Beyond Clients and Teams: The Forgotten Stakeholder in Your Business
When you ask founders and leaders who their most important stakeholders are they will always respond with the obvious two (their clients / their team), will normally then reference the shareholders, and sometimes reference suppliers.
But they will seldom reference arguably the most important one - future them.
They don’t have a concept of them as being a stakeholder whom they need to consider, and ideally delight.
The unintended consequence of this blind spot is that they don’t consider the impact on them of any decision they make, the strategy they create, or the targets they set.
That is a potentially costly oversight given that they are often one of, if not the, most important assets the company has.
Why would you not consider the impact on you, when you consider the impact on other assets like cash.
Reframe: Take care of ALL your assets
Obviously if you deplete your cash reserves your company is going to be in trouble but doesn’t the same logic apply to yourself and your leaders.
You can’t run a sustainable business without enough cash, but you equally can’t run a sustainable business with a depleted & drained leadership team.
How are you measuring and monitoring your own and your leadership teams current capacity? - This is one of the questions we asked the founder we work with regularly.
Rethink: What’s the impact?
The unconsidered question is how will this decision impact me in the future?
If we set a 10% growth target is that going to put too much strain on the leadership team and me personally?
10% growth might delight the shareholders, but would 5% be a more considered target which would satisfy ALL stakeholders?
What would the cost be of the extra 5% and is the extra profit worth the potential impact?
Refocus: Pause and Then Decide
Generally most decisions are less urgent than we think they are.
We have time to pause, and consider impacts across our stakeholders if we just give ourselves the time to do that.
First time leaders feel the need to react at pace.
Experience leaders have learnt to insert a pause. They know a considered response is better for all concerned despite the pressure to act instantly.
The pause gives you the chance to ask that unconsidered question - What will be the potential impact of this decision on ‘future me’?
Remember you are the most important stakeholder here.
