How to Make a Stakeholder Map

Last week, I helped a team create a Stakeholder Map.

I've had this idea in my head for awhile, and have done a few on my own - but this was the first time I had a team create one for a presentation.

We presented it today, and it was really effective. The one above is an example:

• Lines indicate relationships (solid = strong, dotted = weak, none = none).
• Size equals relative size of the client.
• Color equals the client feeling about the product or service (green = good, yellow = medium, red = bad, black = no feeling).

The idea is that you can sell a so-so product to a customer with a great relationship, or a great product through a so-so relationship; but anything red puts you at risk... so you need to fix it.

In our meeting today, an executive said, "Why is the customer disconnected?"
Because, this is an internal product, we replied.
The image stuck in his head, because he later said, "No. Internal = External. We need to start thinking about the customer."

A connection that could have easily been buried in a table or text spoke to him through the picture. And gave us an important insight.

This is, I think, a good idea with a mediocre execution. I give it a 8/10 for utility (it communicated its point very well) and a 3/10 for aesthetics.
I'd love to see someone build a stakeholder map template with a strong design sense.
If you do, please send it to me!

Bad? How about some help?

How can I tell that the economy is getting worse?
Well, occasionally, I listen to KNBR sports radio while I'm commuting.

Remember when MTV first came on and they had no advertising?
They ran all kinds of awesome animation to fill the spots where advertising bucks should have been.
Ahhh... the good old days, when music and cutting edge animation were on MTV.

Anyway, over the past few months, I've noticed a similar trend on KNBR and today it become obvious.
The radio station has been running regular advertisements for advertising on the radio.

Read that again, slowly, I'll wait.......................
The radio station has been running regular advertisements for advertising on the radio.

Yep. Like those big billboards that say, "Advertise On Me!!!"

Today, the radio station ran a car advertisement that highlighted 5 reasons to buy a car.
It ended with "this ad was brought to you by your Northern California Radio Advertising Bureau", or something like that.
It's an interesting concept. I wonder if they approached the car dealers and said, "You've given us so much money over the years that we want to return the favor in these tough times"?
If so, that's kinda cool...

So, what are you doing to help out your best customers? Anything?

Is 10% Good Enough for You? (from Seoul, Korea)

Over the past 6 months, I've been working with the technical support group to improve the quality of customer escalation meetings.

We made an rough estimate of how many escalation meetings have been held in this company in the past 25 years.
50 a day (across all our divisions, a conservative estimate) x 365 days x 25 years = 456,250.

So, half a million escalation conference calls.
And how much training have we done?
0. Nada. Zip. None.
Seriously. No one has been trained on how to conduct or contribute to an escalation meeting.

Now, you may think that it's a pretty easy thing to do.
You'd be wrong.

We identified 31 key attributes to a successful escalation meeting (it's since grown to 37).
We then ran a couple simulations with experienced technical support engineers.
The results?
8-12% of the criteria were met.

So, we're delivering a solution that will include some training, job aids, practice, and real-time coaching.

Lesson - don't assume that any job is 'easy'.
Will all tasks or jobs require training? Probably not.
But almost any task or job could use quantification and a job aid.

Unless 10% compliance is good enough for you, that is...