The stakeholder map is finished. Everyone has been placed in a quadrant. The people who will use the system still have not been asked how their day works.
A matrix is a prompt for a conversation, not evidence that the conversation happened.
The short answer: map influence and interest, then add the effect of the change, current concerns and a specific engagement action. People with little formal power may still experience most of the consequences.
Begin with who is affected
Identify decision-makers, delivery teams, operational owners, users, customers, partners and people indirectly affected. Include groups who may struggle to participate through the usual channels.
Do not equate a senior job title with the only relevant influence. A frontline supervisor may determine whether a new process is used, while a supplier may control a critical dependency. Users can reveal a failure that the steering committee never encounters.
The APM stakeholder-engagement guidance provides useful context. This worksheet is a practical planning aid, not an objective ranking of people’s importance.
Use the grid as a starting hypothesis
| Influence and interest | Starting engagement approach | Question to check |
|---|---|---|
| High influence, high interest | Involve in decisions and trade-offs | What decision or evidence do they need? |
| High influence, lower current interest | Keep relevant decisions visible | What could change their involvement? |
| Lower influence, high interest | Provide meaningful participation and feedback | What impact or insight might be missed? |
| Lower influence, lower current interest | Monitor impact and provide accessible updates | Are they genuinely unaffected or simply unheard? |
Treat the positions as revisable. Interest can increase sharply when a change becomes concrete. A quiet stakeholder is not necessarily a supportive stakeholder.
Add impact and concerns
Record what changes for each group: workload, access, responsibilities, authority, service quality or uncertainty. Ask about concerns directly where possible and distinguish observed views from assumptions.
For example, staff may appear resistant to a new workflow because it adds duplicate recording during transition. Describing them as “low support” conceals a solvable process problem.
Keep personal information proportionate and access controlled. The plan should help the team engage responsibly, not become a private catalogue of speculative character judgements.
Turn the map into an action plan
For each priority group, define the purpose of engagement, method, owner, timing and expected feedback. A newsletter is suitable for an update; it is usually insufficient for testing whether a new service excludes a user group.
An illustrative service change might involve observing frontline work, reviewing a prototype with users, holding a decision session with the sponsor and agreeing interface acceptance with a partner. Each activity answers a different question.
For UK–UAE work, plan language, accessibility, timing and cultural context rather than treating one English-language webinar as universal participation. Ask which format will allow the people affected to contribute meaningfully.
Close the feedback loop
Record what was heard, what changed and what could not change, with reasons. Tell participants the outcome. Asking for views repeatedly without showing their effect is a good way to make the next invitation less successful.
Escalate concerns that require a change in scope, policy or funding through the governance framework. The engagement owner should not promise a change beyond their authority simply to keep the meeting pleasant.
Measure whether the activity resolved an uncertainty or improved a decision. Attendance counts can be useful, but they are not the same as understanding or agreement.
Revisit the map at meaningful points
Review before major decisions, pilots, rollout and operational handover. Update it when roles change or new impacts emerge. Keep the plan connected to actual programme work rather than storing it as a completed initiation document.
Stakeholder engagement earns its place when it improves the change. The grid is useful only if it helps you hear something you would otherwise miss and act on it.
Sources and scope
Reviewed 1 November 2026. The examples and worksheets are my suggested working methods, not measured client results or official standards.
