A named category, from Bruce McCarthy & Melissa Appel's Align, of people who hold informal influence over a CEO or other executive despite having no formal authority — no senior title, no direct reports.
They're identified by behavioral clues rather than org-chart position: daily coffee chats with the executive, showing up uninvited to meetings and asking pointed questions, and similar informal facetime. Because their influence doesn't show up on paper, they're easy to miss when building a stakeholder list drawn from the formal hierarchy.
A specific instance of The Matrix: Mapping Real (Informal) Power vs. the Org Chart's general Power Player concept, worth naming separately because the CEO-adjacent case is common enough, and easy enough to overlook, to warrant its own label.
Из тем: Stakeholder Power and Trust