Stakeholder Mapping for Strategy Work: Who Can Move, and How

Four boxes on a whiteboard

Picture the kickoff for a strategy decision. Someone draws a two-by-two on the whiteboard. “Customers” goes top right. “Staff” goes bottom right. “Regulators” lands top left. The room nods, someone photographs the board, and the map is never opened again.

That picture has company. Fran Ackermann, Colin Eden and Peter McKiernan sat in on five senior executive teams in healthcare as they began developing strategy, and coded more than 500 of the issue statements those executives made ². Two-thirds of the statements mentioned an actor who could respond to the strategy. Yet in 35% of the mentions, the stakeholder was described at such a high level of aggregation that it would be hard to find an effective way to manage them ². And the executives treated half of the stakeholders they named as passive recipients who would do what they were told ².

A stakeholder map shows everyone who can affect a strategy decision, placed by how much power they have over the outcome and how much they care about it, with a stance (for, against, undecided) and a planned move for each. On strategy work it answers four questions: who to interview, who must shape the options, who must not be surprised, and who could sink implementation.

Here is the argument of this page. A stakeholder map is a plan for moving people before the decision is made. Drawn as a snapshot of who sits where today, it is stale within a week, because the strategy itself changes who cares and who can act.

The quadrant is where someone starts, not where they have to stay.

The power-interest grid, and where it came from

The power-interest grid is usually credited to A. L. Mendelow, often with the date 1991. The paper we could trace is Mendelow’s “Environmental Scanning: The Impact of the Stakeholder Concept,” in the proceedings of the 1981 International Conference on Information Systems ¹. Its abstract pairs stakeholder power with how dynamic the environment is; it does not mention interest ¹. Ackermann, Eden and McKiernan credit Mendelow with introducing the grid in 1981 and note that it has been extended since ².

The version worth using is the one Ackermann and Eden published in Long Range Planning in 2011 ³, reproduced in the 2024 paper ². It names the four quadrants, and its advice for each is about changing a stakeholder’s position, not just rationing attention.

Compare that with the shorthand in many guides: manage closely, keep satisfied, keep informed, monitor. The shorthand tells you how much attention to pay. Ackermann and Eden tell you which way to push. A context setter is someone to convert. A supportive subject is someone to help organize. That shift, from attention to movement, is the whole difference between a map that sits in a deck and one that runs a decision.

For engagement methods in general, the stakeholder engagement framework covers the broader toolkit. This page stays with one strategy decision.

Build the map in seven steps

1. Name the decisionWrite the specific choice, not the topic. “Close the Dayton plant by Q3” has stakeholders. “Manufacturing footprint” does not. Power and interest only exist relative to a choice.
2. List actors, then stakeholdersList everyone who could act in response. Stakeholders are the subset with an interest in the outcome; keep the rest on the list to monitor.
3. Split broad groupsReplace “customers,” “staff” or “regulators” with the specific groups that would react differently.
4. Score power by what they can doFor each name, write the actions available to them to support or block the strategy. That list is their power base. Score high or low.
5. Score interest and stanceJudge how much the outcome matters to them and whether they lean for or against, using what they have said or done, not what you hope.
6. Place and choose a movePut each name on the grid and write one verb next to it: involve, brief, convert, help organize, neutralize or monitor.
7. Redraw at each milestoneRevisit the map when the options narrow and again before announcement. Positions move as the strategy takes shape.

Steps two to four follow Ackermann, Eden and McKiernan, who separate stakeholders from the wider set of actors, define power by the actions available to support or block a strategy, and stress that a stakeholder’s attributes change over time ². A blank stakeholder and power map is a convenient place to keep the result.

Volume is not power

The most common scoring error is easy to see once named. The loudest group in early meetings is often a subject: high interest, little power. Meanwhile the context setter who controls a permit, a budget line or a key account says nothing, because it has not yet noticed the decision affects it.

Volume is not power. Score people by what they can do, not by how often they speak.

The research explains why the error persists. Among the actors the executives described as having power, one-third had power that was implied rather than stated ². The executives sensed it but never wrote it down, so nobody planned for it. Writing out each stakeholder’s available actions forces the implied power onto the page: “can delay the permit,” “can move 40% of volume to a competitor,” “can file a grievance under the contract.”

The second error is aggregation. “Staff” in a hospital hides the different power of surgeons and nurses ². “Customers” at a manufacturer hides the two national accounts that could switch suppliers in a quarter and the hundred small ones that cannot. The test for splitting a group is simple: would the parts respond differently, and would you treat them differently? If yes, split. If no, you are adding names without adding moves, and Ackermann and colleagues warn against that too ².

The third is looking only outward. In the five teams studied, stakeholders split evenly between internal and external ². The business unit that loses budget, the function that inherits the work and the team whose bonus depends on the old way are all stakeholders, and internal ones can stall implementation more quietly than any regulator.

The interviews the map tells you to hold

The map sets the interview order: players first, then the context setters you want to convert, then a sample of subjects. The crowd stays with existing channels. Each group gets different questions, because you want something different from each.

Keep interviews to 30 to 45 minutes, write notes in the stakeholder’s own words, and update the map after each one. A stance you inferred becomes a stance you heard. When the time comes to sell the result upward, the same map tells you whose objections to fold in first; managing up picks up from there.

A worked example

Where the map breaks

It assumes people sit still. The executives in the study expected most stakeholders to receive the strategy passively; half were treated that way, and the rest were split between stakeholders seen as possibly responding and those seen as inconsistently passive or active, depending on the strategy ². But stakeholders react to the strategy and to each other’s reactions. A low-power subject can gain power by forming a coalition, and an actor with no stake today can become a stakeholder tomorrow ². The grid has no arrows. Draw them yourself: for each name, write where they would move if the decision went ahead, and who might pull them there.

It can be used to reduce interest as well as raise it. Ackermann and colleagues note that managing stakeholders can include deliberately lowering an actor’s interest so it is no longer a stakeholder, or persuading others to become stakeholders ². In practice that might mean designing an option that leaves a powerful unit’s budget untouched, so it never needs to engage. That is legitimate design, and it is also a choice to make in the open.

The map itself is political. A document that labels the COO “opposed, high power, neutralize” cannot be emailed around. In our experience the working version lives with two or three people, and the shared version shows groups and moves without verdicts on named executives. Decide which version you are drawing before you draw it.

The honest objection is that the grid is crude. Two axes, four boxes, high or low: real power is situational and interest shifts by the week. Fair. The answer is that the grid’s value was never precision. It forces three things a team rarely does unprompted: naming specific groups, writing down what each can actually do, and committing to a move for each. A finer tool that nobody keeps up to date does less. When the stakes justify it, Ackermann and Eden extend the grid into network and dynamics analysis ²; for most strategy decisions, a redrawn grid at each milestone is enough.

Who decides, as distinct from who matters, is a separate question. A map tells you whose support you need; a decision-rights model such as RACI, RAPID or DACI tells you who signs. RACI vs. RAPID vs. DACI covers the choice between them.

Plan the movement

Before the next decision meeting, take your map and add one column: where each player and context setter needs to be by the day of the decision. Then compare it with where they are now. Every gap is a conversation you have not had yet.

A good map ends up wrong, because the moves worked. The union went from opposed to conditional. The development office went from unaware to supportive. If your map looks the same at the decision as it did at kickoff, the boxes were never the problem. Nobody moved anyone.

Questions

What is a stakeholder map?

A stakeholder map shows everyone who can affect or be affected by a decision, placed by how much power they have over the outcome and how much they care about it, with a stance and a planned move for each. In strategy work it decides who to interview, who to involve in shaping options, who to brief, and whose opposition could block implementation.

Who created the power-interest grid?

It is usually credited to A. L. Mendelow, often with the date 1991, but the paper we could trace appeared in the 1981 International Conference on Information Systems proceedings and paired power with environmental dynamism. Fran Ackermann and Colin Eden, who credit Mendelow, published the widely used version with four named quadrants in Long Range Planning in 2011.

What are the four quadrants of the power-interest grid?

In Ackermann and Eden’s version, players have high power and high interest; subjects have high interest but low power; context setters have high power but low interest; and the crowd is low on both. Players and subjects can be for or against the strategy, so mark each stakeholder’s stance as well as the quadrant.

How do you measure a stakeholder's power?

List the concrete actions available to them to support or block the strategy: approving a budget, withholding a permit, moving volume to a competitor, filing a grievance. That list is their power base. Do not score by how vocal someone is in meetings; quiet stakeholders with a veto are the ones teams most often miss.

When should you map stakeholders in a strategy process?

As soon as the decision is named, before options harden, so interviews with players and context setters can shape the options. Then redraw the map when the options narrow and again before the announcement, because power, interest and stance change as the strategy takes shape and as stakeholders react to one another.

Where to go next

• Managing Up: Selling a Recommendation to a Skeptical Executive
• RACI vs. RAPID vs. DACI: Which Decision Model, When
• Stakeholder Engagement Framework: How to Use It
• Stakeholder & Power Map (free mapping sheet)
• Assumption Mapping