Stakeholder Mapping: How to Build a Stakeholder Map

Stakeholder mapping is the structured identification and analysis of the people and groups who can affect or are affected by a decision, usually by their power, their interest and their likely position. A stakeholder map is the result: a single picture, often a two by two grid, that shows who matters to a decision, how much each person or group cares about it, and where support or resistance is likely to come from. This guide explains where the technique comes from, how to build a stakeholder map in five steps, how the power interest grid works, and why the most useful maps capture informal influence as well as formal authority.

What Is a Stakeholder Map?

A stakeholder is, in R. Edward Freeman's widely cited definition, "any group or individual who can affect or is affected by the achievement of the organization's objectives" (Freeman, 1984). For a leader, the useful unit is usually narrower than the whole organization: one decision, project or change. A stakeholder map lists everyone with a stake in that outcome and places each one according to three judgments:

• Power. How much the person or group can shape the outcome, through formal authority, control of resources, expertise or relationships.
• Interest. How much they care about the outcome and how directly it affects them.
• Position. Whether they currently support the proposal, oppose it, or have not formed a view.

Most leaders already carry an implicit map in their heads. Writing it down turns that intuition into something a team can discuss and correct, and it tends to reveal blind spots, such as an influential person who was never consulted or an assumed ally who is in fact neutral.

Where Stakeholder Mapping Comes From

Stakeholder thinking entered strategic management through Freeman's 1984 book Strategic Management: A Stakeholder Approach. Mitchell, Agle and Wood (1997) then asked which stakeholders managers actually attend to. They proposed that stakeholder salience, the degree to which managers give priority to competing stakeholder claims, depends on three attributes: power, legitimacy and urgency.

One of the most cited practical reviews is John Bryson's article on what to do when stakeholders matter, published in Public Management Review in 2004. Bryson presents fifteen stakeholder identification and analysis techniques, grouped into four purposes: organizing participation, creating ideas for strategic interventions, building a winning coalition around a proposal, and implementing and evaluating the result. The power versus interest grid, which Bryson draws from Colin Eden and Fran Ackermann's 1998 book Making Strategy, is the best known of them.

How to Build a Stakeholder Map in Five Steps

1. Define the decision. Name the specific decision, project or change, and the time horizon. A map of the whole organization is too broad to act on.
2. List the stakeholders. Brainstorm every individual and group with a stake in the outcome: decision makers, people whose work will change, those who control budgets or approvals, partners outside the unit, and people whose opinion others follow. Name individuals where you can, since groups rarely act as one.
3. Rate power and interest. For each stakeholder, judge how much influence they have over the outcome and how much they care about it. Bryson specifies that interest is meant in a political sense: what the stakeholder has at stake in the outcome.
4. Place them on the grid and mark their position. Plot each stakeholder on a power versus interest grid, then note whether they support, oppose or are undecided. Bryson recommends that a planning group move the names around until everyone is satisfied with the relative placements, and then discuss what the pattern implies.
5. Plan engagement and revisit. Decide how to involve each stakeholder, who to consult first and what each one needs to know. Update the map as the decision moves forward, because positions and influence shift.

Power Interest Grid

The power versus interest grid arranges stakeholders on two axes, interest and power, which produces four groups (Bryson, 2004, drawing on Eden and Ackermann, 1998):

• Players have both an interest and significant power. Their views shape the outcome, so they usually need early and direct involvement.
• Subjects have an interest but little power. They are often the people most affected by a decision, and their knowledge and support matter for implementation.
• Context setters have power but little direct interest. They can change the outcome if the issue reaches them, so it helps to know what would draw their attention.
• Crowd stakeholders have little interest or power. They are worth keeping informed, since their place on the grid can change.

Bryson notes that the grid helps a team see whose interests and power bases must be taken into account, which coalitions to encourage and whose support to seek. He also observes that the same analysis can help advance the interests of stakeholders with little power. A good map serves the quality of the decision as well as the success of the proposal.

Mapping Informal Influence

A map built from the organization chart shows formal authority. It often misses the people who shape a decision through their relationships: the trusted adviser whose opinion a vice president asks for, the long serving manager whom peers consult, the assistant who controls an executive's agenda. Krackhardt and Hanson (1993) argued that much of the real work of companies happens despite the formal organization, through informal networks that cut across functions and reporting lines. Those networks can revive a stalled initiative or quietly organize resistance to a change.

Bryson's stakeholder influence diagram addresses part of this. Starting from the power versus interest grid, a team draws lines showing who influences whom and in which direction, then discusses who the most central stakeholders are. Three questions help surface informal influence:

• Whose opinion do the decision makers ask for before they decide?
• Who has been right about similar decisions in the past, and is known for it?
• Who will carry out the decision, and what will they say about it to their colleagues?

Stakeholder Map Example

Consider a director who wants to move three regional teams onto a single scheduling system. A first map, built from job titles, might look like this:

• Players: the chief operating officer, who approves the budget, and the head of the largest region, whose team would change the most.
• Subjects: the schedulers in each region, who will use the system every day and know where the current process breaks.
• Context setters: the IT security team and the finance director, who have little interest in scheduling but can stop a purchase.
• Crowd: other departments that receive the schedules.

A second pass, asking whose opinion matters, changes the picture. The most experienced scheduler, whom the regional heads consult informally, moves from the subjects toward the players. The finance director, known to be cautious about software purchases this year, is marked as a likely opponent. The next steps follow from the revised map: test the proposal with the experienced scheduler first, bring the security requirements in early, and meet the finance director with the costs already worked out.

Common Stakeholder Mapping Mistakes

• Mapping titles only. Formal authority is one source of power among several. Expertise, relationships and control of information also count.
• Mapping groups instead of people. A department or a union rarely holds a single view. Named individuals give a more accurate picture.
• Assuming positions. Treat each placement as a hypothesis to check in conversation, especially for stakeholders you rarely speak with.
• Mapping once. Interest and power shift as a decision becomes visible. Revisit the map at each milestone.
• Using the map to steer people against their interests. A stakeholder map is a way to understand legitimate interests and involve the right people. Used to manipulate, it erodes the trust that future influence depends on.

Stakeholder Mapping and Political Skill

A stakeholder map is only as accurate as the observation behind it. Two leaders can fill in the same template and produce very different maps, because one notices informal influence and shifting positions that the other misses. Research on political skill describes that capability. Ferris and colleagues define political skill as the ability to understand others at work and use that knowledge to influence them toward personal and organizational objectives, and their Political Skill Inventory includes social astuteness, the ability to observe others accurately and interpret social situations, as one of four dimensions (Ferris et al., 2005). A meta analysis found that political skill predicted task performance after controlling for the Big Five personality traits and general mental ability (Munyon, Summers, Thompson, and Ferris, 2015).

For ways to act on a map, see the guides to influence without authority and managing up. For the broader capability, see political acumen and organizational dynamics.

How Pine Perspective Relates to Stakeholder Mapping

Pine Perspective measures what a leader can do. Its Influence Agility assessment covers three dimensions. Landscape Reading, the awareness of power structures, stakeholder interests and unwritten rules, is the perceptual capability that makes a stakeholder map accurate. Relationship Navigation is the ability to act on the map by building the relationships it shows are needed. Projected Authenticity describes whether stakeholders with different agendas see you as credible and sincere. A Decision Compass profile describes how you reason through ethically weighted decisions. The method is described on the political skill assessment page.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a stakeholder map? A stakeholder map is a picture of everyone who can affect or is affected by a decision, placed according to their power over the outcome, their interest in it and their current position. The most common format is a power versus interest grid.

What is the difference between stakeholder mapping and stakeholder analysis? Stakeholder analysis is the broader process of identifying stakeholders and understanding their interests, influence and views. Stakeholder mapping places them in a visual format, such as a grid or an influence diagram, so a team can compare and discuss them.

What are the four quadrants of the power interest grid? Players have high power and high interest, subjects have high interest and low power, context setters have high power and low interest, and the crowd has low power and low interest. Bryson (2004) takes these terms from Eden and Ackermann (1998).

How often should a stakeholder map be updated? At each milestone of the decision, and whenever a new stakeholder appears or a known one changes position.

References

• Bryson, J. M. (2004). What to do when stakeholders matter: Stakeholder identification and analysis techniques. Public Management Review, 6(1), 21 to 53.
• Eden, C., & Ackermann, F. (1998). Making strategy: The journey of strategic management. London: Sage.
• Ferris, G. R., Treadway, D. C., Kolodinsky, R. W., Hochwarter, W. A., Kacmar, C. J., Douglas, C., & Frink, D. D. (2005). Development and validation of the political skill inventory. Journal of Management, 31(1), 126 to 152.
• Freeman, R. E. (1984). Strategic management: A stakeholder approach. Boston: Pitman. Reissued 2010 by Cambridge University Press.
• Krackhardt, D., & Hanson, J. R. (1993). Informal networks: The company behind the chart. Harvard Business Review, 71(4), 104 to 111.
• Mitchell, R. K., Agle, B. R., & Wood, D. J. (1997). Toward a theory of stakeholder identification and salience: Defining the principle of who and what really counts. Academy of Management Review, 22(4), 853 to 886.
• Munyon, T. P., Summers, J. K., Thompson, K. M., & Ferris, G. R. (2015). Political skill and work outcomes: A theoretical extension, meta-analytic investigation, and agenda for the future. Personnel Psychology, 68(1), 143 to 184.