Stakeholders has become a term we hear bandied about all of the time. And it’s an important one. Whether internal or external, the people who buy from you, work for you, or champion your brand matter. But, it is critical to ask, “ Who matters most to you and your organization?”
When thinking about a crisis and the issues that are most vital at a fundamental level, lesser business leaders will attempt to address the needs of everybody all at once – customers, employees, board members, or investors alike. Superior leaders and communicators strive to meet the needs of those that matter most first. The rest can follow in due time. But when you’re in the eye of the hurricane, you must know – clearly – who carries the most value for your organization.
At Kith, we work with our clients to think about the concept of stakeholders as three distinct groups, something we call the “3 Cs”: communities, customers, and critics. Who is affected the most about the decisions that you’re making? Who will be impacted by the situation as it unfolds? Do they matter most because they may have criticism or commentary about the issue? Or do they matter most because they’re what keeps the business profitable?
Communities are groups of people that are particularly interested in your business and the goods or services you provide. The foremost community is often employees. Communities could also include vendors and your supply chain; volunteers; the people within a geographic region you work within; or a subsection of industry professionals, such as teachers or physicians, who have influence over your communities or customers. A crisis is no time to figure out who they are? Ask yourself now, “Who are the communities that matter most to us?”
Your customers are who purchases or licenses from you, but, as your marketing department has no doubt said, they are not all the same. You cannot market your way out of a crisis, however, so the distinctions are less about buying habits than they are about impacts. Your customers will be impacted in different ways. Your messaging to them should focus more on how they’re being impacted and less about who they are. Again, a crisis is no time to figure this out. You know the biggest things that can go wrong, so now apply those possibilities to your customers and evaluate how it may impact some differently than others.
Lastly are critics, such as the media, government officials, and industry competitors. You may want to put lots of different people into this category, but the point is that they are not communities directly affected by your organization’s actions. They are not customers which you have an economic relationship with. They are commentators, people who have an opinion and say something about your business, but they may not have any actual relationship to you. Critics can be supportive voices. Movie critics don’t just hate movies – they can praise them, too. Critics should fall into the “rest can follow in due time” bucket of stakeholders. If you’re too focused on critics, then your crisis response will miss the mark.
Knowing who among your communities, customers, and critics matters most is crucial to understanding how to respond to a crisis. Otherwise, you will be creating messaging and strategy that doesn’t fit everybody and might fit nobody. And then the real work will begin: now that you know who to contact, you’re off and running with determining the how. And the when. And the who next. (You can read more about these aspects of crisis management here.)
The key is to start responding to a crisis at that “off and running point,” not the “who are my stakeholders” point. Do the last part first, now, when there is no crisis, and you will be more ready to respond to your key stakeholders successfully when there is a crisis.
Kith facilitates crisis preparedness workshops that will help your company attain the clarity, trust and speed you need to respond confidently – no dithering! – to any crisis. We’d be happy to have a conversation about how we can help your company be ready to chart an effective course to reputation protection.
