Actor
Mapping
Si Guide Series
Overview
Actor maps are a type of system map designed to reveal the network of people and
organizations within a given system and how they are interrelated. The aim is to gain a
deeper understanding of the stakeholders' values, models, incentives, and power
dynamics in the system. This guide is designed to walk you through the process of making
your own actor maps, highlighting the key considerations for gaining a holistic insight into
the actors, incentives, and power dynamics within a given system.
Systems Thinking Systems Awareness Systems Theory Complexity Theory Adaptive Systems
System Inquiry Systems Modeling Mapping Actor Mapping Leverage Points
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Guide Content
Actors Values & Models Incentives Power Dynamics
We first work to We try to understand the We talk about the way We look at power
understand the actors values and their actors are influenced dynamics to understand
different actors mental models by incentives how it shapes outcomes
Overview
Actor maps are a type of system map designed to reveal
the network of people and organizations within a given
system and how they are interrelated. The aim is to gain a
deeper understanding of the stakeholders' values,
models, incentives, and power dynamics in the system by
creating maps consisting of the various individuals and
organizations that have a role in the system we wish to
change.
With actor mapping, we ask who the individuals or
organizations are that influence the system's pattern and
outcomes and who are influenced by them. These
"stakeholders" have a stake in the organization's
outcomes and thus an interest in shaping events
according to their stake. To be responsible in our systems
change initiatives, we must first be aware of these actors,
their perspectives, and interests.
Involvement Communications
Start to recognize who will Why Actor Maps? To understand the mental models
and values of actors so that we can
be affected by a change process and
thus, who needs to be involved better speak their language
Explore Perspectives
Opportunities
Build up a better understanding of
Find opportunities for alliances, the system by looking at it from the
collaboration and recognize different perspectives of the actors
potential points of conflict
Identify Gaps Adoption
Understand how an adoption
Identify where gaps to the flow
process may take place, who would
of information or resources are
be likely to resist or promote change
as potential intervention points
Involvement
If we map out any complex organization, we will see that for
almost every element on the map, there will be a stakeholder, a
person, or a group of people that have an interest in that aspect of
the system. For example, if we are considering a food system, we
may have nodes representing the farmers, regulators, consumers,
machinery manufacturers, the water system, the environment, etc.
Each one of these elements on the map will have an associated
stakeholder that has an interest in the system being a certain way
and the capacity to affect some aspects of its outcomes.
At the end of the day, stakeholders are the ones who control the
state of the system and we need to understand them so that we
can work with them and not against them - remember
stakeholders can become "stickholders" if we get things wrong.
As such, if we want to change a system we need to get both a
comprehensive and detailed understanding of these stakeholders,
their interests and potential actions and this is the aim of actor
mapping.
Key Considerations
Multi-Dimensional Multi-Scale Multi-Perspective
People are multidimensional, they To understand potential externalities, we To build up a more comprehensive
have values, a view of the world, need to consider actor groups on picture of the whole we need to try
incentives, power, etc. and we have different levels, from the individual to and view the system from the many
to factor in these different aspects. organizational but also whole different dimensions of the actors
ecosystems. within it.
Multi-Scale
One reason systems change is complex is that, typically, many
parties are involved, each with their own interests, goals, and
strategies. Large-scale change will involve many alterations
across the system, with many actors being affected in many
different ways. In this process of considering who will be
affected by our interventions and how they will be affected,
we need to think across different levels and scales.
The aim should be to consider actor groups on different levels
to understand potential externalities better. Taking a holistic
approach means considering not just the immediate
individuals and organizations that will be affected but also
stepping back to think of whole communities and ecosystems.
This implies considering not just the immediate effects of
action but also the ramifications across different systems - to
factor in the externalities, both positive and negative, so that
they do not become our stumbling blocks but can provide us
with added opportunities.
Multi-Perspective
Complex systems involve a vast array of actors with many different
perspectives; simply having one global view of the system is not
sufficient. We need to build up our view of the whole from the
specific vantage points of the different individuals within it. Think of
the global financial system, it affects almost every person on this
planet, but in very different ways. Each of us experiences this system
from our own historical, social, economic and geographical context
with our own set of interests shaping our perspective.
Reality is about context; everything happens in the context of space
and time and involves people interacting with the system based on
their own unique set of conditions. Gaining a grasp of a system
through an abstract model is valuable, but this model does not exist
in reality. Our model and understanding of a system have to be
enriched and brought to life by seeing it from the perspective of the
lived experiences of the people who form part of it and use it daily.
From this, we can start to understand better why the system is the
way it is, why individuals perpetuate the system patterns, and what
the opportunities are for changing those patterns.
Multi-Dimensional
We all have values and a view of the world; we form part of social
structures with incentives, and based on that, we make decisions
and take actions that affect outcomes. However, we are not simply
rational agents trying to maximize against a monodimensional
conception of value. As humans, we value different things and
make trade-offs between them in our decisions.
We have values, a way of looking at the world and an identity, we
form part of social structures of incentives and power, and thus, in
reality, the choices we make and the way things play out are a
product of these many different dimensions to ourselves. As such,
for a solution to be viable, it has to create value for different
dimensions. Looking at a system we wish to change in terms of the
different kinds of value to the different actors is an important
consideration. If we don’t understand and factor in those different
dimensions, then we are unlikely to create a solution that is
sustainable and viable in the long run.
Identity Understand Prioritize
We want first to identify Study the actors Prioritize the actors in relation
the relevant parties and relations to our change initiative
Actors
List of stakeholders
To get started, determine who needs to be involved and from this create a
list of stakeholders who form part of the system
Actor Relations
What are the connections between them?
Finance
Information
Products
System
Determine Relevance Influence
Different actors will have different
levels of engagement with the
issue of interest
Indirect
Influence
Direct
Influence
Stakeholder Persona
Now to get to know the actors
Ethnography
Get to know the actors in the system through ethnographic studies.
Ethnographic studies involve completely immersing oneself in the lives,
culture, or situations of the people or organizations we are interested in
over some time. We enter and spend a significant amount of time in the
real environment needed to be observed to gain insight into actors, the
context they find themselves within and how they behave in that
environment.
In the process, we try as best we can to not alter the context or project
our meaning onto it. To understand not just what people say but also
what they do the researcher must observe people as they go about their
daily activities without disrupting them. Over time the insights drawn can
be built up into a persona that captures key information while ensuring
that it matches the underlying experience of the actors.
Factors to Consider Models
Values
Incentives Power
Values
What are the values?
What are the stories those values create?
How do those values create the assumptions?
What is the accepted paradigm?
Models
What are the models people use to
understand the system, who they are and
what they are doing? What are the concepts
and the language used?
What are the perspectives created by the
models?
What are the knowledge gaps created?
Incentive
What are the assets and resources in the system?
How do resources flow through the system?
How do those flows create the incentives?
How do those incentives motivate actors?
Where are the potential points of cooperation
or conflict created by those motives?
Power
What are the sources of power?
What are the sources of legitimacy?
What are the rules?
Who gets to alter the rules?
For whom do the rules favor?
Values
&
Models
Value Mapping
Mental models and the values that shape them are at the
foundations of how we see the world and act upon it to
create the environments we inhabit. Values are like a
compass that directs our lives. They guide what we move
towards or away from by defining what is of higher or lower
value to us. Values rank what is good or bad, better or worse,
and in so doing, they give structure to our world. These
rankings then work to motivate or demotivate us. To get a
deep insight into the workings of the system we wish to
change, we are going to have to map these out and visualize
the values and beliefs of the different actors in the system.
Values define our broad preferences concerning appropriate
courses of action and outcomes. As such, values reflect a
person's sense of right and wrong. Values are, and probably
always will be, a major source of conflict in the world.
However, by learning how to elicit and work with values, we
can begin to understand what is important to the actors and
why they do what they do.
Hierarchy of Needs
Values can be mapped in many ways. One of
the most common is the hierarchy of needs,
which structures values in terms of their Self-
abstraction. People pursuing basic needs such actualization
as food, security, or economic welfare will
differ hugely in motivation and worldview
from those pursuing more abstract Esteem
motivations such as self-realization.
Belonging
Safety
Physiological
Motivation
The hierarchy of needs model helps to illustrate how
values are what motivates us. Values are the "why" of
what people do and can differ hugely - for one
person going backpacking in Thailand makes no
sense, for another it is a path to self-discovery. These
values are probably more important than anything
else in shaping what we do.
Our values might be something that we take for
granted, think are obvious, or that we’ve never
actually articulated or written down. Revealing these
values, however, can be very useful when trying to
explain why things work the way they do. Once the
values are mapped, they can be shared and act as a
common reference point that simplifies and speeds
up decision-making.
How it Works
Have individuals fill Now compile these See where the
out their values together and cluster overlaps exist
them
Conceptual Models
Robert Pirsig in his famous book Zen and the Art of
Motorcycle Maintenance illuminated the importance of
models when he wrote: "If a factory is torn down but
the rationality which produced it is left standing, then
that rationality will simply produce another factory. If a
revolution destroys a government, but the systematic
patterns of thought that produced that government
are left intact, then those patterns will repeat
themselves.”
Mental models and the values that shape them are at
the foundations of how we see the world and act upon
it to create the environments we inhabit. To get a
deep insight into the workings of the system we wish
to change we are going to have to also add these to
our map to represent the values and beliefs of the
different actors in the system.
Thinking
All of these systems that we might be interested in
changing are created by us, by the models that the
people in the system hold and act upon. Virtually
every problem we will encounter in the world can
ultimately be traced back to a socio-cultural one. If
you dig far enough into the water crisis,
environmental degradation, inequality, or
cybersecurity, you will find that it is not really about
lack of water, lack of land, lack of money, or
computer code, as it may appear; it is more about
people and how they see the world; how our models
and thinking constrain us to a certain subset of
solutions.
Boxes
Every community and organization comes to form its
own culture, story and shared way of seeing the
world. Biologists, doctors, accountants, engineers,
each community has its own paradigm, assumptions,
stories, and way of seeing the world. This is
expressed in the institutional structures that we
create and the result is a world of boxes. The
problem is the gaps created between them, all those
things that don’t fit into the boxes. We should be
asking, what are the boxes that the paradigm and
models lock us into? What are the knowledge gaps
between them?
Eliciting Models
Theme
Create questions for people Cluster them to see where actor’s Identify main concepts and
to fill out about how they mental models align themes
understand the system
Incentives
&
Motivation
Overview
Charlie Munger once said, “Show me the incentive, and I'll show you the
outcome.” Understanding the structure of incentives in the system is key to
understanding how and why it operates the way it does and why it continues on
the same path - irrespective of what the stakeholders may say.
For every node on a system map, we will see that the node can have a state that
may be deemed better or worse for that actor. The actors who have a stake in a
given node are motivated to improve their stake and improve their value as they
define it. This creates a set of motives and direction for their decisions and actions.
Ethnographic studies, here again, are important to understand what people really
value and the incentives they experience locally.
Games
In this context, we can understand the actors in
terms of their goal-orientated behavior, i.e. each
actor has some model as to what they value and they
take actions to affect their environment in order to
achieve more of whatever it is they define as
valuable. As the actors pursue their valued ends they
come in to contact and become interdependent in
dynamics of cooperation and competition - we can
call this a “game”.
In game theory, a game is any context within which
agents interact and, in so doing, become
interdependent in attempting to achieve their valued
ends. We need to get an understanding of not just
the points of possible collaboration but also the
points of competition, and where they lie is largely a
function of the structure of incentives.
Incentives
Incentive mapping is important because it lets us see the
somewhat invisible fields of incentives that affect us all
every day. In our investigation, we should ask: What are
the resources in the system? How do they flow through
it? How do those flows influence the actors? Take, for
example, the flow of drugs and associated money
through Central America, which has distorted the social
and economic institutions of many of those nations.
Investigating these incentives will tell us a lot about the
underlying structure of why and where conflict,
competition, and cooperation arise and why. It also
points us in the direction of possible ways to alter those
incentives to realize new outcomes.
Positive & Negative Incentives
If we want to change a system, we need to be aware of
how the incentives are working to either resist it or use
them as potential sources for enabling it. Organizations -
use a subtle combination of positive and negative
incentives to direct us in different ways to enable or +
inhibit actions.
Incentives can be both positive and negative. Positive
incentives are rewarding, while negative incentives are
punishing. A positive incentive would be like a bonus
payment for doing something, while a negative one could
be a fine. For example, as part of environmental
regulation, the government will use a combination of
negative incentives, such as banning certain polluting
activities, but will also use positive incentives, such as
subsidies for certain activities that are seen to be
beneficial to the environment.
Actor Incentives
What are the motivations of the actors in the system?
What do they want to achieve or do?
What are the outcomes they want to see realized?
Power
Mapping
Overview
As Alex Nicholls once said: "power is what perpetuates systems.” Because of this
systemic change almost always involves changes in power dynamics, it reveals new
forms of power and challenges the status quo. Thus nurturing an ecosystem requires
a deep awareness of power: Who has influence? What kind of influence do they
have? Who does not have any influence? Likewise, we need to understand this
power distribution not just in the abstract but in practice through ethnographic
studies.
Power mapping refers to a set of tools and processes that enable us to analyze
power relationships and start creating strategies for change. It is a visual method for
representing the sphere of a person or group's influence in the system. The power
map tool helps us visualize who we may need to influence, clarify leverage points,
and identify where to try to build coalitions that may have systems-level influence.
What is Power?
Let's start with a basic definition. Power is the ability to
make others do what you would have them do. The key
question is; what are the means through which actors can
realize their ends irrespective of the interests of others?
There are many forms of power, force, money, norms,
ideas, mass mobilization, etc.
Power is to social relations what physics is to objects; we
may not like to talk about power, but it is always there.
Power is no more inherently good or evil than technology,
it just is. Power is dynamic, like water, it flows like a current
through everyday life. It determines who gets to make
decisions and who decides the rules of the game. Actor
mapping should involve an attempt to identify the different
kinds of power, who has it, what is the legitimacy for
holding the different kinds of power, and how that affects
the potential for change or creates resistance to it.
Expert
Perceived high level of
competency and
Legitimate knowledge Referent
Seen to be legitimate and a Charismatic form of
valid source of authority power through attracting
others and loyalty
Types of Power
French and Raven's Six Forms of Power
Reward
Capacity to provide others
with incentives Information
Coercive Capacity to control the
Capacity to exert force flow of information
inducing others to act
Influence
Determine the influence of the actors - which members are influential, important, or
have potential. Identify their importance according to different dimensions of influence
Alignment of Interests
Try and determine the motives, objectives and goals of the relevant actors.
Are their motives and agenda aligned with the changes you wish to see take place.
-
Information
+
Oppose Support
- +
High Influence
-
Information +
Oppose
- +
Support
- +
Low Influence
Map -
Place the stakeholders on
the map, scaling them
according to their level of
importance.
+
Observe
Now, step back and look at the map from the perspective of the different actors involved.
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