Keeping your stakeholders in the loop

The importance of stakeholders in strategy

At the end of the day, strategy is developed and executed by people and for people. It's a collaborative process.

We call these people 'stakeholders'. That's because they have a stake in doing the work and in reaping the benefits.

And so, it's incredibly important to keep them in the loop at every stage in the journey. Sometimes they need to be consulted. Other times they need to be informed. At all times we're aiming to get and keep them aligned.

Fortunately, StratNavApp.com makes that incredibly easy.

There are three ways you can engage stakeholders with StratNavApp.com:

1. Managing Stakeholders
2. Communicating with Stakeholders
3. Collaborating with Stakeholders

Managing Stakeholders

You can create records of all of your Stakeholders and record the relevant and important details about them on the platform.

Stakeholders can be:

1. people: including the names, profile images, contact details and other information
2. organisations: including their names, logos, websites, people associated with them and the roles they play, and other information.  (See also Organisations.)
   or
3. groups of people and/or organisations: including links to the people or organisations which make up the group, as well as other information. (See also Groups of Stakeholders.)

You can associate stakeholders with almost every element in StratNavApp.com. Insights, Goals, Initiatives, Actions, Decisions, Issues, etc. And you can describe the stakeholders' roles and relationships with those elements, depending on the context:

• You can use the RASCI framework to define them as Responsible, Accountable, Supporting, to be Consulted, or to be Informed.
• You can define them to be a Performer or a Beneficiary.
• And you can give the stakeholder's role a title and add explanatory text.
• The Initiative RASCI Matrix and Goal RASCI Matrix provide neat summaries of how your Stakeholders relate to your Strategic Goals and Initiatives.

See also:

• Adding Stakeholders to your Strategy
• Managing Stakeholders from LinkedIn with our Bookmarklet
• Manage Stakeholders by email with our Bookmarklet
• CRM integrations

Communicating with Stakeholders

Keeping all of your stakeholders in the loop can be challenging. But with StratNavApp.com it's a snap.

Wherever you've listed people as stakeholders, StratNavApp.com allows you to send them all an email at the click of a button. Simply click on the "Email All" button (the one with the envelope-shaped icon) for that list.

Provided you've entered all of the emails, StratNavApp.com will fire up your email client and prepare a draft email. It will be from you. It will be addressed to each of the listed stakeholders (other than yourself, of course). And the subject will be prepopulated with the title of the strategy element they're all linked to.

You can, of course, add and remove recipients from the email and change the subject. But it's better and quicker to edit than to start from scratch.

If you haven't already captured your stakeholders' email addresses, StratNavApp.com will give you a chance to do so before preparing the draft. And then it will remember them for next time.

It's just one of the many little ways StratNavApp.com makes developing and executing business strategy that much easier.

See also:

• Gmail and G Suite email integration

Collaborating with Stakeholders

Of course, another way you can keep your stakeholders in the loop is to invite them to collaborate with you directly on StratNavApp.com. You can learn more about sharing your projects here.