Every engagement starts the same way: with the right questions, asked by the right people.
FIELD GUIDE
Field guide · Stakeholders, power and decision environments
The Influence Map
A stakeholder list tells you who exists. An influence map tells you how a decision can move.
Twenty-five pages on mapping the decision environment before anyone is contacted: authority, process, relationships, constraints and implementation. It replaces the two-axis power–interest grid with six separable layers you can use in part or in full.
Use the Decision Spine alone for a fast diagnostic, or build all six layers for a consequential engagement. The map is refreshed when the environment moves, not filed.
Get the field guideWhat it is — and is not
A practical method
For institutional strategy, strategic communications, public affairs, partnerships, reputation work and complex change.
A living map
Positions, coalitions, incentives and routes of influence change as new information appears. The map is refreshed, not filed.
Not a predictive model
Scores and categories are structured judgment aids. They do not establish causal certainty or guarantee outcomes.
Not a licence to manipulate
Engagement should be truthful, proportionate, privacy-respecting and consistent with legal and ethical obligations.
What is inside
Decision Spine
Start with the choice that matters: outcome, decision, authority, process, veto, implementation.
Actor roles
Eight functional roles, mapped as functions rather than titles.
Influence profile
Six dimensions that teams usually collapse into the single word “power”.
Relationship network
How influence actually travels, including brokerage and absence.
Power
Visible, hidden and invisible power, plus legitimacy and urgency.
Engagement sequence
Engage in the order the decision requires, not contact-everyone.
Evidence discipline
Observed fact separated from inference, with a confidence convention.
Dynamic mapping
Refresh triggers, and tracking movement rather than sentiment.
Templates built to be used in the room
Decision Spine
The decision, the authority, the process, the veto points and implementation.
Actor inventory
Every actor by function, not by title.
Six-dimension influence profile
Scored with the evidence recorded beside each score.
Relationship map evidence
The four properties that make a tie meaningful.
Power + salience review
Visible, hidden and invisible power, with legitimacy and urgency.
Engagement sequence
Who first, who next, and why in that order.
Engagement brief
One actor, one objective, one interaction type.
Map refresh log
What changed, when, and what it changes about the strategy.
The templates are compact by design. Copy them into your own workspace and pre-fill everything that can be known in advance.
What it is built on
The method draws on established stakeholder-analysis, policy-influence, power-analysis and network-analysis traditions. The six-layer structure, the eight functional roles and the six-dimension profile are Artefact91 synthesis: facilitation and judgment aids rather than validated scientific scales, and the guide says so on the page where each one appears.
- Bryson (2004) — stakeholder identification and analysis techniques
- Reed et al. (2009) — a typology of stakeholder analysis methods
- Mitchell, Agle & Wood (1997) — stakeholder salience: power, legitimacy, urgency
- Gaventa (2006) — the Power Cube and power analysis
- Battaglini & Patacchini (2019) — social networks in policy making
- Varone, Ingold & Jourdain (2026) — policy advocacy through social network analysis
- ODI — stakeholder analysis and the Alignment, Interest and Influence Matrix
- UK Government Analysis Function — stakeholder mapping
- World Bank — interest and influence matrices in engagement planning
- World Health Organization (2026) — RCCE stakeholder analysis and community engagement
Influence analysis needs boundaries, and the guide sets them: no fabricated positions, endorsements or coalitions; no unlawful or disproportionate use of personal data; no institutional communications disguised as independent activity. If you want the picture tested against a live decision, the gap check shows where it is thin. Or bring us the situation you are facing.
