Most public affairs teams know who their power players are: the committee chair, the agency contact, the coalition partner who can actually move things. The real problem is everyone else. The staffers doing the actual drafting. The mid-level regulator who doesn’t matter yet. The aligned group you’ve met twice and never followed up with. Those relationships don’t disappear — they accumulate into a quiet liability that surfaces at the worst moment: when you need something from someone you haven’t spoken to in a year.
In this episode, Tommy Zei lays out a practical framework for getting ahead of that problem. He breaks down how to build a stakeholder map that’s actually useful in the field (not just a strategy deck artifact), what interaction tracking is really for — and why most small teams skip the one habit that separates teams with institutional memory from teams that start over every cycle. Plus, how to run outreach that punches above your team’s weight without sacrificing the personal touch that makes it land.
If your relationship management only kicks in when you need something, this episode is for you.
