Strategically Communicating

The Mind Tools’ Stakeholder Analysis article presents a smart process to utilize when having to identify and strategize about key decision makers. The process they present can especially be helpful on projects where you’re working with external clients who need to be “won over.” However, I’m uncomfortable with the concept of using the tool on your co-workers. While I agree that you need to understand what motivates your co-workers when working on a project. I think completing a power/interest grid about the people  you closely work with feels somewhat sneaky. I guess I could see if you were working on a large corporate initiative for executives and you needed to strategize about  people who you typically don’t work with on a daily basis. But, in a close collaborative working environment, I’m uncomfortable with the overall concept.

I’m all for using this tool on large projects where you’re trying to win work from external stakeholders, but on co-workers, I’m just not sold. When is it appropriate to use the tool below? Is it appropriate to use on your co-workers? Or is this tool better suited to use on external stakeholders?