Embracing Stakeholders in the Age of Uncertainty
In last week’s post, I looked at the smart approach (in my opinion) that Accenture took with its re-branding. Now, I’d like to highlight this quote from the same Forbes story.
“In our work, we see this multi-stakeholder relevance to be key to what we call co-innovation partnership.—Ted Schadler, Forrester.
I’d like to focus you on the words “multi-stakeholder relevance.” The phrase is no doubt clunky and egg-heady, but I contend that those words are the foundation of strategic communications in our time.
Let’s unpack the idea a little bit.
Let’s start with the idea of a stakeholder. This is an idea that has been around and has generated controversy over time. It is not universally adapted by grown-up capitalists, who think want to focus on shareholder capitalism—or, you know, capitalism. (For more on this topic, see our Ultimate Guide to External Stakeholder Management).
Stakeholders Matter, Even to Capitalists
My view is that pitting one against the other is a false choice. The purpose of capitalism will always be to generate a return on investment. There are multiple models that can be employed in that pursuit. One of those is to embrace multi-stakeholder relevance as a means to the end, not the end. A model based on this—and employing the Barras Effect, which I will be outlining in an upcoming post—will create the resilience, agility and ultimately the sustainability it will take to thrive in the short-term and in the long-term. It is the only way (I contend) to create an enterprise that can provide returns as we race into an unknowable future.
Relevance Puts Energy Into Our Network
So, what does relevance have to do with it. The world is bombarding people with inputs. We’ve repeated this so many times that we don’t pay attention to what it means anymore. Taking a step back, as communicators we want people to believe things and to take action. For people to even consider believing us, we have to first be relevant enough that they choose our input to listen to. If we want to continue that “conversation,” we have to be rewarding them by not wasting their time with irrelevant content. And if we want them to take some kind of action, we really need them to believe there’s something in it for them.
Without Multi-Stakeholder Relevance, Enterprises are Always at Risk
How does this impact business? Why not just relevance to our customers?
If we aren’t relevant to our employee stakeholders, we will find employee churn, which creates problems in every department. (We will also have them talking to their friends and family and maybe our customers about what they think).
If we aren’t relevant to our employee-recruitment stakeholders, we will have difficulty hiring and scaling our business up…something impacting many businesses today.
If we aren’t relevant to the media, we miss the opportunity to have other people tell our story—or open the door to them telling a story we don’t want told.
If we aren’t relevant to Google, then we aren’t relevant to anyone in the exploration phase of a buying decision—or an employment decision.
You get the idea. There are more. The flip side is worth seeing. If we are relevant, we have a stable, productive workforce, good people waiting in the wings, good coverage in the media and our online reputation is good. We have a purpose that people have embraced….so when change strikes overnight, we have everything we need to move with agility.
More coming on this topic. As I say, it’s what our times are demanding.