Understanding stakeholders: why strong technical work stalls without a coalition - Coalition building for change
- Feb 23
- 11 min read
Coalition building for change - This post covers why support evaporates, how to map stakeholders beyond the org chart, and how to build a coalition that protects momentum.
Delivering change, whether introducing new technologies, advocating a shift in approach or proposing broader strategic moves, means overcoming several layers of inertia. There is the inertia of the familiar and the comfortable. There is the inertia embedded in the systems, processes and worldviews that senior stakeholders have built their success upon. And there is the inertia of perceived risk: why would someone with no ownership stake champion your idea, fight for your resources or risk upsetting their boss or peers? Why attach their reputation to something that might fail when the status quo feels safe enough?
Competing for resources against initiatives favored by more senior leaders, or challenging assumptions held by those in power, is rarely the obvious route to career progression. Many change efforts never get off the ground because they are not seen by the right people, or because those people are not primed to be open minded, logical or even attentive when the proposal reaches them. Others fail because the real decision makers were never fully convinced or invested, so when pressure builds during execution, they simply choose other priorities. These are predictable patterns, and the adequacy of any approach can be strengthened by the insight and challenge of people who have navigated them successfully before.
A useful reframe is this:
Stakeholders rarely block change because they cannot grasp the technical logic. They block or delay because they do not yet value the proposer, are consumed by other priorities, fear that supporting the initiative could compromise their position or incentives, or because the initial proposal simply is not good enough. It may not answer their basic questions. It may not create curiosity. They may not see strategic merit or a reason to prioritize it among competing options. Or it may come across as rushed or incomplete. And different stakeholders need different things. To build an advocacy group, you must know who belongs in it, where to start and how each early supporter helps you reach the next. Doing this well often benefits from the perspective and challenge of those who have built, and sometimes struggled to build, stakeholder coalitions in the past.
The key point is this: deliberate stakeholder work may look like a soft skill, but it is essential. Securing agreement, maintaining momentum and navigating shifting priorities all depend on the intentional creation and ongoing nurturing of a coalition. Assuming that any stakeholder is fully invested and permanently onboard is one of the most common and most costly mistakes you can make. The teams that succeed are those that treat stakeholder strategy as core delivery and draw on the right insight and support to do it well.
A familiar pattern: support you thought you had, then didn’t
We have seen many instances where early analysis identifies one or two senior stakeholders as critical. Their support appears secure, sometimes even explicitly guaranteed. The change driver throws themselves into the initiative with enthusiasm, personal investment and a strong sense of identification with the work. Then, when they finally surface for air, they discover that the support they were relying on is not as solid as expected. It has become less enthusiastic, intermittent, harder to read or has evaporated altogether.
Sponsors rarely admit that their position has shifted. They may not acknowledge that priorities have changed, that new pressures have emerged or that the initiative has been overtaken by other concerns. Instead, they create a diversion or a holding pattern, so nothing appears to fail and no one feels directly challenged. It is a gentle let‑down, but a let‑down all the same.
We see this pattern repeatedly in operations, in projects and in performance improvement:
A team believes it has the sponsor, the champion and the green light for resources.
Alignment is assumed to persist.
Focus moves to execution.
A decision point arrives and the coalition is thinner than expected.
The lesson is rarely that the change was wrong. More often, the early engagement was too narrow. There was a single point of failure: securing the immediate boss but not their boss; engaging one function but not the adjacent ones who would be affected; assuming alignment without checking comprehension; progressing work without ensuring people felt included or heard. Resistance builds when stakeholders discover progress only after decisions have been made. And even when context genuinely changes, initiatives with broad, ongoing engagement are far more likely to be reconsidered rather than quietly sidelined.
Stakeholders are rational, but not neutral
It is tempting to interpret resistance as ignorance or bad intent. A better starting point is that stakeholders act rationally relative to their incentives, identities and constraints. Their behavior is shaped by perceived risk, role security, competing priorities, limited bandwidth and the fear of losing control or relevance. In many organizations, especially those that are high‑performing or politically sensitive, supporting a change initiative can carry personal risk. Even committed sponsors may hesitate to “rock the boat” if the environment does not feel safe, or if visible advocacy could threaten their standing.
Power dynamics also matter. Some stakeholders derive their influence from expertise, others from relationships or long‑standing loyalty to senior leaders. When a change advocate has deeper technical knowledge than the sponsor, it can create an unspoken tension: does drawing on a subordinate’s expertise strengthen a leader’s position or expose a vulnerability. That tension becomes sharper when the sponsor’s own manager identifies as the technical authority. In such cases, even well‑intentioned sponsors may hold back, not because the initiative lacks merit, but because supporting it risks unsettling the power equilibrium above them.
None of this reflects cynicism; it reflects how organizations actually work. It is consistent with long‑established insights from agency theory: people optimize for their own interests within the system they operate in. If neutrality is assumed, motives are misread. If malice is assumed, reactions become adversarial. The aim is to build an accurate map of interests and influence, then design engagement that broadens involvement, increases confidence and reduces the perceived personal risk carried by your main sponsor. That might mean testing assumptions early with a wider set of stakeholders, committing to more frequent updates or exploring concerns before they harden into objections. It is often awkward, and sometimes politically delicate, to engage early with your sponsor’s boss, but we have found that even light, deliberate engagement at that level can be hugely important.
Stakeholder identification: start wider than you think you need
Most teams, and most enthusiastic would‑be change drivers, under‑scope stakeholder identification. They focus on the formal approvers and the obvious decision makers. They assume that if the sponsor is supportive, the path is clear. What they miss are the people who can delay, dilute or quietly redirect the work long before it reaches a formal decision point.
A more reliable approach is to pause when you have something of real substance - a clear, even if high‑level, proposal or direction. Pause and think about who, beyond those you have already engaged or socialized early ideas with, might be interested, concerned or affected. Brainstorm and cast the net widely. Then evaluate and prioritize. Categorize the people you identify and look for gaps using headings such as:
Decision owners - those who approve scope, resourcing and direction
Implementers - those who must live with the change day to day
Gatekeepers - functions that can stop progress for risk, compliance, safety or control reasons
Influencers - trusted voices whose views travel informally but powerfully
Then think beyond these categories. Who shapes the sponsor’s sense of safety. Who their boss listens to. Who might feel bypassed or threatened. Who holds a worldview that the change could unsettle. These are the people who often determine whether a sponsor stays committed or quietly steps back.
This is why simple tools like 2x2 interest-influence matrices can be valuable: they force consideration of who matters and why. Broader mapping approaches, including Scholes’ stakeholder maps, help change drivers understand the terrain rather than just the hierarchy and, if used as intended, encourage deliberate choices about the frequency and targeting of engagement. The aim in coalition building for change is to avoid the single-point-of-failure sponsorship that so often derails good work, to pre-empt challenge and to reinforce credibility and collective buy-in.
The “dominant coalition” and agenda control
Decisions are not made in a vacuum. Senior leadership groups often operate as a dominant coalition. They shape priorities, decide what is discussed and determine what is treated as legitimate.
Their power is not only the power to say yes or no. Even more importantly, it is the power to decide what gets airtime, without which there is not even the satisfaction of a clear no. They will typically set expectations for formal presentation that must be met. Less visibly, and often with less discipline, they coalesce around a shared sense of urgency, seriousness or lack of seriousness. A proposal that challenges the coalition's shared perception, lived experience or mutually reinforced worldview has to be approached carefully and deliberately. Few initiatives fall into this category, but those that do are often the most significant. Understanding the sensitivities involved in advocating for such differentiated change strengthens your ability to champion politically less challenging initiatives as well.
Earlier patterns become clearer in this light. Sponsors who appear supportive may hesitate if they sense that their own boss, peers or trusted advisers are not aligned. A proposal that unsettles an established worldview, or that threatens the identity of someone within the coalition, may never be given the space to be evaluated on merit. And when the coalition is small or tightly knit, even a single skeptical voice can shift the entire agenda.
A stakeholder strategy that ignores agenda control will often fail. The practical implication is simple: understand the coalition's priorities, language and risk posture, and connect the proposal to them. Recognize that legitimacy is socially constructed. Do not rebel against structures or demands that feel inappropriate or unnecessary. Comply. Win friends. Respect your audience. Focus your energy on influencing those who are receptive rather than battling people whose collective noses are already out of joint.
Power bases: why expertise alone is not enough
Organizations do not operate as meritocracies. As already highlighted, they operate through power, incentives and the informal rules that shape what is heard, what is ignored and what is allowed to progress.
Classic work on bases of power describes the differing facets that, individually or in combination, underpin how stakeholders are influenced. Expertise is one of them. Others include:
formal authority and role legitimacy
control of resources and priorities
networks, alliances and loyalty
credibility and reputation for judgement
Change advocates, particularly those from engineering or scientific backgrounds with an associated unitary worldview, often rely on expertise and the certainty of logic. They become frustrated when stalled by someone with agenda control, or sidelined by a single skeptical voice with positional authority, or by a colleague whose long-standing relationship with senior leaders carries more weight than the content of the argument.
Different power bases matter in different contexts. Understanding the uneven distribution of power, and how that affects effective engagement with stakeholders across your interest-influence matrix, is critical. Building a supportive coalition across those stakeholders can amplify your case and reduce the potential for blockage by an empowered but unaligned individual. Engagement with experienced professionals, within or outside the organization, can help change drivers avoid naïve mistakes, especially those rooted in how the world should work rather than how it actually does.
Coalition building: protection as well as persuasion
Once you recognize that power is unevenly distributed, that legitimacy is socially constructed and that decisions are shaped by dominant coalitions, the role of coalition building becomes clearer. It is not simply about persuasion. It is about protection. A single sponsor, however supportive, is rarely enough. Their position is shaped by their own boss, their peers, their informal advisers and the shifting priorities of the organization.
A coalition broadens the base of support. It reduces the risk that an unaligned individual with positional authority, resource control or a strong relationship with senior leaders can quietly block progress. It also increases the likelihood that the proposal will be seen, discussed and taken seriously in the rooms where priorities are set.
Effective coalition building is deliberate. It involves identifying who carries influence across different power bases, understanding their interests and concerns, and engaging them early enough that they feel part of the thinking rather than presented with a finished solution. It requires patience, curiosity and a willingness to adapt the framing of the proposal without diluting its intent.
Coalitions do not need to be large. They need to be credible. A small group of respected voices, aligned on the value and feasibility of the work, can shift the tone of discussions and create the sense that the proposal is legitimate, timely and safe to support. This is especially important when the work challenges established assumptions or touches areas that senior leaders consider part of their identity.
Coalition building protects the work, strengthens the sponsor and increases the chances that the proposal will survive the informal filters that shape what moves forward and what quietly disappears.
Managing resistance: understanding, anticipating and reducing friction
Resistance should be expected and understood as rational from the perspective of the person exhibiting it. They may feel they are protecting their workload, their identity, their influence or their own sense of worth. They may simply be unconvinced, or wary because of previous experience.
Exploring the causes of resistance, getting under the bonnet, can yield useful and actionable information. It can also build support among those who see genuine effort, curiosity and engagement.
Engage by testing assumptions early, interacting with people who are likely to be affected and exploring concerns before they harden into fixed positions. These may be individuals high in interest but low in influence when mapped on your stakeholder matrix. The opportunity is to satisfy their concerns and ensure that any engagement they have with more influential stakeholders is a positive and reinforcing one.
Reducing friction requires that you are seen as receptive, open to challenge, competent and concerned. It means addressing what others categorize as legitimate in a timely and respectful way, clarifying misunderstandings, setting realistic timeframes and being honest about the effort required. It also requires a clear, shared and well understood picture of the future state.
Maintaining momentum: disciplined follow‑through on your stakeholder plan
Momentum is maintained by working your stakeholder plan with discipline. Once you have identified and differentiated stakeholders across your interest‑influence matrix, the task is to engage them in ways that match their position on that map. Some will need frequent, thoughtful interaction. Others require only light, periodic contact.
Check that you are sticking to the plan and that the plan is working. Close the Plan–Do–Check–Act loop. Act on what you learn, whether it is a deviation from planned activity or an unexpected outcome. Watch for surprises: individuals you assumed had low influence who suddenly matter more, or stakeholders whose interest increases as the work becomes more visible.
Test whether your interactions are having the intended effect. Are key stakeholders reassured? Are concerns reducing? Are coalition members staying aligned? Are you responding effectively to shifts in context or organizational priorities? Small adjustments, made early, prevent friction from building and keep the work moving.
Momentum is built on discipline, on doing good work while staying engaged with those invested in the outcome.
Where Net+U fits
Net+U is being built to help change drivers succeed. Stakeholder dynamics are central to that success in every context. The support we aim to provide takes different forms. We want to offer targeted external expertise that improves the option set and reduces risk. We want to bring lived‑experience insight from people who have navigated similar stakeholder and organizational culture landscapes, including those who have already addressed the concerns you now face. We hope that insight might short‑circuit some issues entirely.
We also aim to help with framing, with identifying and prioritizing stakeholders, with shaping the change driver’s approach and with challenging interpretations of response and adequacy of corrective action. As elsewhere, the goal is simple. The change driver should be the hero. Net+U is there to support that person.
Questions to consider
For change drivers inside organizations:
Which stakeholder dynamics are shaping your work right now?
Where would external insight or lived experience help you navigate them with more confidence?
What support would make it easier for you to sustain momentum and protect the work?
For independent professionals and experienced practitioners:
Where have you seen these dynamics play out, and what have you learned from navigating them?
Where could your lived experience help someone else avoid avoidable mistakes?
What kind of collaboration would allow you to contribute meaningfully without being pulled into full‑time roles?
If these dynamics resonate with your experience, we would welcome a conversation.
Comments