A Winning Formula: Incorporating Stakeholders’ Perspectives for Effective Strategy Execution

Written by Liana Paraschiv on February 7, 2025. Posted in Strategy, Strategy Execution

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The complexity of the world today is affecting many layers of society, from global governments to companies to professional and personal pursuits. What this means for organizations is their decisions and actions are influenced by the new intricacies brought about by technological advancements, globalization, cultural diversity, and consumers’ increasing sophistication. Strategizing for success in such an environment has become more complex due to the varied interests, goals, and expectations of stakeholders.

The challenge for organizations is to recognize and reconcile these diverse interests while aligning them with the overall mission and objectives of the enterprise.

Therefore, organizations should address and enhance stakeholder engagement and incorporate their feedback during strategy execution to minimize any negative impacts and increase the likelihood of successful plan implementation. A proactive approach is required to meet these challenges, starting with the early identification of stakeholders and the analysis of their expectations and interests. After identification, it is essential to group stakeholders according to specific criteria. This ensures a certain degree of consistency in the approach and organizational messaging and helps address their expectations uniformly.

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The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is an example of an organization that manages the involvement of its stakeholders. NASA provides some examples of stakeholders identified using a Life Cycle Stage approach. Considering the planetary impact of its missions—”NASA explores the unknown in air and space, innovates for the benefit of humanity, and inspires the world through discovery”—a broad spectrum of stakeholders is involved, from internal staff to the planetary environment and the public (see Figure 1).

Figure 1. NASA Stakeholder Identification throughout the Life Cycle | Adapted from the NASA website

NASA has an extensive approach to stakeholder identification and their expectations. The organization links them with the strategic objectives that the mission is meant to achieve. Understanding the mission objectives ensures that the project team collectively works toward a shared vision.

NASA also acknowledges the importance of involving stakeholders in all phases of a project. According to the organization, this involvement should be incorporated as an intrinsic “self-correcting feedback loop,” significantly improving the likelihood of mission success.

Capturing this comprehensive feedback is crucial as it avoids unexpected features emerging later in the life cycle. For example, space asset protection may call for certain design modifications, which could be costly to incorporate into a system that has already been developed. Reaching an understanding between the technical team and stakeholders about what is expected or intended for the system/product is crucial in the operational execution of the mission.

The organization ensures that the technical team comprehensively grasps the expectations and how they can be fulfilled by the product. Furthermore, it ensures that the stakeholders have reached a consensus on this understanding. In situations where it is determined that there are gaps or unclear statements, this procedure could lead to further improvement of the first set of stakeholder expectations.

Figure 2. NASA Information Flow for Stakeholder Identification | Adapted from the NASA website

One reason for strategy execution failure often stems from neglecting stakeholders who wield a significant influence over implementation. Early engagement ensures that diverse perspectives are considered during the strategy development phase, leading to a more comprehensive and well-informed plan. Continually engaging stakeholders fosters a culture of transparency, trust, and accountability throughout execution.

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Effective stakeholder management requires two things throughout the process: communication and active collaboration. As the organization advances through strategy execution, ongoing communication and collaboration with stakeholders help in addressing challenges, obtaining valuable feedback, and making necessary adjustments in real-time.

Therefore, an inclusive and continuous approach to stakeholder involvement at all stages of strategy execution is a key driver for success, ensuring that the strategy remains adaptable, responsive, and aligned with the overarching goals of the organization.

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Editor’s Note: This was originally published in Performance Magazine Issue No. 29, 2024 – Strategy Management Edition.

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How can a motivational culture impact the performance of public servants?

Written by Malek Ghazo on February 12, 2024. Posted in Articles, Organisational performance

Outstanding performance that can sustain positive results in the future is one of the key elements of organizational excellence.

Considering organizational excellence as what can drive organizations to a brighter future in terms of more profits, cost reduction, more customer satisfaction, referrals, better net promoter score; it is important to highlight the three pillars of the excellence model from the EFQM model 2020; direction, execution and results.

Having this in mind, the model stresses the need for methodological approach where we develop practices and processes, integrate them into the organization towards agile, effective, and efficient execution, in order to achieve better performance results internally (strategic and operational) and externally as perceptions from stakeholders (customers, citizens, and beneficiaries), which can sustain positively in the future.

The third criterion of the model, namely “Engaging Stakeholders,” focuses on ensuring continuous and positive engagement with all key stakeholders of the organization including employees/public servants. Employees are therefore seen as a key stakeholder, and having them as an integral part of any organizational excellence model emphasizes the need to shift the public sector’s focus from the traditional way of operations, in which public servants are only there to process the requests of citizens, try on their own to be energetic and efficient, awaiting their retirement, to a more competitive way, in which they compete with the private sector’s staff in terms of service excellence.

For this shift to happen, the key players are the employees, who will need to feel the need, accept and change towards a different mindset where they consider themselves not just as public servants but as drivers towards the public sector’s and country’s prosperity.

Leaders need to approve such a shift, align it with organizational purpose, direct it internally and externally, support it with the right values, allow change management to tackle all what needs to change step by step, and catalyze it with motivational culture.

A motivational culture can help public servants create ideas to improve, and innovate in the direction of efficiency and agility, so that they can get recognized internally and externally. Motivate them to be proud ambassadors for the country’s welfare. Motivate them so that they can understand and fully believe that they are the primary drivers of success.

Although motivation is one word, thousands of research papers have talked about it! So, let’s get back to the foundation of human beings without further complications: aren’t we survivors? Haven’t we gone through so many crises and changes in this world and made it safely in 2022? Accordingly, the desire to see what tomorrow holds for us and to consider what we may do now to get a greater return tomorrow is what drives us to get out of bed each morning in search of a better tomorrow.

Finally, I would like to refer to the very significant connection between motivation and sustainability. Motivation is one of the components of sustainability, which ensures that resources are preserved for current generations as well as all future ones.

Will sustainability direction, focus and efforts succeed? It will all depend on whether we, people, feel ourselves part of it and we are motivated enough to invest in it. How to feel this way and how to be motivated? Simply by ensuring our sense of belonging and our ability to effect the necessary change, both for our benefit and the benefit of all future generations.

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