Who counts as a stakeholder, and how to rank them

Affected by, or affecting

A stakeholder is anyone who is affected by the decision or who can affect it. Not only the client; not only the shareholders; not only whoever happens to be in the meeting. The definition is deliberately wide, because the stakeholders you leave out of stage 1 are the criteria you will be missing in stage 3 and the risks you will not have seen in stage 4. Two groups are forgotten most often: employees (the decision is about a machine, and the people who run it vanish from the list) and suppliers or the community (the trade printer who would take the outsourced work, the town that loses two jobs).

Split the list into internal (inside the organisation) and external (outside it), because the two groups are reached differently and want different things.

Worked example — Lakeshore's stakeholders

From the brief and the facts your firm has gathered since:

Internal. Priya Raman, the owner — wants reliable production and to preserve cash. The two press operators — want their jobs; an outsourcing decision removes them. The other four staff — want the business to survive and the workload to be sane.

External. The three key accounts (a regional-government catalogue, a school board, a real-estate brokerage — together $180,000 of revenue at a 42 % margin) — want on-time delivery; two have threatened to move. The bank — wants the debt serviced and cares about how much more the business can borrow. The press vendor — wants to sell a $260,000 press. The Hamilton trade printer — wants the large-format work if it is outsourced.

Seven stakeholders. Now rank them, because a stage-1 response that lists seven with equal weight has not told the reader whose objectives drive the decision.

The four ranking questions

Ask of each stakeholder, in order:

1. Legitimacy — is this a genuine stakeholder, with a real stake, or just a loud voice?
2. What do we need from them — money, work, approval, custom? How much depends on it?
3. Replaceability — if they walked away, could they be replaced, and at what cost?
4. Urgency — how soon does their claim have to be answered?

Applied to Lakeshore: the key accounts and Priya rank first — legitimate, the business cannot survive without the accounts' revenue or the owner's decision, the accounts are not replaceable at that margin, and two of them are threatening to leave now. The press operators rank next: legitimate, needed to run any press, hard to replace with experience, and urgent only if outsourcing is chosen. The bank ranks in the middle: legitimate and needed for any borrowing option, but not urgent unless alternative B is chosen. The press vendor ranks last: a legitimate party with a stake in the sale, but entirely replaceable — there are other vendors — and not urgent. The trade printer sits just above it, relevant to one alternative only.

Notice the ranking is not "who shouts loudest" (the vendor's sales rep phones every week) and not "who pays" (the accounts pay, but so would a new account). It is the four questions, in order.

Rank the clinic's stakeholders yourself

For Grand River Family Dental: the two dentists (owners — want fewer missed appointments, low cost, no disruption); Tomas Reyes (office manager — will run the system; wants fewer double-bookings); the two receptionists (will use it daily; want it easy); patients (want to book easily and not be double-booked — legitimate, numerous, urgent when double-booked); the software vendor (replaceable); the consultancy itself (your firm — wants a client well served). Rank them: dentists and patients first (the practice cannot run without either; the patients are the ones harmed now), Tomas and the receptionists next (they will make or break the implementation), the vendor last. The exam item below asks for this list with a reason on each line.