Building a stakeholder network map

Useful for.

Helping a client understand who are the most important or influential people in their network. If they’re not sure who they should be targeting/ have too many target personas, use this to refine their thinking. The objective is to clarify who is most important for us to think about, who influences them (and how), and if there are other processes/ concerns that may be influencing our core users to the extent where our site may be ineffective. Knowing this early means we can mitigate barriers and use opportunities to achieve impact.

How to do it.

Gather around a bit whiteboard/ piece of paper. Start by writing out all your main personas on postits, and creating a kind of network tree to show responsibilities, lines of communication and how certain people influence others. From this discussion you should arrive at 1-3 priority users who hold the most power to change the system.

Then next to that diagram, draw three concentric circles. Your innermost circle is the ‘core user’, the second are ‘influencers’ and the outermost circle is ‘drivers’. Put all the core users in the innermost circle, the people who influence them directly in the 2nd circle, and others with less influence (or who influence the 2nd ring) in the outermost circle. Start drawing lines to connect these people. Then go through again and add other things (organisations, processes, non-human actors) that influence people’s behaviour in this network.

A good example. Forest Watcher or PSA: description of activity and outcome

Time needed. Around 30 minutes