Stakeholder Landscape Mapper

Group assessments

Senior Leadership Team, 12 people

Your most urgent problem. Two sponsors performing alignment in meetings while actively undermining the program outside them is a governance failure. The rest of the SLT is watching what happens to them. Name the behavior directly in private conversation, offer a genuine off-ramp, and give it two weeks. If nothing changes, escalate formally; their continued dual role is a program-level risk.

Middle Managers, 45 people.

The most underestimated group. They translate every executive message into what 700+ people actually believe. Many survived the last redundancy round and are now pattern-matching for who's next. Flight risk is real and silent. Brief this group before all-staff, with more candor. Identify 5-7 informal leaders within the cohort and engage them separately.

Operations Staff, 400 people.

Hardest hit by the prior round, longest institutional memory. Expect deep distrust of formal channels and heavy reliance on informal networks. Don't let all-staff communications be their primary channel; they'll discount it. Design listening sessions, not briefings. Acknowledge the prior redundancy handling explicitly before they raise it.

Corporate Functions, 80 people.

Watchful rather than resistant. The risk is passive blockage, slow sign-offs and quiet non-participation framed as capacity constraints. HR is under particular pressure, acting simultaneously as change agents, process owners, and personally affected employees.

Customer-Facing Teams, 300 people.

Internal uncertainty travels directly into customer interactions. If this group disengages, service quality degrades visibly and measurably. Treat silence as withdrawal, not acceptance. Monitor service metrics as your leading indicator of engagement health.

What's running beneath the surface.

The 18-month shadow. This workforce remembers who found out informally, which managers protected their people, and what promises weren't kept. Any communication pattern that echoes those failures will be decoded as confirmation history is repeating. Name the prior handling explicitly, and name what will be different this time.

The works councils. Two councils with legal consultation rights are a governance asset most programs under-use. Engage chairs before any broader communication. If they're onside, they become credibility assets. If they feel bypassed, they have the mandate and mechanism to slow or block.

The informal network. Six weeks in, speculation is already filling the vacuum. Around 8-15 people across your organization shape what others believe, rarely the most senior. Map them, brief them early with more candor than the all-staff message, and they'll carry that credibility into conversations you'll never be in.

Sequencing: non-negotiable.

Works councils → SLT → Middle managers → All staff.

Anyone who learns from an all-staff message before their manager has briefed them has already lost trust in the process. The sequence is the message.