Wondering what AI really means for everyday governance? 

 will give you the clearest picture yet. AI has moved from buzzword to being essential to GRC.

Come join us to find out how teams are putting AI to work in practical way. These are not theories or hype, they are AI-powered workflows and best practices, you can bring back to your organization and start using straight away.

 and join us in Atlanta, GA, April 22–24, 2026. 

AI sessions to add to your Elevate 2026 list to attend

AI skills lab: Hands‑on GovernAI training

You’ll get guided, practical time inside the tools so you can see exactly how AI accelerates agenda prep, summaries, minutes and search. No hypotheticals — just real workflows and real outputs.

Shadow AI is becoming a risk. This session shows how to take control of AI adoption with governed tools, clear policies and guardrails that keep sensitive information protected.

Seeing the whole picture: AI‑driven reporting and dashboards

GRC leaders are drowning in data but still lack clear visibility. Learn how AI‑driven dashboards highlight what matters most for your executives and board.

Managing the agentic workforce: Accountability and trust in AI‑enabled GRC

Digital agents are becoming teammates. See how they connect information, suggest next steps and help you act earlier — and what it takes to manage them responsibly.

From spreadsheets to software: Advancing ERM maturity with AI‑enabled risk management

Hear directly from teams who traded fragmented spreadsheets for connected risk intelligence that updates in real time and surfaces issues earlier.

Trust issues: How to build confidence in data and AI

How do you trust AI outputs when so much information is automated? This session gives you a practical framework for validating AI insights so leaders know they can rely on the results. A live demo of ACL AI Studio brings it all to life.

Let’s get hands‑on with BoardEffect’s GovernAI

Explore how Smart Prep, Smart Summary, Smart Minutes and Smart Search help nonprofit boards run smoother meetings with less manual effort.

All in Favor? BoardEffect approvals and polls in action

Learn how to capture responses and streamline collaboration with built‑in approvals, surveys and polls.

AI for mission‑driven boards: People, policy, and purpose

Nonprofit and public boards are beginning the AI conversation with clarity and care. See how they’re balancing innovation with mission, trust and transparency.

Elevate: The AI advantage for governance leaders

Elevate can reshape the way you work with AI — not by adding more to your plate, but by giving you the clarity, skills and confidence to use it where it matters most. You’ll walk out with a sharper workflow, a stronger sense of what’s possible and practical steps to move your organization forward. 

Come ready to learn. Leave ready to lead. See you in Atlanta, April 22–24, 2026 — 

Elevate 2026: Upskill on AI and AI governance

Stakeholder risk management determines whether projects succeed or fail. Organizations that overlook stakeholder dynamics see stakeholders emerging late in project cycles, forcing expensive rework and schedule extensions that erode ROI.

The challenge is twofold. Stakeholders can introduce risks to your project through opposition, competing priorities or last-minute demands. At the same time, your project creates risks for stakeholders whose workflows, resources or interests will be affected by the outcome. Failing to account for either dimension leaves projects vulnerable at critical moments.

Diligent Institute's Transaction Readiness Report

, 56% of organizations cite limited resources as their top transaction readiness challenge — a problem compounded when stakeholder conflicts consume time and attention that should focus on execution. Effective stakeholder risk management transforms this dynamic, converting potential obstacles into project allies through systematic identification, assessment and engagement.

This guide covers practical strategies for managing stakeholder risk throughout your projects:

What stakeholder risk management is and why it differs from general risk management

The impacts of poor stakeholder risk management on project outcomes

A 3-step framework for identifying, profiling and responding to stakeholder risks

Stakeholder risk management is the systematic process of identifying, assessing and responding to risks that arise from individuals, groups or organizations with vested interests in project outcomes.

Unlike general risk management, which focuses broadly on threats to objectives, stakeholder risk management specifically addresses the human dynamics that can accelerate or derail initiatives.

Stakeholder risks fall into two distinct categories that require different identification and response strategies:

 These are uncertainties introduced by stakeholder actions, decisions or influence. A regulatory body imposing new requirements mid-project, an executive sponsor withdrawing support, or an operations team resisting workflow changes all represent risks from stakeholders. These risks often emerge when stakeholders feel excluded from decisions that affect their interests.

 These are potential negative impacts your project creates for stakeholder groups. Employees facing job displacement, suppliers losing contracts, or communities affected by operational changes all face risks to their interests.

When organizations fail to acknowledge and address these impacts, affected stakeholders often mobilize opposition that threatens project completion.

Effective stakeholder risk management requires visibility into both dimensions. Project managers who focus exclusively on risks from stakeholders often miss the opposition that builds when affected parties feel their concerns are ignored.

Impacts of poor stakeholder risk management

When organizations neglect stakeholder risk management, the consequences extend beyond delayed timelines. Poor stakeholder risk management typically results in:

 Unknown stakeholders surfacing during implementation phases force expensive rework and schedule extensions that erode project ROI.

Regulatory penalties and compliance failures.

 Secondary stakeholders like regulators can halt projects entirely when their concerns weren't addressed during the planning stages.

 from Diligent Institute, 41% of directors cite ethics or culture-related scandals as holding the risk of significant impact on their companies. Stakeholder conflicts that escalate publicly create lasting 

 In the most severe cases, stakeholder opposition derails projects completely — wasting invested resources and damaging organizational credibility for future initiatives.

"There needs to be collaboration between risk and the business, vertically up and down but then also horizontally across the organization," says Michael Rasmussen, CEO of GRC Report. "The problem is there are silos.

To effectively manage the uncertainties around working with stakeholders, project managers should develop a framework for learning more about who stakeholders are, the kind of risk they represent and how they may be satisfied without harming your project.

Here are the three significant steps involved in developing a 

1) Identifying stakeholders and stakeholder risks

Unfortunately, many of us have experienced the exasperation of getting deep into a project development cycle only to be hit with new requirements from an unknown stakeholder. Even worse, these requirements may crop up at the moment of implementation or in the release phase, when it's too late to address them without expensive rework.

At that point, your team may discover the new stakeholder has the power and will to bring your venture to a halt. That's why stakeholder management should include a systematic approach to identifying potential stakeholders.

Start with team brainstorming that includes the project sponsor. Focus on those directly affected by any changes your project entails: who would end up benefiting from or losing something after you roll out the venture?

Give everyone paper to write down as many stakeholders as possible within 10 minutes. Then pull everyone's lists together, eliminating duplicates, and use that as the basis of a more traditional brainstorming session where everyone makes suggestions on who they would consider a stakeholder.

Once you've agreed on a stakeholder list, start creating profiles that outline their roles in the project. In addition, the profiles should include answers to questions that give you a better understanding of the risk a stakeholder poses to your venture. Examples of questions you might want to see answered with a specific stakeholder profile include the following:

Who uses the products or services from the project?

Who will face work disruptions because of the project?

Who will have to update or eliminate specific workflows because of the project?

Who will decide when it's time to move to the next project phase?

The responses to your questions help the team achieve a 360-degree view of the project. That way, you increase the chance of identifying essential stakeholders at the start, which lowers the risk of an unknown yet vital stakeholder popping up near the end.

There's a lot of decision-making involved with every phase of a project. Who's in charge of making decisions for your project? Go over your current project plan, and make a list of all decisions and authorization points. Make a note of who would be responsible for the final call, and account for any stakeholder with veto authority you previously missed.

As you work on identifying your primary stakeholders, keep an eye out for groups who might typically get overlooked because they're not involved in the project execution. They would include the following groups:

Regulators who wouldn't show concern unless a rule violation occurred

The clients of customers responsible for driving the demand that prompted the project

Those opposed to the project because they could end up suffering a loss

If you don't account for secondary stakeholders from your project's outset, they could emerge as an adversarial force at the end just as easily as a primary stakeholder could.

Try to add a personal touch to the profiles you develop for stakeholders. Understanding who they are as people gives you more insight into their stake in a project and the stakeholder's potential influence. For example, “John Smith, Regional Operations” gives you something more specific to work with than simply “Operations.”

3) Developing responses to high-risk stakeholders

Once you know more about your stakeholders, the next step is figuring out effective ways of communicating back and forth with them. Start by organizing your stakeholders in order of importance and the potential risk they represent to your project.

As part of a risk management strategy, identify high-priority stakeholders by understanding what they care about, how their interests align or contrast with your project, whether they'll require significant monitoring and what it would take to keep them satisfied.

Then drill down to specifics: What title do they hold? What will they contribute? What level of authority do they have over the project? What outcome are they looking for? Do they represent a threat or an opportunity?

To mitigate project risk by getting stakeholder decisions to go your way, map the political landscape systematically:

Rank each stakeholder's position on key proposals, noting both their stance and the strength of their conviction

Rank their ability to influence decisions, placing those with final decision authority higher

Build an illustration showing where each person stands on critical decisions

Map relationships between stakeholders, highlighting alliances and tensions while ignoring neutral connections

This process reveals the power dynamics and relationship networks that determine whether your proposals succeed or fail, allowing you to develop targeted engagement strategies for each high-risk stakeholder.

Continuous risk management of stakeholders

How you communicate with stakeholders will differ depending on whether they are high-priority stakeholders, the amount of influence they carry, and how much information they require at different project stages. Develop a communication plan for delivering the correct information to the right people in the proper format as often as needed.

Use the information collected when identifying your main stakeholders to decide on communication strategies for different groups. By planning out your responses and communication strategies, you shift from a reactive mode to a proactive one for managing risk around stakeholders.

A solid communication strategy is essential in risk management. It gets everyone on the same page in identifying problems and the potential threats they represent to a project. In addition, you ensure that any solutions are developed to account for the concerns of every group affected.

The larger a project, the more confusion might arise on who has the final decision. This can lead to a lot of conflict between the project team and stakeholders and among different sets of stakeholders.

Your communication strategy can go a long way in getting stakeholders to move past any 

 for the overall good of the project. Otherwise, you run the real risk of failure if you don't effectively communicate essential information to stakeholder groups.

Provide transparent updates at predetermined intervals to prevent information gaps that fuel stakeholder concerns

Assign clear risk owners for each high-priority stakeholder relationship

Involve key stakeholders directly in risk assessments where their input improves accuracy

Establish escalation protocols before conflicts arise

Document stakeholder feedback and demonstrate how it influences project decisions

When stakeholders feel informed and heard, they're far less likely to become obstacles late in the project cycle. Consistent communication builds the trust that turns potential adversaries into allies and surfaces concerns while you still have time to address them.

See how AI-powered dashboards help organizations identify and monitor stakeholder risks before they derail projects.

Centralize your risk visibility

Persuasive risk communication with stakeholders

Persuasive risk communication involves getting stakeholders to change their attitudes, opinions and behaviors around an objective that represents a risk to a project. Forms of persuasive risk communication include the following:

 This relies on messages containing rational arguments subject to the premise that the stakeholder understands your logic and applies the same rules when making judgments about the source of your information. Both of you must also feel equally motivated to deal with the risk that an issue represents. However, you may run into trouble with this approach if the stakeholder operates from a different ruleset, relies on conflicting information sources or doesn't view the risk with the same sense of urgency.

 Stakeholders who may remain unmoved by rational persuasion may be more open to emotional persuasion, where you're appealing to their subconscious mind instead of their conscious mind. Many marketers and salespeople rely on emotional persuasion to appeal to consumers. Emotional persuasion can involve the arousal of feelings like fear or excitement to influence a stakeholder to adopt a more favorable position.

How AI transforms stakeholder risk visibility

Managing stakeholder risks across complex projects requires visibility that spreadsheets and email chains cannot provide. AI-powered 

 address the stakeholder identification, profiling and communication challenges documented throughout this guide.

For organizations building their first formal stakeholder risk management programs, Diligent's 

 provides a fast path to visibility. The platform uses AI-powered peer benchmarking against 180,000+ real-world risks from SEC 10-K filings to surface stakeholder-related risks that similar organizations face. Implementation takes days rather than months, giving project teams the risk intelligence they need without complex deployment.

"It's a solution that was properly priced, quick to deploy, and simple to learn — enhancing our 

 program and delivering immediate value to all stakeholders," says Melanie McGrath, General Counsel at CBCL Limited.

For organizations with established programs, 

 centralizes stakeholder risk data alongside 

. Interactive heat maps translate complex stakeholder dynamics into visual formats that leadership can quickly interpret, while automated workflows route stakeholder issues to appropriate personnel and track resolution progress.

The City of Lethbridge achieved a four-year ERM maturity plan in under 12 months 

, with interactive dashboards fostering accountability and clearer communication across departments.

Overall, effective stakeholder risk management transforms potential obstacles into project allies through systematic identification, assessment and engagement. The right technology makes this transformation practical at any organizational scale.

 to see how Diligent can help your organization build stakeholder risk visibility that prevents project derailment.

Frequently asked questions about stakeholder risk management

How do you manage stakeholder risk in projects?

Effective stakeholder risk management follows three core steps: identifying all stakeholders (including secondary stakeholders like regulators), profiling each stakeholder's interests and influence level to assess risk, and developing targeted response strategies for high-risk stakeholders. Ongoing communication and monitoring ensure risks don't escalate.

Why is stakeholder management important in risk management?

Stakeholder management is critical because stakeholders can accelerate or derail projects based on their support or opposition. Unknown stakeholders emerging late in project cycles cause delays, cost overruns and sometimes complete project failure.

Proactive stakeholder risk management identifies these dynamics early when response options remain flexible.

Stakeholder risk management: Best practices for setting a strategy and maintaining it

This article originally appeared in our January 15th edition of the Diligent Minute Newsletter. For more insights like these, delivered straight to your inbox, subscribe

After three quarters of near-record low confidence levels

, America’s boardrooms ended 2025 on a surprisingly hopeful note, even as directors brace for another demanding year. The latest 

, our quarterly survey of U.S. public company directors conducted with Corporate Board Member, shows sentiment rebounding sharply after three consecutive quarters at a five-year low throughout much of last year.

Why U.S. board confidence rebounded at the end of 2025

Confidence rose 23% in the final month of the year, climbing from 4.9 to 6.0 on a 10-point scale and finally nudging back into what respondents consider “good” territory. As a key driver behind the shift, directors point to:

In other words, after a year of policy whiplash, boards feel they at least understand the playing field a bit better - even if they don’t like it.

That late-year rally, however, shouldn’t be mistaken for a victory lap. For 2025 overall, average confidence registered just 5.0, well below 2024’s 6.2 and far short of the 6.9 directors had forecast a year ago.

Three quarters of respondents say tariffs were a primary reason conditions fell short of expectations, far outpacing any other factor. Their comments underscore how hard it is for boards to plan when rules change midgame; familiar playbooks don’t work when trade policy and enforcement shift repeatedly.

Tariffs, uncertainty and a new risk landscape

Directors in sectors long considered resilient

, like life sciences, describe this period as unlike anything they’ve seen in decades. Many point to deferred capital spending and elongated decision cycles as companies try to model scenarios that are, frankly, impossible to model with precision. That reality is reshaping how boards think about risk, resilience and the very nature of their oversight role.

Their outlook for business conditions by late 2026 is 6.0, essentially flat from today’s reading. CEOs, by contrast, are modestly more upbeat: in a parallel survey by Chief Executive, they project a 6% improvement to 6.4, and 44% say they expect conditions to improve, compared with 32% of directors. That gap is telling. CEOs are closest to near-term operations; boards are increasingly focused on longer-horizons, compounding risks.

Those directors who are optimistic tend to anchor their confidence in 

 seeing opportunities to transform productivity and reimagine business models. Among those who expect deterioration, concerns skew heavily toward macro and geopolitical risk, with uncertainty emerging as a dominant theme -— on par with inflation for many neutral respondents.

How boards can strengthen oversight and learning in 2026

directors emphasize adaptability, deeper engagement and faster learning, recognizing that they must connect dots across 

5 years of the Director Confidence Index: Tracking a more demanding role

This quarter also marks five years of fielding the Director Confidence Index, and we asked respondents how their roles have evolved since 2020.

Board members say they are spending far more time on risk in a “more complex and faster moving” environment, with cybersecurity, AI, geopolitical shocks, supply-chain integrity and policy volatility now standard agenda items. Many describe a shift from “managing the present” toward future-oriented scenario planning and strategic resilience, alongside heightened scrutiny from investors and activists that expands the mandate beyond financial performance to culture, human capital and corporate character.

Taken together, the picture is clear: being a director today is more time-intensive, strategically demanding and consequential than it was in 2020 and perhaps than it has ever been. One director distilled the 2026 playbook to three words: “Defend and survive.” I would add a fourth: learn. Boards that invest in learning about AI technology, geopolitics, regulation and stakeholder expectations will be best positioned not just to endure whatever comes next, but to help their organizations emerge stronger on the other side.

Boards brace for 2026: Confidence rebounds, risk looms 

This article originally appeared in our December 18th edition of the Diligent Minute Newsletter. For more insights like these, delivered straight to your inbox, subscribe 

As we close out 2025, I’ve been reflecting on what this year taught us and the word that comes to mind is “unprecedented.” Insights from the Diligent Institute’s research show how directors navigated multiple unprecedented challenges – often simultaneously – while also driving major change. The lessons we learned this year aren’t just a look back. They can be a compass pointing to the directional shifts boards will need to embrace as governance moves into a faster, more AI-enabled era.

Five governance shifts boards must prepare for in 2026

What will change: Boards will move beyond passive reporting and lean into more 

 Predictive analytics and scenario planning will become part of everyday conversations, helping directors navigate volatility before it hits.


Why? Director confidence hit historic lows in 2025. Our 

 conducted in partnership with Corporate Board Member, landed at just 4.8 out of 10, among the lowest since the pandemic. That’s a wake-up call for faster, smarter decision-making. If you’re curious whether sentiment is shifting, our Q4 results will be live by the time this issue hits your inbox. Check them out to see if optimism is making a comeback.

What will change: Dashboards won’t just summarize risks. They’ll surface them within hours, and crisis protocols will kick in during the first 72. AI-powered assurance will scan massive datasets to catch anomalies as they happen, and directors will be able to ask complex questions in plain language and get instant answers. Oversight will move from reacting after the fact to staying ahead of the curve, a fundamental change in risk management.

 7.9 out of 10. Quarterly updates aren’t enough anymore. Boards need early-warning systems and integrated intelligence to keep pace.

3) AI governance moves to the top of the agenda

What will change: Agentic AI is moving fast, from assisting to acting. Boards will need to build AI literacy, test for bias and keep humans in the loop to manage less visible risks.

Why: Two-thirds of directors used AI tools in 2025, but 

, 57% of respondents said their organizations had deployed AI in one or more areas of the business, but only 36% had audited usage.As AI deployment climbs higher on the priority list for 2026, closing this governance gap is critical.

4) Integration becomes a growth essential

What will change: M&A ambitions will stall without tech integration. Boards that prioritize scalable platforms will unlock faster, cleaner transactions and reduce risk during rapid growth periods as integration readiness becomes a board-level KPI.

 conducted in partnership with Wilson Sonsini and NetSuite, found only 4% of organizations had fully integrated GRC and financial systems.

What will change: Board agendas will shift toward forward-looking conversations powered by predictive analytics and cultural insights. Directors will widen their lens beyond financials to include culture and workforce resilience, using anonymized data to spot risks before they surface.

Why: The ability to anticipate, not just react, will define effective governance in 2026. Boards that lean on AI-driven scenario modeling and continuous feedback loops will stay aligned with fast-changing realities.

Turning 2025 board lessons into a 2026 action plan

2026 will reward boards that act, not just react. That means pairing human judgment with AI-driven foresight, embedding continuous assurance and integrating systems for scalability. Governance is moving from static to dynamic – and the boards that thrive will be ready to keep pace.

Check out the full blog on trends shaping governance in 2026.

Diligent

Blog

Elevate 2026: Upskill on AI and AI governance

Stakeholder risk management: Best practices for setting a strategy and maintaining it

Your Data Matters