← Field Notes
People · 2025
The Character Sheets I Keep on Every Stakeholder
How I turned stakeholder management into something more like game prep — and why knowing your players changes everything about how a session lands.
2025
5 min read
People
In a cross-functional product team, you work with the same people repeatedly — in different contexts, with different stakes, across different kinds of decisions. And yet most designers (myself included, for a long time) treat every session like the first one. Same prep, same assumptions, same surprises.
I started keeping what I call stakeholder character sheets — short profiles of each person I work with regularly. Not org chart data. Not job titles. But the things that actually matter in a session: what they care about, how they communicate, what gets them on board, and what triggers defensiveness.
"It's not about managing people — it's about meeting them where they are."
The idea crystallized during a facilitation feedback session I was part of. We were discussing how to manage stakeholder politics — specifically, that some attendees join sessions for relationship-building or organizational positioning rather than immediate contribution. Knowing that in advance, rather than discovering it mid-session, completely changes how you design the room.
The stakeholder map
Here's a snapshot of the cross-functional network I navigate at Geotab — from AVP-level leadership to development partners. Each cluster represents a team. The lines represent active collaboration on live projects.
Leadership
Content
Learning & Multimedia
Product Operations
Development
How the character sheet works
Each profile has four fields I actually use. They're intentionally short — the point is to be scannable before a session, not comprehensive forever. I update them when something new about a person's working style or priorities becomes clear.
- Type (archetype). A one-line mental model that anchors how I approach them.
- Key priorities. What they're optimizing for — not their job description, but their real north star in any given conversation.
- What works. The framing, format, or approach that consistently gets alignment.
- What to avoid. The triggers, traps, or dynamics that reliably derail things.
The format isn't sacred. What matters is that it's yours — something you actually refer to, not something you write once and forget.
Leadership
Key priorities
Business ROI, org-wide alignment, team capacity and sustainability
What works
Start with the "so what." Connect design decisions to revenue, growth, or risk. One-slide narrative, not a Figma walkthrough.
What to avoid
Design jargon, pixel-level debates, or anything that doesn't ladder up to a business outcome. He operates at altitude.
Content & Learning
Key priorities
Content accuracy, editorial consistency, voice and tone alignment across surfaces
What works
Share rationale early. Frame design asks as collaboration, not correction. He wants to know why the copy matters in context.
What to avoid
Last-minute content changes or framing design as the authority on copy. He is protective of content ownership — and rightly so.
Key priorities
Learner experience, educational clarity, accessibility, production quality
What works
Involve her in structure, not just execution. Use learning journey maps as a shared artifact. She's a visual thinker — show, don't tell.
What to avoid
Dumping content at her without context for the learner's goal. Production has long lead times — plan at least two sprints ahead.
Product Operations
Key priorities
Operational efficiency, process clarity, scalability across teams
What works
Tie design decisions to operational KPIs. Come with a clear point of view — he appreciates directness and measurable success criteria.
What to avoid
Vague asks or open-ended explorations without a defined outcome. Ambiguity reads as lack of preparation.
Key priorities
Speed to alignment, consistency across surfaces, clear business coherence
What works
One-pager + decision log. Structured agenda with a timer. Separate discussion from decision-making explicitly — he moves fast when the session is contained.
What to avoid
Open-ended discussions. He will fill a vacuum with his own solution — not always the wrong one, but often too early.
Key priorities
Cross-team alignment, documentation quality, stakeholder satisfaction
What works
Loop her in early. Share agendas and pre-reads in advance. She appreciates good meeting hygiene and clear ownership of outcomes.
What to avoid
Scope surprises. She flags drift quickly — have clear scope boundaries defined before the session starts.
Development
Key priorities
Technical feasibility, clear specs, minimal ambiguity in design handoffs
What works
Live coding sessions. Consulting him during ideation, not just at handoff. He responds well to showing rather than documenting.
What to avoid
Handing off without discussion. He will surface design-dev gaps immediately — use that as a quality signal, not a disruption.
Key priorities
Code quality, design system adherence, edge case coverage
What works
Annotated Figma with behavior specs. Use design system language. He's async-first — Jira and GitHub comments are where he's most precise.
What to avoid
Ambiguous states or missing specs. He notices every inconsistency — treat him as a quality gate, not a reviewer to placate.
Why this practice matters
Design in a cross-functional environment is relational work. The quality of your output depends not just on how well you design, but on how well you understand the people who will shape, challenge, approve, and implement it.
Character sheets don't replace genuine relationships. They're a scaffold — a way to remember what you've already learned, so you can show up to the next session building on that knowledge instead of rediscovering it.
"Facilitation is not about what you know. It's about how well you know the room."
The practice also has a side effect: it makes you a more empathetic collaborator. When you spend time thinking about a person's priorities and constraints — not just their role — you start designing sessions around their reality rather than your ideal.