HBR Stakeholder Analysis
Stakeholder analysis maps who has power over your decision against who actually cares about it, so you know who to manage closely, who to keep satisfied, and who you can safely leave alone.
Dots scatter across a grid of power and interest, clustering into four zones that call for different handling.
Reach for this when…
- A project stalls because someone with real power was never consulted.
- You're spending equal energy on everyone involved when their stakes are wildly unequal.
- A change initiative needs buy-in and you don't know whose buy-in matters most.
How to run it
- List everyone affected by or able to affect the decision, inside and outside the organisation.
- Rate each on power to influence the outcome and interest in it.
- Plot them: manage closely, keep satisfied, keep informed, or monitor.
- Build a specific engagement plan for each quadrant, not one message for everyone.
- Revisit the map as the project moves - power and interest both shift.
A worked example
Situation. Andrés Gómez runs an urban renewal NGO in Medellín, Colombia, and had strong support from residents but had barely briefed the city planning office, which held the actual permit power.
Applied. He mapped stakeholders on power and interest and saw the planning office sat in Keep Satisfied, needing regular updates despite low day-to-day interest, while residents sat in Keep Informed.
Result. A short monthly briefing to the planning office prevented the kind of permit delay that had stalled the previous phase of the project.
The catch
Power and interest both change over a project's life, so a map done once at the start goes stale - a group in Keep Informed can gain power fast if it organises. It also assumes you can honestly rate power, which is uncomfortable when the honest answer is 'more than mine.' A good map still requires the harder work of actually building the relationship, not just plotting the dot.
If your only stakeholder with real power sits in 'Keep Informed', you've drawn the map to avoid an uncomfortable conversation.
Origin: Developed from Aubrey Mendelow's power-interest matrix (1981); popularised in the power/interest form used here by Gerry Johnson and Kevan Scholes in Exploring Corporate Strategy.