explore · Strategy · 30–45 min · 3-20 people · medium energy

Stakeholder Ecosystem Map

Coaching only sticks if the ecosystem around it holds. Map four roles — sponsors who protect time and budget, coaches slightly ahead per team, learners and what they are coached toward, and the support roles (IT, legal, data) who unblock. Then find the missing role that will quietly stall adoption.

When to use Stakeholder Ecosystem Map

Use before standing up a coaching layer, to surface the dependency that will stall it past the first quarter.

What it solves

Capability programmes stall not on skill but on an unnamed missing role — usually the one who unblocks data access.

How to run Stakeholder Ecosystem Map, step by step

  1. Draw four zones: Sponsors, Coaches, Learners, Support roles (5 min).
  2. Populate each with real names, not job titles. A zone with no names is a gap (15 min).
  3. Draw the dependencies between zones. Which arrow does not currently exist? (10 min)
  4. Name the one missing role that will quietly stall adoption past the first quarter. Assign someone to go find them (10 min).

Materials needed

  • Flip chart or shared canvas
  • Sticky notes
  • Marker pens

Facilitator tips

  • Insist on names. 'The IT department' is not a stakeholder; a person in it is.
  • The critical gap is usually a support role, not a sponsor. Sponsors are visible; unblockers are not.
  • If nobody in the room can name the sponsor, that is the finding.

Common pitfalls

  • The map becomes an org chart. It is a map of who does what for this programme, not who reports to whom.
  • Groups list stakeholders and stop, skipping the dependency arrows where the real insight lives.

What it produces

A four-quadrant ecosystem map with the critical gap or dependency named explicitly.

Origin

Marco van Hout · Demadera — AI Capability Playbook (VERIFY, letter I). Extends classic stakeholder mapping with a coaching lens. — source

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