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The power and interest map

What it is

A power and interest map places each stakeholder on two axes: how much they can affect the outcome, and how much they care. The grid that results — high power and high interest, high power and low interest, and so on — says what to do with each person. The artefact is a one-page grid with names on it and a note of each person’s actual concern.

Why it matters

Without the map, attention goes to whoever is loudest, which is not the same as whoever matters. The quiet person with budget authority who has not been consulted is the classic project risk, and so is the enthusiastic ally with no power whose requests consume the team’s time. The map costs an hour and it converts a vague worry about “stakeholders” into a list of named people with a stated interest.

Core ideas

Fill the grid with names, not roles

“Finance” is not a stakeholder; a named person with a specific concern is. Roles change and people do not.

High power / high interest   Maya, finance lead — must sign off on refunds
High power / low interest    Tom, CTO — cares only that it does not add a system
Low power / high interest    Priya, support — will absorb the calls; wants it
Low power / low interest     marketing — no action

The classic error is treating the bottom-right as unimportant; they are frequently the people whose daily work the change alters.

Write the concern, not the job title

What each person actually cares about decides how the work is presented to them. Tom’s concern is architecture sprawl; Maya’s is auditability; Priya’s is call volume.

Move people deliberately between quadrants

A high-power, low-interest stakeholder becomes high-interest the moment they understand the risk to their own goal. That is the point of communicating early, not simply being polite.

Revisit the map when the scope changes

New scope brings new people. A compliance angle added in month two brings a stakeholder who should have been consulted in month one.

The map is not the communication

It is the input to a plan: what each person is told, in what form, how often, and by whom. Without the plan the map is an analysis artefact.

Practice

Draw the map for one piece of work

List every person who can fund it, block it, or be materially affected by it, and place each on the grid with their concern written beside their name.

Done when: at least one person you had not previously communicated with is on the grid, and every high-power row has a named person.

Test one quadrant assumption

Pick the high-power, low-interest person and find out what would make them interested.

Done when: you can state their concern in their words, and say what they would need to see to support the work.

Common mistakes

  • Mapping roles instead of people — “operations” cannot be consulted; fix: name individuals with their specific concern.
  • Attention following volume — the loudest voice sets the agenda; fix: allocate communication by power and interest, not by volume.
  • Ignoring low-power, high-interest people — the people whose work changes are surprised; fix: include them and plan how the change reaches them.
  • A static map — new scope brings new stakeholders who were missed; fix: revisit when the scope changes.
  • A map with no communication plan — the analysis changes nothing; fix: attach what, when and by whom for each quadrant.

Go deeper

Worked examples

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