An influence-impact matrix is a classification of stakeholders on two axes: how much influence someone has on your organization, and how much that same party is affected by what you do. The matrix itself is not new. What is often missing is a consistent way of scoring and a clear owner per relationship. Without those two elements, the matrix becomes a snapshot that is forgotten after a quarter.
Influence and impact are not synonyms. A regulator can have a great deal of influence without being affected by your day-to-day operations. A local community can be strongly affected without having any formal influence. The matrix exists to make that distinction visible, not to create a single ranking of importance.
The question of how you determine influence, and the question of how you determine impact, are two separate issues, each with their own criteria. On how do you score influence you will find what an influence score depends on. On how do you score impact the same is explained for the other axis. Both scores are an estimate made by your own organization, not a measured fact. That is a difference that comes back later.
A score that has been set once will age. Influence shifts when legislation changes, when a stakeholder forms a coalition, or when a project moves to a different phase. Impact shifts when the effect of a decision broadens or just diminishes. A matrix that is not revised is a photograph of a situation that no longer exists.
That problem grows once there is not just one project running but several at the same time. The same stakeholder can have little influence on one project and a great deal on another. How to handle that is described on scoring influence when multiple projects are running and, viewed more broadly, on applying the matrix with multiple ongoing projects. The matrix is then not a single scheme but a collection of schemes existing side by side, with the risk of conflicting scores if no one reviews them together.
A matrix without ownership produces a picture, not behavior. Every cell in the matrix represents relationships with people, and every relationship needs someone responsible for maintaining it. Without that assignment, contact falls back to whoever happens to have time, or to no one at all.
The question of who becomes the owner of a relationship is therefore just as decisive as the score itself. On who becomes the owner of a stakeholder relationship you will find what that assignment depends on: role, history with the stakeholder, and available time all play a part. A matrix that shows scores but no names is incomplete.
Stakeholders with high influence and low impact require a different approach than stakeholders with high influence and high impact. The first group has power without experiencing anything themselves; that relationship calls for an explanation of why you are paying attention to something that does not directly affect them. What that approach involves in concrete terms is described on the approach for high influence and low impact.
The matrix shows how your organization estimates influence and impact. It does not show what a stakeholder thinks about that themselves. That distinction is not trivial: a management team that assesses a party as having little impact may encounter a very different experience once that party speaks up. The matrix is an internal tool for prioritization, not a measurement of external sentiment. What stakeholders think, you only find out once they say so themselves.
This is also why a matrix only becomes meaningful alongside a counter-image: management's own assessment set against what stakeholders actually report back. The difference between those two pictures is where attention needs to go, not the matrix on its own.
A cell in the matrix says something about priority, not about what has been promised. A small commitment that is not kept often costs more trust than a large investment that is never made. That is why a matrix without follow-up on commitments made only does half the job. The other half is a way to track what has been promised and whether it has actually happened.
The Trust Baseline works with this matrix as its starting point: an internal survey alongside an external survey among stakeholders, with the difference between those two pictures as the first outcome, supplemented by a commitment tracker and a fixed signal rhythm. The instrument is still under development. Those who want to use it once it becomes available can sign up for the waiting list.
Maintaining a stakeholder relationship consists of a series of recurring tasks: gathering information, drafting updates, tracking agreements, passing signals on to the right person. So the question of who exactly becomes the owner of a relationship also raises the question of how much of that underlying work can run automatically and how much still requires human judgment. The work scan by FTE TO AI calculates per task what portion of it can be taken over by AI, separate from the question of who is assigned the relationship in the matrix.
Vraag maar. Het interessantste antwoord komt meestal van wie u nog niet heeft gesproken.
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