I've been trying to work out for a while why stakeholder management training is so hard to make stick.
Not hard to explain, exactly. Hard to make stick.
Because the training on it is usually fine. The maps are sound, the influence models are sound, and most managers can draw a power-interest grid before lunch.
And then they go back to their desks and spend the next quarter giving their attention to whoever asked for it loudest.
Which isn't their fault, really. There are only so many hours, and nobody ever made them feel what the quiet ones cost.
I'm not much better at it myself, for what it's worth. I just designed a game about it, which is a very roundabout way of admitting it.
So that's the job I built this programme for.
How it works: play, then the EPPA loop
The programme runs on one loop, and I call it EPPA. Experience, Patterns, Principles, Application.
- Experience. The game. Six rounds of Bloom, played properly, with something on the line.
- Patterns. What kept repeating at the table. Who got tended first, every round, and who got pushed to next round, every round.
- Principles. These come out of the room's own mouth. I don't lecture them in. It lands because they got there.
- Application. A named behaviour, a real situation and a date. The bit that usually gets cut when the clock runs out, and the only bit that changes anything on Monday.
So that is where the AI goes. Only there.
Never inside the game. Bloom is cards, flowers and people across a table, and it stays that way.
The game at the heart of it: Bloom
In Bloom, I hand each team a garden of three plants, five flowers, five actions a round and one instruction. Grow the most flowers.
The whole team shares that garden and those five actions, so every move has to be agreed out loud. Which is where it gets interesting, honestly.
Underneath, every plant is a person, and across the six kinds no two want the same thing. One is cheap, steady and easy to forget. One pays the most flowers in the game and needs pruning before every single bloom. One hands you an extra action on the rounds you leave it alone.
The garden grows every time you buy a plant. The five actions don't.
So sooner or later the team has to decide which plant it is going to stop looking after.
And at the start of every round, any plant the team didn't touch last round takes a hazard. It can't bloom again until somebody spends an action clearing it.
There are no dice in that. The problem lands exactly where the attention stopped.
Six rounds, and nobody packs up at the end. The plant cards stay face up, hazards and all, and that table is what we read in the debrief.
What six rounds of Bloom is built to tell you
Put something on the table and people stop performing their values. Here is what the game is designed to bring out into the open:
- Who the team drops first when it can't tend everything, and whether it's the same plant the second time a hazard lands.
- Who gets parked because they'll deliver anyway. The steady, cheap plant is the easiest one on the table to forget, which is rather the point.
- What the argument over five actions was really about. It is rarely about a plant. It is usually about what the team counts as value - flowers now, or growth later.
- Who nobody invests in. One plant in the market is a bad buy, and I made it that way on purpose. Whether anyone takes it on, and why not, is one of the quieter moments the debrief is built around.
- Who went quiet by round three. Five shared actions means every choice gets said out loud, so silence shows up too.
The debrief is designed to end on one line I like a lot. You never ran out of care today. You ran out of actions.
And on Monday they still get five. So the only question left is who gets them.
Where AI comes in: the Application step
By the time we reach Application, the room has already named its own patterns and its own principles. Nobody needed a machine for that, and I'd honestly rather they didn't have one.
Then each manager turns to their real work:
- They list their real stakeholders. The actual people from their actual quarter. Not a case study about somebody else's company.
- AI turns their own notes into a one-line read per person. Does this person need water, a bigger pot, or space? The same needs they just spent six rounds learning to tell apart.
- They pick one person who cannot pay them back yet. The plant nobody bought, in real life.
- They plan the first give, and put a date on it. A named behaviour, a real situation, a date. All three, or it did not happen.
What stays human is the choice in that third line.
AI can sort the notes quickly. It can't decide to back somebody before there is anything in it for you. That one is theirs, and I think it should be.
What your managers walk out with
- A one-line read on every stakeholder who matters this quarter, built from their own notes in a few minutes.
- One person they've chosen to back, before that person can do anything for them.
- One first give, with a date, so Application is a diary entry and not a good intention.
- Why the hazard always lands on the plant you didn't touch - and the uncomfortable list of real people that idea tends to bring to mind.
- A shared language for the team - water, bigger pot, space - that is easy to remember, mostly because it's a bit silly.
The receipts
On a one-day frontline manager programme for a leading HR-tech platform, using an earlier edition of Bloom, all 13 participants agreed they understood the learning objectives, and 12 of the 13 said they would apply the learning.
That was the earlier Bloom. The team version on this page has no score of its own yet, and I'd rather tell you that than let the number do work it hasn't earned.
I've been training founders and leaders since 2019, with founders in the US, Canada, Australia, Singapore and India.
One programme at a Fortune 100 company scored 8.82/10 as a satisfaction score, across 113 respondents and six session-days. That's one programme, so I won't pretend it is all of them.
Across every scored session-day I have, it is 8.40/10 across 244 respondents. A bit lower, and a lot more honest.
Who it fits
- Someone capable who just got promoted into a role with no authority in it. They're finding out that "because I said so" does not cross a function boundary.
- Technical teams who are superb in their lane and know nobody outside it.
- Teams who agree relationships matter and haven't quite got round to acting on it. Everyone agrees with the slide, and then the week gets busy, which is fair enough.
- The session right before a 360. People arrive at the colleague feedback already knowing their own patterns, so it reads as confirmation instead of an ambush.
New managers, project leads, business partners. Anyone whose results depend on people they cannot instruct.
Who would get more from something else
- When the problem is the org chart, not the people. Bloom changes behaviour. It can't rebuild your structure, and I'd rather say so than take the booking.
- Groups too small to make proper teams. Bloom is played by 2 to 4 teams, and every team has to agree out loud before it moves. Without a few people on each team there is nothing to argue about.
- When the real question is negotiation, authority or decisions rather than influence. I have other programmes for those, and they're all on the programmes page.
- Teams who are genuinely already good at this. Bloom is a diagnosis. If there's nothing to find, you'd be paying me to confirm a thing you knew.
Fair questions
"A garden game, for managers?"
That's a fair worry, and it's usually the first one I hear. It does look harmless. What I'm counting on is that the petals stop mattering fairly quickly, and what's left is a table deciding, out loud, who it is going to stop looking after.
"We don't have much time."
Honestly, this needs more than a quick slot. The game is six rounds, and the debrief and the AI-augmented Application step need their own time after it. We size the session around your group, and I'll tell you on the call what I think it needs rather than squeeze it.
"We've done stakeholder training before."
Most teams have, and it was probably fine. The difference here is that your managers act it out with witnesses first, and then plan one real move on one real person before they leave.
"Can AI really help with something this human?"
With part of it, I think. It's quick at turning messy notes into a clear read. It doesn't choose who to back, and it isn't asked to. Where your managers' notes go, and which tools your company allows, is a fair question too - one I'd rather answer properly for your setup on a call than guess at here.
Worst case? We have a conversation and you come out of it with a clearer brief, whether or not it's Bloom.
Come and see if it fits
Your managers, where the relationships are thin, and my honest answer on whether Bloom is the right heart for it.
Or just tell me what you're trying to fix
I went back and forth on whether to put a form at the end of this page.
Because a form asks you to be tidy about something you are probably still working out. And the enquiries I enjoy most tend to arrive as three messy lines, written by someone who has not finished deciding what they want yet.
So there are two ways in, and I genuinely do not mind which one you use.
Write to me directly at arvindh@puttheplayerfirst.com and say roughly what you want to change. Three lines is plenty. I read my own email.
Or fill this in, if that is easier. It lands in the same inbox.
I answer these myself, usually within a day. Two if I am in a room somewhere with my phone in a bag.
And you are not committing to anything by writing in. Worst case we have a conversation, and you come out of it with a clearer brief than you had this morning.
It won't turn anybody into a natural networker overnight. It just makes the first give a lot more likely to happen, which, for most people, is the hard part anyway.
With love from Bengaluru, this is Arvindh saying over and out.