If you’ve been around a moment, you’ve heard or read about our Kith formula: Clarity + Trust = Strategic Speed. Today, I want to talk about just one piece of Clarity: Knowing your stakeholders. That means knowing who matters, what they value, and how to communicate with them effectively under pressure. It’s not about guesswork. It’s not about internal alignment alone. It’s about external impact. And it’s fundamental to being crisis ready.
This is the first of four in a series about crisis preparation, and over the next few posts, I’ll break down how to:
- Identify and prioritize your stakeholders
- Understand their values and fears
- Communicate through the right messengers
- Build credibility before you need it
Let’s get into it.
Stakeholder Mapping Is Not Optional. Let me check in here: Do you know who your stakeholders are? Have you done a stakeholder map? Have you figured out who your most important stakeholders are? Are they your employees? Your board? Your customers? Your widget makers?
This is not a throwaway exercise. Stakeholder mapping is foundational. You cannot communicate clearly if you don’t know who you’re talking to and why. And you definitely can’t move fast in a crisis if you don’t know who needs to be in the loop, who can help you carry a message, or who might light a fire under you if they’re ignored.
Here’s the key: Not all stakeholders matter equally in every crisis. You have to prioritize. That changes depending on the context. In a cyber breach? Customers and regulators. In a workplace incident? Employees and their families. In a merger? Investors and key partners.
Do the mapping before the crisis. Because in the moment, speed matters.
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.
