Stakeholders are the ecosystem that shapes your success.
Their perception, engagement and support ripple through your operations, reputation and growth potential. Understanding your stakeholder landscape is not just about listing names and titles, it’s about seeing how relationships influence outcomes and where you have the most impact.
Every business has stakeholders. Some are obvious, like customers, employees, partners, and suppliers, and others less visible, such as regulators, industry bodies, community groups, investors, and even future customers. Yet too often, organisations only think about them when something goes wrong: a missed approval, a dissatisfied partner, or community backlash. The reality is that stakeholders don’t just react to problems; they influence every decision, every outcome, and ultimately the reputation and resilience of your organisation. How they experience your business, how seen, respected, and engaged they feel, directly shapes their behaviour, advocacy, and willingness to collaborate. That’s why understanding and intentionally designing stakeholder experience isn’t a nice-to-have; it’s a business imperative.
Why stakeholder experience matters
It’s tempting to think of stakeholder management as a corporate compliance exercise. Send the newsletter, hold a meeting, tick a box. But consider the impact of this, a supplier who feels undervalued might slow deliveries, a trade partner who feels ignored might push business elsewhere and a community that feels overlooked might actively resist your projects.
Conversely, when stakeholders experience intentional, thoughtful engagement, they become allies. They advocate for your brand, collaborate proactively and offer support when challenges arise. Stakeholder experience is about designing relationships that are deliberate, not accidental.
Seeing the whole landscape
Start by identifying who matters. Beyond your customers, think broadly about who influences your ability to deliver, grow and maintain credibility. Common categories include:
- Internal stakeholders employees, leadership team, boards
- Commercial partners suppliers, trade partners, distributors
- Regulatory & industry bodies local councils, regulators, sector associations
- Community & social stakeholders local communities, advocacy groups, media
- Investors & funders your bank, shareholders or grant providers
Mapping these groups visually is a powerful exercise. It reveals clusters, overlaps and gaps, showing not only who matters, but how critical each group is to your business outcomes.
Prioritising relationships
Once you’ve identified stakeholders, the next step is prioritisation. Not all relationships require equal effort, but all should be considered in strategy and planning. One useful framework is to plot stakeholders along two axes:
Impact on your business
How much influence does this stakeholder have on your success?
Proximity How closely connected are they to your daily operations or strategic decisions?
High-impact, high-proximity stakeholders demand active management, consistent communication, early involvement in decisions and personalised engagement. Low-impact, low-proximity stakeholders may only need periodic updates or monitoring.
This approach prevents “spray-and-pray” engagement, where energy is wasted on low-value connections while critical relationships are neglected.
Designing stakeholder experiences
Understanding your landscape is only half the battle, you must also shape how stakeholders experience their relationship with you. Consider:
- Clarity Are roles, expectations and processes clearly communicated?
- Reliability Do you, and they, consistently deliver on promises?
- Recognition Do stakeholders feel their contribution or engagement is valued?
- Access Can stakeholders easily reach the right person when needed?
Small gestures, like sharing milestones with partners, can shift a relationship from transactional to meaningful. Over time, these experiences compound into trust, advocacy and resilience.
A living map
Your stakeholder landscape is not static. Markets evolve, regulations change, partnerships shift and new players emerge. A stakeholder map should be reviewed and updated regularly and should inform decisions across marketing, operations, governance and growth strategy.
For leaders, the map becomes a lens for prioritising attention, aligning resources and spotting risks before they become problems. For teams, it’s a shared reference point, everyone knows who matters, why and how they should engage.
Ultimately, the company you keep matters. By intentionally mapping, prioritising and designing experiences for your stakeholders, you turn what is often an invisible network into a strategic advantage.
