How to Make Your Stakeholders Happy & Get the Most Out of Them

How to Make Your Stakeholders Happy

To make your stakeholders happy, you will need to first identify all your key stakeholders. Then, you must make sure that you have a comprehensive but lean portfolio of your stakeholders. In other words, that there are no missing relationships (which you should have but do not) and no redundant relationships that you should not have, but do. All identified missing relationships must be established and all redundant must be terminated.

Then you must identify aggregate (FFES) needs and wants of each stakeholder (develop comprehensive stakeholder profiles). As well as individual ‘buttons’ that need to be pushed to make each stakeholder do what you want him or her to do (you will need it in the next section).

Then you must (1) create high expectations of your company – using the proper corporate communication tools; (2) satisfy the needs and desires of your stakeholders, making sure that you exceed their expectations; and (3) make sure that their expectations match the reality.

How to Get the Most Out of Your Stakeholders

To get the most out of your stakeholders (you must do it to ensure corporate harmony), you must (1) identify the aggregate (FFES) needs of your company; (2) identify stakeholders’ decisions and actions (‘services’) needed to satisfy these needs; and (3) make your stakeholders make the decisions and perform actions that will satisfy these needs (you will need their ‘buttons’ for that).

To make it happen, you will need your stakeholders' map (see the diagram).