Stakeholder Mapping
This activity helps you identify organizational stakeholders, their expectations, and the relationships between them. It’s useful when facing a new challenge, introducing new team members, exploring new markets, or evaluating an offering. Stakeholder Mapping is especially important when your landscape of partners and needs may be rapidly shifting.
Example Scenario: Consider how the needs of volunteers or donors may have changed in the current environment.
Instructions:
Identify stakeholders:
Brainstorm and list all stakeholders related to your unique situation on sticky notes, one stakeholder per note. Include teams, roles, project leads, executives, partners, and end-users.
Capture stakeholder perspectives:
For each stakeholder, write down their thoughts, opinions, or expectations on a separate sticky note.
Cluster stakeholders:
Group similar stakeholders together and label each group.
Map relationships:
Draw lines between the groups to represent relationships such as influence, process, or dependencies. Label each line to describe the relationship.
Notes:
Encourage the use of visuals like icons or different shapes to represent different types of stakeholders.
Stakeholder maps can be used to identify and address power imbalances, tailor communication strategies, anticipate and mitigate conflicts, and foster collaboration throughout a project’s lifecycle.