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[MUSIC]
We’re now going to go back to the foundational principle of all
great communications.
It all starts with the audience.
However for our discussion today we’re going to replace the word audience with
the descriptor stakeholder.
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Merriam Webster defines a stakeholder as one that has a stake in an enterprise,
or one who is involved in or affected by a course of action.
In every aspect in area in our lives, in every job or role we fill.
The reality is we have a corresponding set of stakeholders who have an interest in or
are affected by decision or course of action that we may propose.
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Some of those stakeholders may even have the power over those decisions.
For example,
in my role as a father my primary stakeholders are my three children.
And trust me when I tell you they're very interested in every decision or course of
action that I take especially when it comes to a family budget or vacation.
And my oldest daughter even feels she has the power over those decisions.
In my role as a college professor, I have a different setup of stakeholders,
students or the faculty members my boss.
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The bottom line is that great storytelling starts with your ability to understand
these different stakeholder groups and understand what's important to them.
To understand how they're thinking, feeling or acting.
Ultimately to put yourself in their shoes and ask, what's in it for me?
This is what we call, the WIFM.
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Their customers and consumers, suppliers, employees,
shareholders, the communities in which we work and live,
governments, non-governmental organizations,
the media and of course your competition.
At this point, you may feel overwhelmed that the numbering the diversity of
the groups with whom you may need to communicate, so
we need a way of prioritizing these groups into manageable segments.
The other reality is that no person or
even any company has enough resources, time, people or
money to reach and persuade all of its stakeholder groups equal.
So what you need is a tool or
process that will empower you to focus by helping you figure out,
who, where and how to allocate your resources to achieve the best outcome.
Which includes your odds of success.
We call this tool or process, stakeholder mapping.
I"m now going to share with you a variety of stakeholder maps
that are designed to help you better understand how to group,
prioritize and even allocate resources against the various stakeholder groups
you will need to consider as you develop your story.
The process is simple pick the stakeholder maps
that best suits your particular needs and populate it, or
map it with the key stakeholder groups that are most relevant to you.
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With you or your company or organization in the center,
this map simply identifies the relevant stakeholders
without any attempt to determine their level of importance or priority.
This map is always a great first step.
Second, is a stakeholder which tries to assign relative levels of
importance through the use of radiating concentric circles.
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This map tends to be particularly helpful when you're leading a project or
need to drive alignment within an organization.
Here's an example of how it might work.
Let's say you're in the restaurant business and
you want to open a new location downtown.
You know that you're going to communicate with many stakeholder groups about
this and you're excited to begin telling your story, but who should you focus on?
What groups are truly the most important?
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Now because you don't have the resources to treat each of these groups equally.
You may decide from this map that those stakeholders
in the upper right hand quadrant.
Those with high interest and high level of power influence are the ones that
you're going to focus on you may also decide that all those that
are in the lower left hand quadrant that have low interest and low power,
well they're not going to get very much if any of your resources place against them.
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But just to reinforce the point,
identifying your primary stakeholders doesn't mean you forget the rest.
But at least you have a way of making a differential investment in those that
matter most.
This map is also very valuable because everyone may not agree with you
on how you've mapped out your stakeholders.
So this can be used as a foundation of a great discussion
that can get everyone aligned on the priorities and how to proceed
I'm sure you can also see that depending on what the project issue or
action is the resulting map may look completely different.
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How might that affect the man?
You can see from this example the stakeholders may shift.
Look at what's happened to the media.
They've moved to a more prominent position because the story is now more news worthy.
Lastly, we have a stakeholders issues matrix that helps determine across many
issues which stakeholder groups are most important?
With each of these maps, you have the ability to define the parameter axis.
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Maybe instead of looking at the level of importance,
you want to consider the sensitivity to a topic or
the propensity to act, the possibilities are endless.
And now that we have discussed how to identify and
prioritize our key stakeholders, let's move forward in the storytelling process
by putting some structure around our story.
Tom CollingerExecutive Director Spiegel Research Center
Ernest DuplessisFaculty
Hud EnglehartFaculty
Candy LeeProfessor
