iF Quarterly

Do you know your stakeholder ecosystem?

Tools and frameworks for fulfilling your collective potential

Based on hundreds of hours of secondary research, stakeholder interviews, podcast conversations and client work, we’re excited to share with you some fundamental frameworks and guidance that you can use to better understand and serve your stakeholder ecosystem and, in turn, nourish your own long-term success. Putting the ideas behind Stakeholder Capitalism into practice is complex, nuanced and highly collaborative work. Our hope is that these techniques help you make a little more progress no matter where you are on your journey.

The following is excerpted and adjusted from a presentation made by Michael Dix, Intentional Futures CEO and Christian Anibarro, Director of Stakeholder Centered Strategies at the annual Impact Summit hosted by Singularity on December 8th.

This guide can be used by leaders and teams to assess your stakeholder ecosystem, determine opportunities for shared value and drive collaborative innovation through a series of tools, processes and practices.

In the following sections, we’ll walk through three steps that will activate your stakeholder ecosystem to unlock greater impact:

1. Understand who actually has a stake in your business
2. Evaluate those relationships through the lens of your purpose
3. Translate stakeholder value into measurable success outcomes

Step 1: Understand who actually has a stake in your business

Start by identifying a team that will map your initial stakeholder ecosystem. Consider bringing together a diverse group that includes various levels of leadership and interests. With said team, begin by identifying the primary stakeholders in your organization with the following questions in mind:

• Consider who your success actually depends upon
• Who has influence over whether you thrive or fail?
• Who are the stakeholders that are underserved or may be ignored?

Step 2: Evaluate stakeholder relationships through the lens of your purpose

Choose one stakeholder group to start with and reflect on what the needs of that group may be. The key of the exercise is to put yourself into the position of said stakeholder. Strive to identify at least three needs for the chosen stakeholder. Having identified your stakeholder and their needs, you can now delve deeper into your understanding of how you might engage with them. As a team, assess how well you understand your current relationship.

Using the Value Exchange Worksheet, have team members post their assessment of how well they are serving each stakeholder’s needs. This is an opportunity to engage in conversation for reflection and improvement. Some questions to consider:

• How do we create value for this stakeholder today?
• What is the opportunity to improve our relationship with them?
• What risks or threats exist with this stakeholder?
• What is the opportunity to create more value with them?

At this point you have assessed your stakeholder needs from an internal perspective. The next step is to test and correct those assumptions directly with the select stakeholders and others in your organization that may have knowledge and relationships with the stakeholders. This becomes the basis for innovative solution development.

Step 3: Translate stakeholder value into measurable success outcomes

Taking a stakeholder-centered approach can reveal strategic value for your organization. The next step is to identify opportunities to run small tests of change to see how to create additional shared value for your organization. These strategic experiments can provide an important innovation opportunity and be a test lab for a concept that can be scaled up to have significant impact across others in your stakeholder ecosystem.

Take the outputs from the previous sessions and engage in an exercise to identify newly clarified or uncovered stakeholder and organizational needs. Using the following worksheet, map the needs and brainstorm potential tensions or trade-offs that may need to be addressed. Engage in dialogue about how those tensions, constraints and trade-offs may result in new thinking and new requirements.

Tip: Ensure everyone has an opportunity to be heard and considerations are understood. Strive for open thinking to avoid this becoming an exercise of “impossibilities” and restrictive constraints. At this point you are simply documenting “what” you understand about the current state versus ideas for improvement.

Next, move into a brainstorming session to generate ideas for shared value.Use the “Opportunities” worksheet to capture ideas. For each idea, pose two questions:

1. Why is this important to the organization?
2. Why is this important to the stakeholder?

Using the “Evaluate New Solutions” worksheet, evaluate and prioritize ideas that capture aligned interests. Identify who may be involved in teams to follow up and explore tests of change to learn more about the impact of the ideas.

Upon completion of this toolkit, you should have an expanded approach to establishing alignment around key priorities, driving collaboration and measuring your organization’s progress through a broader lens.

Every quarter, Intentional Futures puts out a long-form piece on what we’ve been up to, and what we’re thinking about.

If you’re interested in getting the iF Quarterly directly in your inbox, subscribe to our newsletter here.