Explorers' Gym: Blunt Stakeholder Mapping

In organizational settings, whenever you think of convening a wider group of perspectives to talk about a topic, "stakeholders" come to mind. For a typical corporation, stakeholders might include shareholders (of course), union and employee representatives, local government, environmental groups… 

All good. This makes sense. Who all is being affected by this situation I'm in? Who else has a stake in this topic? Let's talk with them.

Stakeholder conversations are already happening. Maybe even routine. But strangely (or perhaps not), those conversations have left many topics unaddressed and many problems unresolved. Including perhaps yours.

Blunt stakeholder mapping is a chance to change that. Look at your stakeholders on your topic and ask yourself two simple questions: Who tends to show up? And who tends not to? If it helps, group your stakeholders into these four boxes:

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You might consider the righthand boxes to be "the usual suspects." You know they’ll show up. So work harder to include people from the lefthand boxes on your Invite list. If you can get them to show up, that would already make for a different conversation...