Case Studies › Front Line Manager Programme
Stakeholder Management, Played Not Lectured
How 13 front line managers learned to run a network of competing priorities, through two physical games, not a single slide.
The Challenge
Managing stakeholders is the job. Nobody trains for it.
Front line managers inherit a network of competing priorities, personalities, and power dynamics on day one, then figure it out through trial and error. The brief was clear: build stakeholder skills that transfer to Monday morning, not just make sense in a classroom.
That ruled out lecture. It ruled out frameworks dropped into slides. It meant building an experience where the learning happened inside the doing, with real stakes, real decisions, and real consequences visible in the room.
The Approach
Two physical experiences. Zero passive learning.
One day, two hands-on simulations, and a debrief that tied every move back to a real stakeholder the managers were already carrying into the room.
Activity 01
Bloom
A card-and-resource garden game that turns stakeholder management into a live system you have to play across eight rounds. Every plant is a stakeholder, different needs, timelines, and conditions for success. Five actions per round. You can't tend everyone equally, and that's the entire point.
- PlantsStakeholders. Different needs, timelines, conditions for success.
- 5 actions/roundFinite attention. You can't tend everyone equally.
- HazardsConflicts and blockers. Ignore them and the relationship stops producing.
- PruningManaging expectations. Cutting back is what makes something grow.
- The gardenThe whole map. One plant always affects the others.
Activity 02
Lego Stakeholder Map
A physical 3D build of each manager's real stakeholder ecosystem, every brick a person, relationship, or dependency. You can't be vague with Lego. When it's sitting on the table, everyone sees the gaps, bottlenecks, and hidden dependencies.
Managers presented their models and fielded questions from peers. Patterns emerged that no one had articulated before.
Frameworks
The thinking tools behind the play.
Five frameworks anchored the debrief, connected to what participants had just experienced in the game, not introduced as abstract theory.
- 01
FIDO MOST CITED
Stakeholder classification and response.
- 02
Power–Interest–Impact Grid
Prioritising where to invest your attention.
- 03
Employee Archetypes
Reading the room, adapting by personality.
- 04
Conflict Management
Structured approaches to stakeholder friction.
- 05
Relationship Mapping
Visualising dependencies and influence lines.
Results
Zero negative responses. Across every measure.
Understood the learning objectives
Will apply to their current role (zero disagree)
Learning enriched by facilitator examples
Had ample opportunity to ask questions
What Stuck
In their words.
"FIDO"
Most cited framework, in participant feedback
"The garden metaphor"
Recurring theme across participant responses
"Prioritising stakeholders"
Named by multiple participants as key takeaway
"Conflict management"
Named by multiple participants as key takeaway
Want to run this for your managers?
Bloom is available as a standalone session or as part of a front line manager programme. I design and run every session myself.