If you understand the impact your work has on other people and how important they are to your success, you can plan your time most effectively. Those people are referred to as  ‘stakeholders’, and a stakeholder map helps you to identify (and map) the importance of each person involved in your project. Once you have a stakeholder map, you can update it when new information comes in, or if the project takes a new turn, and you can use it to solve problems down the road. 

For example; if you start a new project, you can use it to identify the right stakeholders to talk to in order to get things off the ground, get approval, or to escalate an issue. The steps are simple. 

Step 1 - Identify your stakeholders

Make an extensive list of all of the people that touch your project. The managers, the workers, their managers, the users, the approvers, the responsibles, the irresponsibles, whatever. Write them all down and include the following information to limit duplicates and identify if you have gaps in Role or Department representation: 

• Full name
• Role
• Department

More is better, you can always thin this list down and add structure later. An easy way to start this list is by asking yourself the following questions: 

• Who is impacted by the project?
• Who is responsible or accountable for parts of the project?
• Who has authority within the project?
• Who can support or obstruct the project?
• Who has been involved in a project like this before?

Next, put the names into concentric rings. The innermost circle represents your ‘Core users’. These are the people that are the reason you exist, the ones who are impacted the most. If you don’t know who these people are, congratulations, this process has already highlighted a problem. Go and find out.

The next circle should be your team ‘Core Team’ , obviously you and your team are going to have an impact on your project. Next  you want ‘Other users’, then ‘Direct’ and ‘Indirect’ stakeholders. Feel free to leave one of these last three out or merge them if that makes more sense for you and your team. Once you have your circles and have filled them with names, you can see everyone in one place. Great, step 1 complete. 

Step 2 - Understand their goals, motivations, and concerns

This step makes you think about your project from someone else’s perspective, an empathetic phenomenon that is very rare but very powerful. Once you understand a person's goals and motivations you’ll be able to understand their choices and start to be able to anticipate the benefits this project will have on real people. How do you find out these things? Well, you could guess and try to work it out yourself, but the best way is to just ask your stakeholders: 

• What do you expect from our team?
• What do you expect to provide to us along the way? 
• What is your biggest worry about what we’re working on?
• Why are you a stakeholder in our work? 

Again, these things will inevitably change, and you can update your map as you go, but the really valuable thing is to understand their perspective and ultimately their needs. This means you can start to work out what you should, or should not, include them in, how you can get them on your side, and when to be careful. Empathy, am I right?

Think about each of your inner circle stakeholders, what are their goals, motivations, and concerns? Then, write them down. For the more outer circles, doing this for groups of stakeholders instead of individuals is fine.

Step 3 - Make connections

Next, draw lines between the names in the circles to link them together. You’re looking to highlight two very important things, dependencies between stakeholders, and influences between people. If you understand these things you’ll know when to make ‘skip level’ decisions (where you can talk to a person of higher authority  directly), you’ll be able to identify more influential people, and you’ll know the stakeholders to pay closest attention to. 

Stakeholder dependencies

A dependency between stakeholders is if one person or team needs another person or team to do something before they can act. For example, if one of your core users is a member of the  support team then you already know that before they can do something you need to get approval from the support teams manager. So go ahead and figure out who they are and add them to your map. 

Stakeholder influencers

An influence between people is more personal, it’s about identifying the people who get listened to, who can help or hinder your ideas. These are the movers and shakers. For example, your boss is likely to be able to influence you, or if there’s a brand new VP of sales who’s racking up the sales, they are going to have a lot of influence over a lot of people. Mapping these connections lets you see patterns and helps to identify the most advantageous stakeholders to buddy up with.

Step 4 - Make choices

Once you have all of this mapped, you’re almost there, but it’s all useless unless you start making decisions and changing how you behave to reflect your stakeholders needs. Make a copy of all of the names in your circles and stick them onto a 2x2 grid with the x-axis ranging from low interest to high interest, and the y-axis from low power to high power. Be honest: The stakeholder mapping does not need to be shared or circulate, it can remain private to the project and delivery teams if you feel it could cause issues. This is no about personal views, it's about the project so make sure your decisions are non biassed and in line with the project's narrative.

Once you have all the right stakeholders in their blocks you're good to go. Remember, influence and interest can change overnight so keep checking on your map to make sure the right people are getting the right information when they need/want it.

Step 5 - Communication Plan

With this secondary mapping completed you can start to think about stakeholder management strategies and communication plans. Ask yourself:

• Who needs to be informed of what, and when?
• Who needs to be consulted about what, and when?
• Who is responsible for engaging each stakeholder?
• Who needs to be closely managed, or just monitored?

When you have answered these questions, identified your Stakeholders needs, and created your templates you can make some new regular meetings, delete some old ones, and get going. 

Tips and tricks

Stakeholder mapping can be a tricky business. Identifying the correct stakeholders and the connections between them comes with experience and you will inevitably get better over time as you learn and reflect on what you mapped vs reality.

To try and get you ahead of the curve her are some things to think about:

• Stakeholders with high influence means they have power over the project, however don’t be fooled by the idea that just because someone is in a senior position means they automatically have influence over the system. For better or for worse. 
• Stakeholders that have high Influence but are not interested still need to be included. If you’re unlucky enough to have a senior stakeholder who’s work depends on yours but they don’t seem to care about what you’re doing, they’re still going to be affected by what you do. You have to keep an eye on them, or they could very easily turn <zombie emoji>. 
• Keep your stakeholder map up to date throughout the project - as mentioned before situations change overnight, someone in one position today could be in a new one tomorrow and as the Project gets momentum, interest will inevitably increase and therefore attract more attention from other people. It doesn’t take a lot of effort to map them too, so do it when you can. 
• Don’t beat yourself up if you don’t get it right the first time - So you missed someone and it was sort of a big deal … Well you have learnt your lesson right? You likely won’t get it right the first time but you can only do your best. Make your apologies, update them on the project so far and add them to the list and make a note for next time, then … move on, it’s just a map, goodness me. 

You’re now armed with enough information to map your stakeholders and start making decisions. Congrats. And good luck. Let’s see how it goes.

Outro

Yes it all seems like a lot, and yes it seems convoluted but it’s not that much work and it helps you understand the people you’re working with, so give it a try. You don’t even really need a whole team to do it, whenever I join a new team or a new organisation I’ve done this for me as part of my onboarding process. I identify the people, ask about their goals, map them out, and act accordingly. I imagine you could apply it to a lot of places, to family, to relationships, whatever.

It’s really about getting things out of your head and onto a page so they’re easier to understand.

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