“Who Does This Affect?”
Comes Up After the Decision.

Who does this affect?

You've heard somebody ask that. Maybe it was about a new schedule, or a new tool. When did you last hear it? And when you heard it, did it come before the decision, or after?

When "Who does this affect?" comes up after the decision, the change is already agreed. Your team's said yes. Your boss has said yes, and people are planning around it. And then somebody asks.

You can end up there by doing what leaders are told to do. The advice says to get people to agree first, but it never says who needs to be asked.

This is The Autistic Leader Podcast. I'm Uday Kiran Bolusani. Each week, I take one piece of advice every leader already gives, and I give you one skill that makes you work for every kind of mind.

The advice I'm talking about, you've probably given it yourself. "Get alignment before you decide."

Leaders say that for good reasons. The people a decision affects get a say before it's fully formed, while you can still change it. That's your chance to listen for what each of them cares about. And a decision your people resist and don't carry out isn't worth much.

So how do leaders usually do it? You go see each person the decision affects, and each person with influence over it, before you decide. And with each of them, you talk about your plan in terms of what each person cares about.

Say your team runs the website for a chain of sporting goods stores. Every Friday, your team is answering requests from other teams. A wrong price to correct, a store's holiday hours to post. Answering them takes up the whole day. So what you started on Monday, say a new page where customers can book a bike repair, that's still unfinished when the week ends.

So you ask to keep Fridays for finishing things like that page, with no new requests that day. Your team agrees. You bring it to your director in your one-on-one. And your director says, yes, go for it. You figure your team and your director are the people it affects, and nobody brings up anyone else who might be affected.

Two weeks later, your director hears from the manager of store marketing. Her team sends you requests too. And most of them come in on a Friday. They're each weekend's sale prices and the ones that go on the website. They come on a Friday because the stores set those prices late in the week. And nobody had asked her how a Friday with no new requests would affect her team. So of course, your director lets requests from the other team come back on Fridays. And your team's answering them again.

Getting your team and your director to agree first, that's exactly what leaders are told to do. You did it.

So what did the advice leave out? How to find out who a change like that affects, and what each of those people actually needs. You've got to work that out yourself.

Now, a lot of leaders pick that up over time. They watch social cues, they talk with people every day. And the people who trust them help them get things done. That's a real way to lead. A leader who talks with store marketing every week might already know about those sale prices.

Listening to people, that's the job. Working with people, that's the job. Working out who a change affects, that's a part of the job too. But say your organization has no process for writing down who a change affects. Then you're left guessing who those people are and what each of them needs. That guessing is what's costing you. It's cognitive load, the mental effort a process or tool could save you.

Back on your website team, nobody had listed store marketing. So when you proposed keeping Fridays free of new requests, you never planned for its sales prices.

You can also find people a decision affects on paper, and there's a method for it, you can look it up. It's called stakeholder analysis. Back in 1984, the management scholar R. Edward Freeman defined a stakeholder as any person or group who can affect whether an organization reaches its objectives, or who is affected when it does. When I use that definition for one decision, I'm asking two questions before I decide. Who can change the decision, and whose work would it change?

Ask that second question about keeping Fridays free of new requests, and you get to the manager of store marketing.

I'm autistic, and I do well when people say things plainly. So before I ask people to agree to a decision, I make a stakeholder map. Mine's a page with one line for each person the decision affects. On each line, I write what that person needs. Then I check that line by asking them. I use a map like this all the time. I do that mapping myself, and Claude, the AI I use, helps me get through it faster.

A lot of leaders work out who a decision affects in conversation. I do it with a page and a question. It's the same job.

And anybody who wants to lead can learn this method, however their mind works. They don't have to rely on social cues or charisma to win people over.

With that map, I can work out who has power over a decision, what each person wants, who answers to whom, and how that decision gets made.

Working from a map makes leadership accessible to autistic people especially, and I'll tell you why. With a map, you write down what many leaders pick up from cues, and you check each line by asking, so you can work out who a decision affects without relying on cues.

And say you already know from social cues who a decision affects. You can still make this map with your team. Then anybody on your team can see who that decision affects, and check whether someone's missing.

So here's how I do it. Before you ask anyone to agree to anything, you make a list. Everyone who can affect what you're proposing, and everyone whose work you would change, on your team and on other teams. And you note who you expect to support it, and who you expect to push back.

Then each person on that list gets a line. And each line has four parts.

The first part is their role in the decision. My Decision Charter, that's my framework for who holds which part of a decision, names three roles. Somebody makes the call, somebody holds the facts the decision depends on, and somebody owns how it turns out. If this person holds none of those three, you write "none."

That's the first part of the line. The second part is who they influence, because some people have no role in a decision and they can still change it through someone who has one.

The third part is what they need from the decision. Once you've asked them, you write it in their own words. Until you've asked, you mark it as a guess. When you see that word, you know who you still need to go ask.

And the fourth part is how they want to hear about it. One to one, in writing, or in a meeting. And from whom?

That's one person's line, their role, who they influence, what they need, and how they want to hear.

Then you work out who needs your attention first. That's the people who can change the decision the most and care about it the most. And you also go early to the people whose work it changes the most.

And you're like, okay, four parts for every person. When am I doing that? Each part's only a few words to write. Let's go back to your website team and write those lines for keeping Fridays free of new requests. Here are three of the people on your map.

Your director makes the call, so that's the role. They influence the department heads. What do they need? Each weekend's sale prices on the website before the stores open on Saturday. And that bike repair finished. And they hear your proposal in your next one-on-one.

Your lead developer holds the facts on how many requests from other teams arrive on a Friday, so that's the role. They influence the rest of your team. They need Fridays to finish work like that bike repair page. And they hear your proposal first, from you, one to one.

Then the manager of store marketing. She holds none of the three roles, so you write "none." But she influences your director. What does she need? You haven't asked yet. So you write what you expect. She needs to send the sale prices after the store has set them, late in the week. You mark that as a guess until you ask her, and she hears about it from you before anything changes.

You expect your director and your developer to support your proposal. With the manager, you don't know yet, because you haven't asked her. So who do you talk to? And in what order? First your developer. Then you ask the manager what her team needs. Say she tells you the stores have those prices set by Thursday afternoon.

Your director makes the call, so your director comes last. By then, you've got a plan built on all three lines and your developer's count of how many requests come in on a Friday.

In that plan, you keep Fridays for finishing things like the bike repair page. Store marketing sends the sale prices on Thursday afternoon. It sends everything else, like new banners for the website, earlier in the week. Your developer influences your team, so your developer can walk them through that plan. And your director can do the same with the other department heads.

Let me give you two more examples from very different work.

Say you run the pools for a city parks department. You want to open them an hour later this summer, so your lifeguards can train in the morning. Your head lifeguard goes on the map right away, and she holds the facts on how many people swim in that first hour.

Now, who else does that affect? Say the city's summer day camp brings its kids to swim first thing every morning. The person who runs that camp holds none of the three roles. She influences your parks director, and she hears about it from you before the new hours get posted. What does she need? Maybe the pool open when her campers get there. It's a guess. Only she can tell you what her morning's built around. So you ask her, "What would opening an hour later change for your camp?"

Or say you manage the crews at a landscaping company, and you want to move them to four long days a week. Your senior crew lead knows which jobs run long, so he holds the facts.

Then there's a person in your office who calls customers to set up their mowing days. He's easy to miss. He holds none of the three roles, and he influences the owner, who makes the call. He needs enough notice to call each customer whose mowing day moves. You only find out how much notice by asking him. So next to his line, you write the word "guess."

What's the next proposal you need people in your organization to agree to? Who does it affect? On your team and off it. What's their role in it? What do you actually know they need? And what are you guessing? And who are you going to ask first?

Once your lines are written, AI can help you check them. My AI Cognitive Strategy Matrix is my framework for which parts of the work AI can help with, and which your people keep. So AI can check the role on each of your lines against the three roles in my Decision Charter. And it can list the kinds of people missing from your lines.

You stay accountable for your reasoning about each person. You write every line. And you do the asking. You don't let AI fill in what anyone needs or who they influence, and you don't let it rank anyone.

Your organization can build a map like this into how decisions get made, and give leaders the time to go ask people plainly what they need. Then a manager like the one in store marketing gets asked what her team needs before anything changes. A team like yours can keep its Fridays to finish things like that bike repair page. And a leader who doesn't rely on social cues has a way to work out who a decision affects, and to check it by asking.

So the short version. You get your team and your boss to agree on a change, and nobody has listed the other teams it affects. You're told to get that agreement as if you'd already know who to ask. So you write one line per person, and you check each line by asking that person. And you start on Monday with your next proposal.

You'll find the four parts written out in this week's essay on my site, with the website team's three lines filled in. And a prompt you can copy into your AI to check your own lines.

Here's my ask. I built the show to help leaders who think differently reach senior roles, by changing how organizations are designed. Every person who subscribes is one more leader this work reaches, every week. So subscribe to the Substack, and take each week's skill to your team.

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So on Monday, take the next proposal you need people to agree to. In your own copy of it, write one line for each person it affects, including anyone outside your team, with their role and what they need, and mark every line you guessed.