Influence Mapping as a Project Management Tool
Strategy+Business.com dealt with who to include on projects in “The Community Network Solution“. The premise of the article is that choice of participants on a project is crucial. Typically power players are chosen based on rank but they suggest that highly networked people, who are much harder to identify, will result in better projects:
Identifying such people is a challenge because they fly below the public radar. Finding them requires not compiling a list but devising a new approach — making a map. This kind of map is a diagram of the informal communications links among people; it reveals the topography of the cultural territory by tracing the webs of relationships through which information is dispersed and resources flow. Because the map shows networks rather than hierarchical standing, it is innately more community-enabling than a list, which automatically orders people into rankings or disconnected categories. The map shows both points of leverage (people who can be tapped for their interest and influence) and points of constraint (people who might have reason to shut down or limit an initiative). It identifies the personal connections that can be harnessed in the service of large-scale change.
This sounds a lot like a large project sales techique called influence mapping. The idea is to identify all the people in a company that have some influence on the deal and figure out how they relate to one another as the sales process unfolds.
When you select project participants, do you pay attention to how well they are networked in the organization? Share a story or two about how a well networked individual can get things done.
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