🚩 Tactical Memo 007: Identifying the 5% of Stakeholders That Carry 95% of the Influence

Read time: 5 minutes

Welcome to Tactical Memo, my weekly newsletter where I share frameworks, strategies, and hard-earned lessons for leaders navigating complex environments.

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The Briefing: Today’s Focus

• Why Most Stakeholder Maps Are Useless

• The 95/5 Rule: Identifying the Power Players

• A Tactical Playbook: How to Map the 5%

• What’s Happening: General Updates

• A Reader’s Question on Managing Up

Why Most Stakeholder Maps Are Useless

If you’ve ever been through a corporate strategy exercise or a government project review, you’ve probably seen the same thing: a giant stakeholder map with dozens of names, logos, and arrows pointing in every direction.

It looks impressive. It feels thorough. But here’s the truth: most of that map does not matter.

Not everyone has the same weight in decision-making. Some people are noise. A few are bottlenecks. And a very small number quietly shape the entire outcome.

The problem is that most teams spread their time and energy across the entire list instead of asking the real question: Who actually decides, who influences them, and who can I safely deprioritise?

The 95/5 Rule: Focus on the Power Players

Across every major project I have worked on, I keep seeing the same pattern emerge. A tiny minority hold nearly all the leverage. About 5 percent of stakeholders carry 95 percent of the influence.

Everyone else is either symbolic, procedural, or reactive. They may need to be kept informed, but they are not going to shape the outcome.

This does not mean you can ignore them entirely. But it does mean your limited time and political capital are better spent building deep alignment with the critical few rather than shallow relationships with the many.

Think of it like chess. You do not try to protect every pawn equally. You identify the pieces that control the board.

What’s Going On - General Updates

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A Tactical Playbook: How to Map the 5%

Here is the step-by-step process I use to cut through the noise and identify the true power players.

Step 1. List Everyone Who Thinks They Are a Stakeholder
Do not filter yet. Capture the full cast: executives, advisors, regulators, influencers, sponsors.

Step 2. Run the “5 Filters” Test
For each name, ask:

• Decision Authority → Can they say yes or no

• Informal Influence → Do others listen when it matters

• Resource Control → Do they hold budgets, people, or key data

• Network Centrality → Do they connect groups that otherwise would not align

• Skin in the Game → Do they personally win or lose from the outcome

Step 3. Score and Sort
Give each stakeholder a score from one to five for each filter. Add them up.

• 20–25 = Critical 5 percent

• 10–19 = Supportive but secondary

• 0–9 = Low impact (do not over-invest)

Step 4. Build Your “Critical Few” Strategy
Prioritize those at the top. Establish consistent touchpoints. Meet or message them frequently. Anticipate their objections before they raise them. Frame wins in their language so it is easy for them to back you publicly. Protect their reputation and help them look good. Loyalty is earned when you make influential stakeholders feel secure and credible.

Step 5. Cut the Noise
Politely limit time spent on everyone else. Send digestible updates rather than involving them in every conversation. Route communications through your critical few. Decline low-value meetings that only drain time and attention.

If you do this right, you will spend the majority of your stakeholder energy on the 5 percent who truly control the board. That focus is what drives momentum and avoids the paralysis that comes from trying to keep everyone happy.

The Briefing: Reader’s Question

Q: “I keep getting pulled into endless alignment meetings with middle managers. None of them can actually decide, but they insist on being in the loop. How do I manage this without burning political capital?”

A: This is one of the most common traps in any large organization. Middle managers want to be included because inclusion feels like influence. But what you are experiencing is not alignment. It is diffusion. The more people you try to bring into the decision-making process, the more diluted the actual decisions become.

Here is how I would approach it.

First, map upward. Ask yourself: who do these managers ultimately report to, and who do they defer to when it really matters? That is your true point of leverage. If you can secure alignment at that higher level, the middle layers will usually fall into line. It is not about excluding them, it is about re-anchoring communication at the right altitude.

Second, reframe the conversation. Instead of attending every meeting, offer to provide consolidated updates through the senior decision-maker. Phrase it as a way to save time for the group and to keep information clear. People respect efficiency when it is positioned as protecting their own calendar, not just yours.

Third, give middle managers a role that is meaningful but bounded. They are often close to the operational detail, which means they can be useful as sources of intelligence. Position them as advisors whose input you value, but make clear that final decisions sit higher up. This gives them recognition without handing them veto power.

Finally, learn to say no without friction. Decline meetings by offering alternatives: a written summary, a monthly touchpoint, or a single group update. You are not shutting them out. You are protecting the process. Over time, people adjust to the rhythm you set, especially when they see it produces faster progress and better outcomes.

The key is to manage perception. If you look like you are avoiding people, you lose political ground. If you look like you are streamlining the process for everyone’s benefit, you gain it.

Cheat Sheet Vault

p.s… As promised, click below for my frameworks on:

• Stakeholder Influence Mapping

• High-Leverage Briefings

• The 3-Layer Message Model

👉 Access the Vault Here

Until next time,
Justin

✍️ From the Desk of Justin Bateh, PhD
Real-world tactics. No fluff. Just what works.