Stakeholder Mapping
Ford uses a process called stakeholder mapping to create a physical display of the groups involved in a public dialogue about the company. The stakeholder map fits on a computer screen or a wall board and shows who influences, or should influence, the company and what issues most concern them.
In “The Art of Corporate Listening” (Bloomberg BusinessWeek, May 11, 2010), Peter Firestein writes about how a good stakeholder map displays not only the issues that concern each stakeholder group, but it clusters the groups by shared interests. In Baldrige language, this would be stakeholder requirements instead of issues and the list of groups would likely be different. Firestein mentions investors, NGOs, communities, regulators, and news reporters. It seems to me that customers and employees are major key influencers that certainly participate in the public dialogue about a company.
I think Firestein is exactly right when he states that the “most powerful part of stakeholder map-building is the culture change it brings to the management team. They must commit to becoming the source of the map’s content, and the only way they can fulfill that commitment is by engaging actively with the company’s stakeholders. Such engagement sensitizes them to external attitudes about the company.”
In the Organizational Profile of the Baldrige Criteria, one area to address asks about this specific issue:
- What are your key stakeholder groups?
- What are their key requirements and expectations of your products, customer support services, and operations?
- What are the differences in these requirements and expectations among stakeholder groups?
It sounds like a stakeholder map would go a long way toward answering these questions while demonstrating a high level of sophistication about stakeholder requirements. I look forward to seeing the first Baldrige Award winner to embrace the idea.
To read more about stakeholder requirements, click on these articles:
- The Priorities of Leadership
- The Best Performing CEOs in the World
- Walk in Your Customer’s Body Armor
- 9 Ways to Get Closer to Customers
- Dangerous Assumptions about Customers
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Stakeholder mapping is perhaps one of the most influential steps that can be determined at the onset of a project, any project.
Knowing who to go to when an issue arises or a project gets held back, or any reason, can keep stress to a minimum.
Thanks for the link to the Bloomberg article as well. Great read.
“Groups”.
“What are your key stakeholder ‘groups’?”
Baldrige, in the glossary provided with the criteria, defines the word “segment”. However, the definition section is silent on the word “group” or “groups”.
Is a group a subset of a segment?
Or is a group an entity that can comprise members of one or more segments.
Say you’ve segmented your workforce into professionals and hourly workers. Suppose further that a work group comprises members of both segments. That gives the word “group” one meaning.
Is there some commonly accepted definition of “group” such that one can answer the criteria that ask something or other about “segments and groups”?
Thanks.
I can’t speak for the Baldrige folks, but when I write an application, I interpret key stakeholder groups to be customers, employees, shareholders, community, etc., in which case a segment would be a subset of a group. In your example, professionals and hourly workers would be segments of the employee stakeholder group.
Hope that helps.