Stakeholder Map — for facilitators

Samvinas

• Pipe in the list of stakeholders (from a Brainstorm of "who's affected?").
• Set the axis labels to fit your framework.

Paper and pen

You need: a flip chart, a fat marker, sticky notes (one stakeholder each), and a small strip of dot stickers per person.

• Draw a big 2×2: Interest across the bottom, Influence up the side. Write the quadrant names in light pencil if the group knows the framework.
• Write each stakeholder on its own sticky note before any placing starts.
• Place by dots, not by debate: for each stakeholder, everyone puts a dot where they would place it — then stick the note at the centre of gravity.
• The failure mode is anchoring — the first confident placement drags everyone else's. Dots-before-discussion is the cure; scattered dots mark exactly the stakeholders worth arguing about.
• Harvest: photograph the finished map, and list each quadrant's stakeholders with the agreed engagement move next to them.

When & why

Reach for the Stakeholder Map when a plan is taking shape and the group needs to see whose support it depends on — it organises the cast of characters without ranking or cutting anyone.

• Use the quadrants to plan: high influence + high interest → manage closely; high influence + low interest → keep satisfied; and so on.
• Differences in placement often reveal different assumptions about who matters — surface them; the disagreement is the insight.
• Placements go stale — a map made early in a change effort is worth redrawing once the work is underway.
• What usually follows: a Brainstorm of engagement moves for the critical quadrants, then Sign Up to put names against them.