Toolkit
World-Changing Impact
Stakeholder Mapping
What
Stakeholder mapping is a collaborative process of research, debate, and discussion that draws from multiple perspectives to determine a key list of stakeholders across the entire stakeholder spectrum. The process of stakeholder mapping is as important as the result, and the quality of the process depends heavily on the knowledge of the people participating.
Why
Stakeholder mapping makes visible the connections between the work the company does and its impact on all valued stakeholders including, employees, investors, customers, supply chain partners, society and the environment. Impact can be assessed by what non-financial outcomes affect stakeholders in a company’s wider orbit of concern.
How
Set up. Gather a cross-functional group of internal participants to engage in this process. Identify sources external to the company who may have important knowledge about or perspective on the issues, and reach out to these sources for input and participation. Finally, identify a facilitator who can facilitate your work through the following activities. Create a semi-circle of chairs gathered around a whiteboard of flip-chart
Every individual from the cross-functional team gets a chance to contribute their ideas, all moderated by a facilitator chosen to keep the conversation moving. Cross-functional team-members take the lead filling in the stakeholder needs with which they are most closely associated and most familiar.
Capture all your work in writing to help with future steps.
Mapping is broken down into four phases:
- Identifying: listing relevant groups, organizations, and people.
- Brainstorm a list of stakeholders without screening, including everyone who has an interest in your objectives today and who may have one tomorrow. Use the following list to help you brainstorm: Owners (e.g. investors, shareholders, agents, analysts, and ratings agencies) Customers (e.g. direct customers, indirect customers, and advocates) Employees (e.g. current employees, potential employees, retirees, representatives, and dependents) Industry (e.g. suppliers, competitors, industry associations, industry opinion leaders, and media, Community (e.g. residents near company facilities, chambers of commerce, resident associations, schools, community organizations, and special interest groups) Environment (e.g. nature, nonhuman species, future generations, scientists, ecologists, spiritual communities, advocates, and NGOs) Government (e.g. public authorities, and local policymakers; regulators; and opinion leaders) Civil society organizations (e.g. NGOs, faith-based organizations, and labor unions)
- Analyzing: understanding stakeholder perspectives and interests.
- Once you have identified a list of stakeholders, it is useful to do further analysis to better understand their relevance and the perspective they offer, to understand their relationship to the issue(s) and each other, and to prioritize based on their relative usefulness for this engagement. Here a list of criteria to help you analyze each identified stakeholder
- Contribution (value): Does the stakeholder have information, counsel, or expertise on the issue that could be helpful to the company?
- Legitimacy: How legitimate is the stakeholder’s claim for engagement? •Willingness to engage: How willing is the stakeholder to engage?
- Influence: How much influence does the stakeholder have? (You will need to clarify “who” they influence, e.g., other companies, NGOs, consumers, investors, etc.)
- Necessity of involvement: Is this someone who could derail or delegitimize the process if they were not included in the engagement?
- Action: Use these five criteria to create and populate a chart with short descriptions of how stakeholders fulfill them. Assign values (low, medium, or high) to these stakeholders. This first data set will help you decide which stakeholders to engage. It is not practical and usually not necessary to engage with all stakeholder groups with the same level of intensity all of the time. Being strategic and clear about whom you are engaging with and why, before jumping in, can help save both time and money.
- Mapping: visualizing relationships to objectives and other stakeholders.
- Prioritizing: ranking stakeholder relevance and identifying issues
- For each of the key stakeholders, identify at least 3 needs for each.
- Which stakeholders do you feel is most neglected, and why?
- Identify the stakeholder relationship that, if we could strengthen it, would have the greatest impact on the business.
- Do we have any “silent” stakeholders that we may not have considered?
- Consider the following issues for each of your stakeholders:
Attributions
Conscious Capitalism Field Guide by Sisodia, Henry and Eckschmidt, HBR, 2018
by Montaia