How to Run a Stakeholder Analysis Session on a Whiteboard
Launching a product or entering a new market means navigating a network of people with different levels of investment in the outcome. Some have significant organizational power but limited interest in what you're doing. Others are deeply interested but have little influence over the decision. A few sit at the intersection of both. Those are the relationships that determine whether a project succeeds. Stakeholder analysis makes that network visible by plotting each person on two dimensions simultaneously, so engagement strategy follows directly from position rather than from guesswork.
Watch stakeholders ranked first by interest, then repositioned by power. Watch the four engagement strategies emerge from where each block lands.
Switch-Its makes every placement a conversation
With Switch-Its magnetic dry-erase blocks, each stakeholder is a named block that gets placed on the grid by the team together. Positioning is a shared decision, not a solo judgment, and disagreements surface before they become blind spots.
Rank by interest before adding power
All eight stakeholders wait above the empty grid. The first pass ranks them by interest in the product, from IT Support at the low end to CEO at the high end. Getting one dimension right before adding the second keeps the session from becoming a free-for-all.
Add power to find the quadrants
Each block repositions as power is layered in. CEO, Investors, and Owner land in the high-power high-interest zone. CFO and Legal sit high in power but lower in interest. Marketing and Beta Users show strong interest but limited organizational influence. IT Support lands in the monitor zone.
Four quadrants, four engagement strategies
The strategy labels go on last: Manage Closely for high power and high interest, Keep Satisfied for high power and low interest, Keep Informed for low power and high interest, Monitor for low power and low interest. Every stakeholder now has a named engagement approach, and the whole map is visible to the team at once.
Stakeholder analysis is most valuable when it's done collaboratively. The disagreements about where a particular person belongs on the grid are often more informative than the final placement. Making it physical means those disagreements happen out loud, in front of a shared map, where they can actually be resolved. The same logic applies to risk prioritization and other placement-based frameworks in the broader prioritization activity collection.