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Stakeholder & Leadership Engagement

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Overview

Stakeholder & Leadership Engagement helps teams identify impacted groups, engage leaders, and build alignment across stakeholders.

This area focuses on understanding who is affected by the change, how stakeholders may influence or experience the initiative, and what engagement is needed to build awareness, trust, participation, and ownership throughout the change journey.

For more information about the OCM CoE model, visit the OCM CoE main page.

Why It Matters

Successful change depends on more than informing stakeholders that a change is happening. Project teams need to understand stakeholder needs, concerns, influence, readiness, and potential resistance so engagement can be targeted and meaningful.

Stakeholder & Leadership Engagement helps ensure the right people are involved at the right time, leaders are prepared to reinforce the change, and impacted groups have opportunities to ask questions, provide feedback, and participate in the transition. This work strengthens alignment, reduces adoption risk, and supports sustained commitment across stakeholder groups.

Supporting Activities

Stakeholder Assessment identifies, analyzes, and categorizes stakeholder groups based on their role, level of impact, influence, interest, and readiness for change. It provides the foundation for understanding who needs to be engaged and how. 

This activity helps teams:

  • Identify stakeholder groups and key individuals impacted by or influencing the change.
  • Understand stakeholder needs, expectations, concerns, and potential resistance.
  • Assess stakeholder influence, interest, readiness, and level of support.
  • Use stakeholder insights to inform engagement, communication, training, and readiness planning.

Stakeholder Engagement Strategy defines how project teams will involve and support stakeholder groups throughout the change lifecycle. It uses stakeholder assessment and change impact insights to design targeted engagement activities that build trust, encourage participation, and support readiness. 

This activity helps teams:

  • Define engagement goals by stakeholder group.
  • Prioritize engagement based on stakeholder influence, interest, impact, and readiness.
  • Select appropriate engagement methods, such as leadership briefings, town halls, listening sessions, focus groups, or targeted updates.
  • Integrate engagement activities with communications, training, and readiness efforts.

A Change Leader Network establishes a group of trusted representatives who serve as local advocates for change within their departments or stakeholder groups. Acting as an extension of the project team, Change Leaders help reinforce key messages, gather feedback, identify emerging concerns, and support stakeholder readiness throughout the change journey.

By creating trusted connections between the project team and impacted audiences, a Change Leader Network strengthens two-way communication, increases organizational awareness, and helps build momentum for adoption.

This activity helps teams:

  • Identify and engage trusted representatives from impacted areas. 
  • Define Change Leader roles, responsibilities, and expectations. 
  • Equip Change Leaders with timely information, resources, and key messages. 
  • Create structured feedback channels to surface stakeholder insights and concerns. 
  • Reinforce consistent messaging and encourage peer-to-peer engagement. 
  • Extend the reach of the project team and strengthen organizational readiness for change.

Leadership Action Plans define specific actions leaders can take to visibly support the change, communicate key messages, model desired behaviors, address resistance, and reinforce accountability. 

This activity helps teams:

  • Clarify how leaders should support the change throughout the project lifecycle.
  • Align leadership actions with project milestones, stakeholder needs, and OCM activities.
  • Provide leaders with messages, resources, and engagement guidance.
  • Maintain visible and consistent leadership support before, during, and after implementation.

OCM CoE Support

The OCM COE partners with campus units and project teams to establish a strong foundation for managing change. We work with teams to define the vision for change, understand organizational impacts, and develop a right-sized change management strategy that aligns with the initiative's goals, complexity, stakeholder impact, and adoption risk.

Our level of engagement is tailored to each initiative. Depending on the magnitude of change, we may provide strategic guidance, collaborate with project teams to develop planning deliverables, or provide hands-on support to establish the change management foundation.

Support may include:

  • Facilitating Vision for Change and Case for Change development 
  • Developing or reviewing an OCM Strategy & Plan
  • Conducting or advising on Change Impact Assessments 
  • Facilitating project team alignment and team-building workshops 
  • Providing planning templates, tools, and best practices aligned with UCLA's OCM methodology 
  • Advising teams on how to scale Change Management Planning activities based on project size, complexity, stakeholder impact, and adoption risk 

For access to the OCM CoE resources, including how-to toolkits, templates, and sample materials, please contact us via email: dtsocmcoe@it.ucla.edu. We are also available to answer any questions about the OCM methodology or to discuss your OCM needs.