Tracking Down the Power

*The need:* Groups burn out trying to persuade everyone, when the work is usually to move a few specific actors.

Power is the relationship between interests and resources — so before acting, a team maps who holds what. This is a leadership-team exercise with markers, post-its, and two big sheets:

Step 1: Map the actors. Write every individual and group with influence (actual or potential) over your effort on post-its. Sort them into five zones: your constituency (the people with the problem, standing together), your leadership (drawn from within that constituency, accountable to it), supporters (share your values, hold resources, aren't directly affected), competitors (share some interests, compete for the same people or money — can often be turned into allies), and opposition (their interests conflict with yours).

Step 2: The field of play. Draw a spectrum from "greatest interest in change" to "greatest interest in the status quo," with sidelines. Place every actor. Mark who is actively in play and who is watching from the sidelines.

Step 3: Debrief. Are there key supporters on the sidelines — and what would pull them in? Which competitors could become allies? Which opposition efforts need to be neutralized, and which can be safely ignored? Don't try to address every actor; pick the few that matter most.

For each key actor, ask the power questions: what do they want, and what do we have that they need? A neighborhood group that runs this exercise usually discovers it has more leverage than it thought — votes, stories, relationships, attention, legitimacy — and a much shorter list of people to actually move.

Details

• ingredients: your leadership team, post-it notes and markers, two flipchart sheets or a whiteboard, an hour
• source note: The 'Map the Actors' and 'Field of Play' exercise from the appendix of 'Organizing: People, Power, Change' (2014). Kin to the Midwest Academy strategy chart tradition of power mapping.
• how it works: Map the actors: constituency, leadership, supporters, competitors, opposition., Place every actor on the field of play, from 'wants change' to 'wants status quo', noting who's on the sidelines., Debrief: who could we pull off the sidelines? Who could we convert? Who must we neutralize?, For the few actors who matter most, answer: what do they want, and what do we hold that they need?, Revisit the map at every campaign peak — power shifts as you build it.
• min resources: Free. Post-its.
• practice kind: recipe
• success signals: the team can name its three most important actors, at least one 'competitor' becomes a supporter, effort stops going to actors who don't matter