Stakeholder Mapping (Power-Interest)

Step 1: Frame the specific decision, not the company

Stakeholders of Nike is a meaningless list. The decision is: rebuild full-price wholesale distribution across roughly 1,000 to 1,500 priority doors in North America and EMEA over the next 18 months, including running specialty, while protecting brand gross margin. Note the time constraint that shapes everything: factory capacity is booked 6 to 9 months out, so the commitments happen two seasons before any sales show up in a quarterly print. A second decision, which franchises get allocated to which channel, is politically hotter and deserves its own map.

Step 2: Generate the list wide, then cut to about ten

External: Foot Locker, JD Sports and Dick's Sporting Goods; independent running specialty chains that gave their wall to Hoka and On; department stores dropped in 2020-21; Tier-1 contract factories in Vietnam and Indonesia; signed athletes and federations; the resale and sneakerhead community; sell-side analysts and business media. Internal: the Nike Direct and digital leadership built up over seven years, the wholesale field sales organisation that was gutted and now has to be rehired, the category GMs for running and basketball, and supply chain planning. Ownership: the board, index funds, activist holders such as Pershing Square, and the Knight family, whose Class A shares elect the majority of the board. Cut the list to the ten dots that can actually change the outcome.

Step 3: Score power on the ability to actually block

Power here is not seniority, it is leverage over this specific rebuild. The Knight family holds a structural veto through the dual-class structure, which is the highest formal power on the board even though it is almost never exercised. The quietly decisive one is Nike Direct leadership: they control inventory allocation and the launch calendar, so they can starve wholesale of hero product without ever saying no in a meeting, which is the purest form of block power. Foot Locker and JD have power over the outcome rather than over the decision, since they own physical access to the mall consumer, and the Tier-1 factories hold hard capacity power because an order not booked by season N-2 cannot be delivered at all. Analysts, media and consumers have essentially zero formal power.

Step 4: Score interest on what each one gains or loses

Nike Direct leadership has extreme interest and it is negative: they lose relative revenue, headcount and the narrative they were promoted on, so they are the blocker even though every one of them will publicly agree with the strategy. Foot Locker has extreme positive interest because Nike is roughly 60 to 65 percent of its merchandise, down from about three quarters in 2019, so its entire equity story depends on this reversal. Running specialty is conditionally interested: they already replaced Nike with brands that give them better margin and rep support, so their interest only becomes support if Nike beats what On and Hoka currently pay them. The Knight family has episodic interest, spiking at CEO transitions and capital allocation and near zero week to week, while activist holders care intensely about the multiple and not at all about channel mechanics.

Step 5: Plot the grid and overlay supporter or blocker

Manage closely: Nike Direct leadership marked as blocker, Foot Locker and JD marked as supporters, and the running and basketball category GMs marked as neutral. Keep satisfied: the Knight family and board, large and activist holders, and the top Tier-1 factories, all high power but low day-to-day interest. Keep informed: running specialty accounts, the rebuilt field sales organisation, and signed athletes. Monitor: media and the resale community, both of which jump straight into manage closely on any botched launch. The punchline the map produces is uncomfortable and correct: the highest execution risk is an internal dot, not a retail partner.

Step 6: Write an engagement plan per dot, with owner, message and cadence

Nike Direct leadership, high power, high interest, blocker: the CEO personally owns it, and the move is to remove the loss rather than win the argument, by changing the metric from Nike Direct revenue growth to total marketplace full-price sell-through and brand gross margin, with the DTC leader's bonus paid on both channels, plus a monthly allocation council where wholesale allocation is decided first rather than taking what is left. Foot Locker and JD, manage closely: the category GM owns it, with a three-season joint launch calendar, guaranteed allocation of two or three named franchises, co-funded store concepts, weekly planning and quarterly top-to-top meetings. Knight family and board, keep satisfied: a one-page quarterly note that says explicitly that the DTC mix number will fall on purpose, so nobody reads a mix decline as a failure six months in. Factories, keep satisfied: pre-book capacity two seasons out with a written volume floor, because a wholesale reset with no product to ship dies in delivery. Running specialty, keep informed: dedicated territory reps, early seeding of new run silhouettes, and terms that at minimum match the incumbents.

Step 7: Plan deliberate moves and set re-map triggers

Three dots need to be relocated on purpose. Move Nike Direct from high-power blocker to high-power neutral by rewriting the incentive, since no amount of town-hall alignment beats a comp plan that pays people to hoard product. Raise the power of the rebuilt wholesale field organisation by giving it P&L ownership of a door portfolio and a seat on the allocation council, converting a keep-informed group into a self-interested champion. Keep the Knight family and large holders parked in keep satisfied by front-running the bad optic, since the first quarter where DTC mix falls and margin dips is the moment the strategy is most likely to be reversed by people who were never told it was the plan. Re-map at three triggers: the first full season of rebuilt wholesale orders, the quarter DTC mix visibly declines, and any further executive churn.

Step 1: Frame the decision, and notice you need two maps

There are four moves but only two political games. Map one covers the pair that actually moves EBITDA and touches doctors: procurement centralisation plus the consultant compensation reset, decided and communicated before the next appraisal cycle, which is about five months away. Map two covers the tier-2 unit closure, where the power players are completely different: the district collector, the local MLA, 140 non-clinical staff and the local press, none of whom appear anywhere in map one. Writing one blended map is the single most common mistake here, because it dilutes the doctor problem into a generic list of everybody.

Step 2: Generate the list wide using who pays, approves, executes and loses

Internal: the surgeon-promoter and family; the professional CEO the fund wants to hire; roughly 60 rainmaker consultants in cardiac sciences, oncology, orthopaedics and neuro; the other 290 consultants and DNB residents; nursing and paramedic staff running at about 30 percent attrition; the 22 unit COOs; the CFO; and the unit-level purchase heads who personally own the vendor relationships. External: implant and pharma distributors; TPAs and private insurers plus PSU insurers; state scheme and Ayushman Bharat authorities; NABH for accreditation; NPPA and state price caps on stents, knee implants and drugs; the lenders; and the referring GP and nursing-home network that feeds admissions. Cut this to about ten dots that can stop the plan.

Step 3: Score power on who can actually block

The rainmaker consultants have the highest real power in the system and none of it is contractual: a cardiac lead who walks takes his cath-lab volume, his referring GPs and typically two or three juniors to the competitor hospital three kilometres away, and non-competes are effectively unenforceable for doctors in India. Ten such exits put roughly 180 crore rupees, about 6 percent of revenue, in play within a year. The promoter has board power but his decisive power is personal: he recruited most of those doctors himself, so he is the only person whose word carries with them. Unit purchase heads have quiet block power, since they can slow-walk vendor consolidation indefinitely without ever refusing; insurers hold tariff power over roughly 60 to 65 percent of realisation; and the fund, despite the cheque and the board seats, has almost no operating power in year one.

Step 4: Score interest on what each one concretely loses

Be specific about the loss rather than saying doctors may be unhappy. Moving from about 15 percent of collected billing to a fixed 1.2 to 1.8 crore plus a variable band raises the median consultant's certainty but caps the top decile, where the modelled downside is roughly 20 to 30 percent, and those are precisely the people you cannot afford to lose. Unit purchase heads lose discretion and, in some units, informal income, so their interest is extreme and will be expressed as silence and delay, never as objection. Distributors lose roughly 110 crore rupees of billings if the vendor base goes from about 400 to 60, and they will lobby through the very doctors whose implant preferences they have been funding for years. The promoter's stake is reputational: he is being asked to break promises he personally made.

Step 5: Plot the grid and mark supporters and blockers

Manage closely: the top 15 to 20 rainmakers, several of them blockers; the promoter-chairman, currently neutral and the true kingmaker; and the incoming CEO. Keep satisfied: insurers and TPAs, lenders, NABH, and the fund's own investment committee, all high power but uninterested in internal comp mechanics. Keep informed: the other 290 consultants and residents, nursing leadership, unit COOs, and the referring GP network that quietly decides where patients land. Monitor: local media and patient groups, who stay dormant until the tier-2 closure leaks and then jump straight to manage closely. The map's verdict is that one dot decides everything, because the promoter is the only person who can announce a comp change to doctors he hired without it reading as an outsider extracting rent.

Step 6: Build the engagement plan, owner and trade by trade

Promoter: the fund's managing partner owns this personally at a weekly cadence, and the trade is explicit, a defined chairman and clinical-governance role rather than operations, a clear liquidity path on his residual stake, and a genuine veto on clinical-quality decisions, bought in exchange for him personally fronting the comp announcement. Top 20 consultants: one-to-one conversations by promoter and CEO before any policy circular goes out, each with a personalised sheet showing last year's earnings against new-plan earnings, plus a 24-month income guarantee at prior levels for the top decile costing roughly 25 crore rupees, which is a seventh of the revenue at risk. Purchase heads: do not negotiate, simply centralise the top 30 SKUs by value first under a new central head with a hard reporting line, and hand unit COOs a share of realised savings so their incentive flips from protecting vendors to switching them. Insurers: the CFO owns a joint tariff and coding review framed as cutting disallowances, so the payer sees upside rather than a squeeze. Nursing: keep informed but visibly, with a retention allowance and a written OT staffing-ratio commitment, because degrading theatre support is the fastest way to lose the surgeons you just paid to keep.

Step 7: Move the dots, then sequence and re-map

Deliberately relocate three. Raise the power of three or four mid-career high-growth consultants by putting them on the clinical governance council and letting them model the new plan's best case, which breaks the top decile's monopoly on the internal narrative. Lower the biggest blocker's loss with the income guarantee rather than debating fairness, since the guarantee expires but the switching moment does not. Sequence accordingly: procurement first because it is invisible to doctors and banks roughly 110 crore rupees of credibility, comp second, the HIS rollout third, and the tier-2 closure last once there is a track record and a second map. Re-map after the first 20 doctor conversations, because at least a third of your assumed blockers and supporters will turn out to be the other thing.