Build: A Tracking-Down-the-Power Canvas

Build a collaborative canvas version of the 'Tracking Down the Power' exercise, for a leadership team meeting (in one room or remote).

Screen one — Map the Actors: sticky notes sorted into five zones (constituency, leadership, supporters, competitors, opposition). Screen two — Field of Play: a spectrum from 'greatest interest in change' to 'greatest interest in the status quo', with sideline areas above and below; the team drags each actor into position and marks whether they're actively in play or watching. Screen three — Debrief: the handbook's questions, answered as decisions ('Which sideline supporter will we pull in, and who's having that 1:1? Which competitor could become an ally? Which opposition move must we neutralize — and which can we ignore?'). Each decision becomes a card with an owner and a date.

For each high-priority actor, prompt the two power questions: what do they want, and what do we hold that they need?

Constraint: this maps public roles and institutional interests, not private lives — no dossiers on individuals, no data beyond what's publicly known about an actor's stated position. Include an export that drops straight into a team agenda.

Details

• builds on: tracking-down-the-power, theory-of-change-sentence
• guardrails: public roles and stated interests only — no dossiers, every debrief answer becomes a commitment with an owner and a date
• practice kind: prompt