What benefits can you gain from involving multiple stakeholders in your strategic thinking?

One of the most critical reasons to cast a wide net is to proactively identify your blind spots. All of us are naturally biased and bringing in multiple stakeholders can help correct those before it's too late. Also, it will help surface questions/pushback that you might receive - and instead prepare for those in advance. However, it's critical that you have the right stakeholders involved; there is a huge difference between naysayers and constructive contributors.

One person's risk is another person's opportunity. Keeping an open mind and asking questions with genuine curiosity will give you various perspectives, that you might not otherwise encounter. When you engage in meaningful (curious and non-judgmental) conversations with your stakeholders, they often possess the insights to mitigate the risks and together you will discover opportunities to establish a compliant and commercially savvy business process. The primary drawback is often fear - fear of the unknown, fear of risk, and fear of failure. By actively engaging and listening to your customers, employees, shareholders, managers, and even competitors, you will gain confidence and identify a range of opportunities to explore. ;-)

Letting people have a seat at the table will always expose different viewpoints, gaps, and strengths, among other opportunities. Senior leaders need to recognize the strength that comes from opinions contrary to their own and be comfortable enough to welcome them to the conversation. Being challenged is something businesses should encourage, and gaining insights from different stakeholders will always provide growth.

It's not about involving a list of multiple stakeholders; It's about involving the right stakeholders. This means a diverse group (the financial strategist, the challenger, the creative, the process-driven etc.). In fact, research shows that teams composed of individuals with diverse backgrounds and skillsets are 30% more efficient in their decision-making. From the many strategic positioning workshops I engaged to date, the most effective ones (and memorable!) were those where all involved stakeholders were at ease to share their ideas and concerns through the session, but were flexible enough to accept that the strongest idea came only after the brainstorm.

Innovation and smart alternatives come from 360 degrees points of view. Listening and taking in serious consideration the opinions of customers, partners, salesforce, frontline workers, administrative staff, etc. help to consider every angle, including those that never crossed your mind. It's a matter of conscious humbleness and strategic inclusion.

It is always the best to approach things in a humble way so you can learn and make the best decision possible for the business. When you can accept that you don’t know everything, you invite additional information, perspective, and diversity of thought that will then position you to make the best decision possible for the company and it’s stakeholders or partners.

Oftentimes we are just too close to the innovation or idea that we generated. We need to see that others' ideas and opinions could provide a creative thinking that we may have completely missed or overlooked as unnecessary. Inspiration comes from every department and having that contribution only strengthens possibilities for the organization.

The best leaders are constantly listening to feedback and learning new things every day. Step out of your comfort zone and surround yourself with creative, collaborative and driven people. Iron sharpens iron!

Gaining stakeholder alignment and acceptance is a critical element for strategy execution. Stakeholders want to understand the rationale of the proposed strategic initiatives and how they would benefit. Therefore investing time and efforts in communicating the intent and benefits go a long way to build the stakeholder trust and alignment. This element of strategy execution often gets limited attention and potentially could create a bottleneck.

One thing I've found helpful is to remember the fairy tale "Sleeping Beauty". Do you know it? when the princess was born, the king and queen invited all the fairy godmothers, but they forgot one. That one came anyway and cursed the baby that she would prick her finder on a spindle (its to do with spinning yarn, you can look it up) and fall asleep for 100 years. Yes, it can be a mistake when someone is not invited, not consulted...but the consequences can be quite large as the king and queen found out. Strategic thinking is to consider not only "who are we leaving out" whose perspective could be useful. but "who are we leaving out" that could actively work against us in ways that could have terrible consequences. Remember Sleeping Beauty!

Crucial to any successful strategic plan is the ability to build trust. This has to be garnered through a deliberate collaborative development process of the plan. It then allows all stakeholders to claim ownership of the vision and strategic priorities. This then translates itself into commitment in execution as people support what they have helped to build.

Involving diverse stakeholders in strategic thinking builds trust and commitment. When stakeholders see their input valued, it fosters trust, and their involvement leads to a more significant commitment to the plan's success. LVMH is known for its commitment to involving multiple stakeholders in its strategic thinking process. LVMH regularly engages with its customers, employees, suppliers, and the communities it operates to gather feedback and insights. They established customer advisory councils to gather feedback on new products and services and conduct employee surveys to identify areas to improve the workplace.

It's human nature to want to be involved in something bigger than yourself. In my experience, involving employees in the formation of your vision, mission, goals, plan to win, KPIs, etc. will make them feel part of things and they will have a vested interest in doing their part to contribute to achieving the plan and its goals. As a leader, you can also make it fun!

Involving diverse stakeholders in strategic thinking aids implementation and evaluation. Committed stakeholders support plan implementation and provide valuable feedback for ongoing evaluation, leading to adjustments and improvements. Gucci is known for its innovative and collaborative approach to strategic thinking and regularly engages with its customers and employees to gather feedback and insights to develop and implement strategic plans aligned with the needs and expectations of all stakeholders. Gucci has established a sustainability council (representatives from academia, industry, and non-profit organizations) to advise the company on its environmental and social initiatives.

Any strategic decision making process should start with the question of why we are doing what we are doing and what we want to achieve as the outcomes. Thus we need to start with the big picture, showcase the goals and then more importantly chart the milestones to get there. If the relevant stakeholders are given visibility to this (even better if they could contribute to this map), they can help formulate what would be the metrics to think about, how to evaluate them and more importantly how to meet or exceed them. The teams will then self-govern about the achievement of the milestones or work through the impediments to the plan. Effective leaders know how to create or foster such an environment in their organisations.

Every organization I've every been part of relied on team member buy-in through participation in the planning. Even in the army, where you could order someone to do something, it was the last resort because it was the least effective way to reach an outcome. People would slow-walk a decision or find another way to undermine it. Only when they had an opportunity to influence a plan and make it their own, would they support it. It's a pretty easy formula: participation = buy-in = implementation. Everyone gets a vote as to whether or not they embrace an initiative and how much effort they put in.

You can leverage your experience to help the group achieving a smooth and fast implementation and using smart metrics to evaluate and facilitate discussion on corrective actions.

Execution requires the coordinated effort of many groups, so it's quite obvious that when the groups are aligned, things go smoother and faster.

Communicating your strategic plans to your stakeholders ensures that the whole thing isn't going to be quietly forgotten! If you know you are going to share the strategic plan then you will do a much better job of making it realistic and concrete and not just a bunch of vague aspirations.

Involving multiple stakeholders, in particular from younger folks, people outside your silo and people who come from different ethnic backgrounds can not only strengthen your strategy but can also prepare your next generation of leaders. In the states, baby boomers are retiring. To the extent that they've engaged the rising leaders strengthens their organization. When we were brought in by our leaders and were given responsibilities, we learned how to become a leader. We learned by doing and they taught us the pattern, the culture and the expectations. No body lives forever. No job lasts forever. But if you bring in a mix of young, diverse, old and other talent you may be able to create a culture and value that transcends your tenure.

Much of organizational or functional strategy development today is obsessed with defining objectives. That is not enough. It is critical to know what the constraints and resources both your company and the market (customers, competitors, etc.) are operating with. Figuring this out enables you to set a strategy of how do we get from here, NOW, to there, OBJECTIVE, taking into account what both we and have to do as an organization and what our current and prospective customers would have to do for US to achieve that objective. Thinking this way, makes your strategy about how you can systemically focus on reducing the constraints and increasing the resources available for your customers. The strategy isn't worth pursuing otherwise.

When we interview candidates, especially those coming from larger corporations, we often hear that they felt like just a number. Their contributions to the larger business were neglected or they felt lost. Generally speaking, people want to feel valued and that they are actually having an impact on the success of the business. While this is not to say everyone should be involved, don't ever underestimate the importance to getting your top talent involved in decisions where appropriate. It's hard for an employee to leave if they feel heard and valued.

Involving multiple stakeholders has many benefits. One not often mentioned is setting the tone for the culture and developing younger talent. An open collaborative culture, not only brings people together, it gets key stakeholders emotionally invested in the outcome. This is really important as today’s workforce becomes one of the most diverse and multigenerational in history.