How many times haven’t we said that businesses need to adapt to their changing environment despite current success. Two companies in the news recently typify this very well. Thomas Cook spent the last year buying retail space and consolidating them under one brand to the detriment of their online business. This 170 year old business is now reliant on ongoing bank finance for survival. This will come at a price.
Yell – Good old fashion yellow pages. Although they are working very hard to build their digital business to have 70% of your revenues from paper based products, is not smart.
No prizes for guessing that they are both reviewing their strategies. It is not just about customers or shareholders.
You feel for Blacks Leisure, the outdoor retail specialist are already reeling from poor trading figures which resulted in profit warnings; they must have been delighted at the thought of selling tents and appropriate equipment to protesters outside St Paul’s Cathedral. The trouble is, they were asked by the Metropolitan Police not to!
Sometimes stakeholders wield far more influence on organisations than executives realise. That is why we constantly encourage our clients to conduct intelligent stakeholder mapping to understand their stakeholders’respective levels of interest and power.
The following two questions are a good start:
What is the importance of the stakeholder(s) to the organisation?
What is the importance of the organisation to the stakeholder(s)?