| Category | Client Onboarding |
|---|---|
| Time to Run | 15 min |
| Difficulty | Deep Work |
| Output | Analysis |
| Client-Facing | No — internal use |
You just signed a new engagement and had your first real conversation with the client. Names are flying around — the CFO who controls budget, the ops director who will actually implement, the founder’s longtime advisor who quietly vetoes anything they don’t like. You’re scribbling names on a notepad and hoping you remember who matters when the real decisions start.
This is the moment most consultants lose weeks. They treat the org chart as flat, talk only to their primary contact, and get blindsided when someone they never met kills a recommendation. Run this skill early in any engagement when you need to understand who matters in the client organization — before your first deliverable, not after your first surprise.
Copy the .md content below into a file and use it as a Claude skill.
---
name: stakeholder-map-builder
description: Maps the decision-makers, influencers, blockers, and champions in a client organization during onboarding. Run early in any engagement when names start surfacing and you need to know who actually matters.
metadata:
author: "Kathryn Brown, Practice Builders"
version: "1.0.0"
date: "2026-04-25"
---
# Stakeholder Map Builder
Turns scattered names and org context into a structured power map so you know who to align, who to watch, and who to avoid surprising.
**Core Principle: Map influence before you map process.** The org chart tells you reporting lines. This skill tells you who actually decides, who quietly blocks, and who will champion your work behind closed doors. Build the influence map first — every recommendation you make will land differently depending on which stakeholder receives it.
## What This Skill Does
**Job 1: Extract and categorize every stakeholder.** Takes the raw list of names, roles, and contextual clues from your early conversations and sorts them into four categories: Decision Makers (they sign off), Influencers (they shape opinions), Blockers (they can stall or kill), and Champions (they actively support your work).
**Job 2: Map relationships and power dynamics.** Identifies who reports to whom, who has informal authority, who has history with outside consultants, and where alliances or tensions exist. This isn’t the org chart — it’s the political reality underneath it.
**Job 3: Generate a stakeholder engagement plan.** For each person on the map, recommends a specific engagement approach — how often to involve them, what kind of communication they need, and what risks emerge if you skip them.
### Section 1: Stakeholder Identification
Review all names mentioned in client conversations, emails, and engagement documents. For each person, capture: name, role/title, how they were mentioned (introduced formally vs. came up in passing), and their apparent relationship to the engagement scope. Don’t filter yet — anyone mentioned is potentially relevant. A name dropped casually (“oh, you should probably meet Sarah at some point”) often signals more influence than a formal introduction.
Format: Table with columns for Name, Title, How Mentioned, and Connection to Scope.
### Section 2: Stakeholder Classification
Place each stakeholder into one of four categories based on the evidence:
- **Decision Maker** — Has formal authority to approve, fund, or kill your engagement or its outputs. Look for: budget control, signing authority, the person your contact says “needs to be on board.”
- **Influencer** — Shapes decisions without formal authority. Look for: tenure, trusted advisor status, domain expertise the Decision Maker lacks.
- **Blocker** — Can stall or derail through action or inaction. Look for: someone who controls a resource you need, has been burned by consultants before, or was not consulted about hiring you.
- **Champion** — Actively wants your engagement to succeed. Look for: the person who brought you in, someone whose pain you’re solving directly.
One person can occupy multiple categories. Flag these explicitly — a Decision Maker who is also a Blocker is your highest-priority stakeholder.
### Section 3: Influence and Relationship Mapping
For each stakeholder, document:
- Who they report to (formal) and who they listen to (informal)
- Their likely stance on your engagement (supportive, neutral, skeptical, opposed)
- Evidence for that stance (what they said, how they were introduced, body language cues from your contact)
- Any known history with outside consultants or change initiatives
Flag relationships between stakeholders: alliances (“they always align”), tensions (“they don’t see eye to eye”), and dependencies (“nothing moves without their sign-off”).
Format: Prose with bold stakeholder names. Not a table — relationships are narrative.
### Section 4: Risk Assessment
Identify the top 3 stakeholder-related risks to the engagement. Each risk needs:
- The stakeholder(s) involved
- The specific scenario (what goes wrong)
- The signal you’d see before it happens
- The mitigation (what you do now to reduce the risk)
Common patterns to watch for: a Decision Maker who wasn’t part of hiring you, a Blocker who controls data or access you need, a Champion who lacks organizational authority, an Influencer whose goals conflict with the engagement scope.
### Section 5: Engagement Strategy
For each stakeholder, define:
- **Communication cadence** — How often and through what channel (direct meeting, CC on emails, formal updates, informal check-ins)
- **Key message** — The one thing this person needs to hear from you to stay aligned
- **Engagement timing** — When in the engagement to involve them (now, before first deliverable, only at milestones)
- **Risk if skipped** — What happens if you don’t engage this person proactively
Format: One paragraph per stakeholder. Bold the name at the start.
### Section 6: What to Skip / What to Watch For
**Leave alone:** Stakeholders who are neutral and have no direct connection to your scope. Don’t manufacture relationships with every person in the org — over-engaging dilutes your credibility. If someone is genuinely peripheral, note them and move on.
**Watch for:** Shifts in who your primary contact mentions. If a new name starts appearing frequently, that person’s influence is rising. If a name disappears from conversation, they may have been sidelined or may have disengaged from your work. Update this map at 30 days.
## Quality Check (Internal — never shown to the user)
| Check | Question |
|-------|----------|
| Completeness | Does the map include every name mentioned in the inputs, with no one dropped? |
| Evidence-based | Is every classification supported by specific evidence from the inputs, not assumptions? |
| Actionable | Does every stakeholder have a concrete engagement recommendation? |
| Risk-aware | Are the top 3 risks specific (named people, named scenarios), not generic? |
| Honest gaps | Are information gaps flagged explicitly rather than filled with guesses? |
Enforcement: Run all checks. Identify the weakest section. Rewrite it. Verify the rewrite is present and improved before presenting the output. The user sees only the finished map.
## Rules
- Never guess at someone’s influence level. If the inputs don’t give enough information, classify as “Unknown — needs discovery” and recommend a specific action to find out.
- Always flag when the map is based on limited information. State how many conversations the map draws from.
- Do not invent stakeholders. Only map people explicitly mentioned in the inputs.
- Include a “Gaps” section listing what you don’t know and what conversations would fill those gaps.
- Never present the map as final. Label it with the date and note it should be updated after every significant client interaction.
- Format the output for quick scanning. A consultant should be able to glance at this before a meeting and know who’s in the room and what they care about.
## Output Format
```markdown
# Stakeholder Map: [Client Name]
**Date:** [Date] | **Based on:** [Number] conversations/inputs | **Engagement:** [Scope summary]
## Stakeholder Overview
| Name | Title | Category | Stance | Priority |
|------|-------|----------|--------|----------|
| [Name] | [Title] | Decision Maker | Supportive | High |
| [Name] | [Title] | Blocker | Skeptical | High |
| [Name] | [Title] | Influencer | Neutral | Medium |
| [Name] | [Title] | Champion | Supportive | Medium |
## Influence Map
**[Name]** reports to [Name] and is closely aligned with [Name]. Evidence suggests [stance] based on [specific evidence]. Key dynamic: [relationship note].
[Repeat for each significant relationship]
## Top Risks
1. **[Risk name]:** [Stakeholder] could [specific scenario]. Signal: [what you’d see]. Mitigation: [specific action].
2. **[Risk name]:** [Stakeholder] could [specific scenario]. Signal: [what you’d see]. Mitigation: [specific action].
3. **[Risk name]:** [Stakeholder] could [specific scenario]. Signal: [what you’d see]. Mitigation: [specific action].
## Engagement Plan
**[Name]** — [Communication cadence]. Key message: [one sentence]. Engage [timing]. Risk if skipped: [consequence].
[Repeat for each stakeholder]
## Gaps
- [What you don’t know] → [Conversation or action to fill it]
## Watch List
- **Leave alone:** [Peripheral stakeholders and why]
- **Monitor:** [Signals to watch at 30-day review]
Most consultants track stakeholders in their head or jot names in a notebook. That works until the engagement gets complex enough that someone you forgot about shows up at a review meeting and asks why they weren’t consulted. This skill forces the classification early — before you’ve committed to a communication pattern — so you’re engaging based on influence and risk, not just who replies to your emails fastest.
Copyright (c) 2026 Kathryn Brown, Practice Builders This skill is licensed for your personal and business use. You may run this skill inside your own practice and share the outputs it produces with your team and clients. "Your practice" includes employees and contractors engaged to perform work for your business under your direction — virtual assistants, operations support, bookkeepers, and similar team members. You may not share, distribute, resell, or repackage the skill file itself — including this SKILL.md document, its prompts, frameworks, and structure — with anyone outside your practice. This includes peer practitioners, other consultants who would use it in their own client work, and anyone outside your operating team. Written permission from Kathryn Brown ([email protected]) is required for any redistribution. This skill is provided "as is" without warranty of any kind, express or implied.
---
## Expected Output
What comes out: a structured stakeholder analysis document — a one-page map with a summary table, influence narratives, three prioritized risks with mitigations, and a per-stakeholder engagement plan. It’s designed for quick reference before any client meeting or internal planning session.