Stakeholder Engagement

Stakeholders are defined as any organization, sector or individual who has an impact on, or stake in, the organization’s delivery of its goods or services. Leaders who want to assure their organization’s future must understand how their whole system of stakeholders impacts delivery of goods or services, positively or negatively.

Businesses, for example, may need to learn how to connect more strongly with:

Competitors and industry organizations
Government, regulatory and standard-setting bodies
Local communities via different groups and key persons
Civil society sector NGOs, e.g. environmental advocate NGOs.
Potential new business partners and/or networks
Cross-sectoral alliances focusing on social issues of relevance to the mission

NGOs may need to learn how to better connect with:

Business partners and business networks with common-cause interests
Government, regulatory and standard-setting bodies with common interests
Local communities via different groups and key persons
Other civil society sector NGOs sharing common concerns.
Sectoral alliances or networks that focus on questions relevant to their mission

Each key stakeholder relationship can enable or limit the organization’s ability to meet its challenges with greater creativity and efficiency. Most leaders effectively manage those stakeholders who impact day-to-day work but are not as clear about how to engage the less obvious, though perhaps equally important, stakeholders. We help leaders understand how to build long-term stakeholder connections and how to formally design these relationships in ways that match the organization’s and the stakeholder’s needs.

Our systems analysis and mapping process provides a way to understand stakeholder impacts and needs and to mesh them with organizational needs and opportunities. We help to forge long-term relationships that can dramatically improve effectiveness, including how to make these relationships part of ongoing plans and strategies. Leaders can learn that working objectively with stakeholders to turn challenges into mutual agreements adds practical and sustainable value to the organization.

For a more detailed discussion of how organizations may evolve their thinking about stakeholder relationships, see PDF article: Integrating Stakeholders: A Strategy Continuum.