After running an Organizational Health Baseline Survey, one of the reports available to you is an Excel sheet which includes a list of potential influencers and recommended influencers.

Potential influencers – represent those individuals who have the largest spheres of influence in the organization, simple ordering based on total nominations…

Recommended influencers – tries to answer the question – how could I get the smallest set of people to give me an understanding or drive change through the largest part of the organization. It is a set of individuals who are not bottlenecks, but collectively have the most effective way to influence the broader organization with the smallest number of people who influencer different (or complementary parts of the organization). So effectively, while we start with people who have the largest influence, as we continue to construct the list, we look at which next individual will “influence” the largest number of people not already influenced by people selected so far. In an extreme situation, imagine that potential influencers #1 and #2 touch exactly the same individuals. Adding #2 would not yield additional benefit at all. Hence you are checking who has the broadest influence not yet covered.