather than inferred. And roles involved in engaging with stakeholders records who does the engaging, which matters because of the Hiatt and Creasey finding that different messages are credible from different sources.

What is not in it

The exam tests this directly: how information used to communicate with stakeholders will be kept confidential is not part of a stakeholder engagement strategy. Confidentiality and data handling are governed elsewhere. The engagement strategy is about how engagement will be identified, analysed, recorded, reviewed, measured and delivered.

Measuring engagement effectiveness

Including how the effectiveness of stakeholder engagement activities will be measured in the strategy is easy to write and hard to do, but it is what prevents engagement becoming an activity count. "We held twelve workshops" is not effectiveness; a shift in the know , feel and do outcomes is. This links forward to change analytics, where assessing the effectiveness of communications and engagement is explicitly part of a change analytics strategy.