How do you balance the interests of your different stakeholder groups?
Making each of your stakeholder relationships mutually productive can be challenging, but to balance them all is another complication. Businesses that achieve sustained improvement manage their stakeholder groups effectively, utilising their skillsets and satisfying their concerns.
Objectivity can be difficult to achieve, but as much as possible try to detach yourself and analyse the importance of your stakeholder relationships, and how much time and effort you spend on each. If some are favoured to the detriment of others, readjustment is required.
Understandably, finding the schedule space to specifically engage with each party can be testing. One solution to this is to delegate some of these communications to your colleagues/employees; this will ensure every stakeholder group receives sufficient attention. Another answer may be to rethink your timetable to prioritise the vital meetings which will ensure the most influential groups are recognised.
Try to cultivate an ‘owner mentality’ amongst your employees. This can be achieved by empowering them to take on greater responsibility, thus increasing their engagement with the business. If they feel personally connected to your organisation and can see their impact, this will stimulate loyalty and productivity.
By instilling this ‘owner mentality’ you will transform the way your company functions into an accountability-based culture. Features of this will be more creative thinking, spreading the completion of objectives, and taking ownership of decisions. If accountability is shared more effectively this can release some of the pressure on those further up the organisational structure. Set the parameters and goal, schedule performance updates, and step back.
As consumers we trust our fellow customers far more than the faceless companies we purchase from. Therefore, testimonials, case studies, and recommendations are the new gold all businesses should be looking to mine. Delight your clients so they are willing to go out and autonomously advertise your services.
Have a Net Promoter Score (NPS) to identify who sits in each customer segment, whether this is promoters, passives, or detractors. Give your promoters the tools and material to recommend you, convert your passives into promoters, and neutralise your detractors. By creating a group of ‘raving fans’ you will reduce your marketing spend. This in turn means your profits increase, as your acquisition cost per new customer reduces. Think about how you can stimulate this delight.
Identify your most useful suppliers and work towards establishing long-term partner relationships with them; make them know you appreciate their work. Unrewarding supplier interactions are characterised by a sense of mistrust, usually due to reliability. If any suppliers seem totally unaligned to your company ideals, find someone new. Supplier and purchaser must feel valued in their interactions and be sure that the other understand their wider goals and challenges.
How could you most effectively delegate to increase engagement amongst your employees? What could you do to create ‘raving fans’ amongst your customers/clients? How could you establish long-term reciprocal supplier relationships?