Stakeholder Map Template For HR Decisions

The Four Positions

Every person near a decision holds one of four positions.

• Decision holder. The person who signs it off

• Consent holder. Someone who can veto or delay it, often through a budget or a process they control

• Influencer. Someone whose view the decision holder and consent holders trust

• Affected. People who will implement the decision or absorb its cost

Most advisers spend their effort on the decision holder and are defeated by a consent holder.

A finance director can ask for a fuller cost model two weeks before the budget closes, and the proposal misses the cycle.

What Each Person Stands To Lose

People near a decision are usually protecting something specific, and they rarely say what it is.

The template offers five options in a dropdown.

• Budget, or the headcount attached to it

• Control over how their own area runs

• A position they took in public earlier

• A person they have backed or promoted

• Management time, and the cost of another change

The third is the most common and the least discussed.

A director who argued for the current arrangement two years ago will resist a proposal that implies the argument was wrong.

The Column That Sets The Order

The column for who each person listens to matters most.

Most positions form before the meeting, in a conversation with someone the person trusts.

To find informal influence, look at who the decision holder copies into emails, who presents at their team meetings, and whose numbers they quote.

A map with that column complete shows whom to talk to first, and it is rarely the decision holder.

Recording Stance From Evidence

The stance column runs from opposed to advocating, with unknown as its own value.

Each stance needs an entry in the evidence column, such as something the person said, wrote or did.

A stance guessed from job title or past behaviour on a different subject is recorded as unknown.

Unknown is the most useful value on the map, because every unknown row is a conversation still to book.

Update the stance after each conversation, with the date, so the map shows movement before the decision meeting.

Common Mistakes

• Mapping the organisation chart and calling it politics

• One map for a whole programme instead of one per decision

• Stances recorded without evidence

• An empty column for who each person listens to

• Conversations planned with the decision holder first

Each of these leaves the adviser surprised in the meeting, which is the outcome the map exists to prevent.

The Map In Six Steps

1. Name one decision, who signs it off and the date

2. List everyone who can sign, stop, shape or absorb it, and give each a position

3. Record what each person stands to lose, and their stance from what they have said or done

4. Fill in who each person listens to on this subject

5. Score power and interest from 1 to 5 to see the grid view

6. Book a dated conversation for every unknown, doubtful and opposed row, starting with influencers and consent holders

A Worked Example

An HR director wants to merge three regional sales academies into one national programme, decided by the executive committee on 14 March.

The chief commercial officer signs the decision, and listens to the head of sales operations on anything involving cost.

The head of sales operations has no recorded stance, so that is the first conversation, a month before the committee.

The north regional director set up the northern academy four years ago and is opposed.

The second conversation offers a design that keeps the northern academy name and its lead trainer.

Related Articles

The full method behind the map is set out in power mapping at work.

How to work the conversations it produces is covered in influencing without authority.

Where The Tools Sit

Trusted Talent Advisor covers this work in its component on stakeholder conversations, including the order of conversations and the close.

All five free templates are listed together in free talent management templates.