Getting sentimental

Seeking the views of stakeholders is essential in managing and improving corporate reputation.

We work with many companies and organisations that need to know what their stakeholders think about them and their operations. There are several ways to gather this intelligence but the method that works best is a stakeholder sentiment survey.

The survey generally comprises a series of face-to-face, structured interviews that seek the views of people that can make a real difference to the organisation. The survey typically seeks views about:

• the resonance of a corporate strategy;
• areas of concern about the operations, customer service, people or products;
• what challenges and opportunities exist;
• a comparison between competitors; and
• various other insights.

Who do we interview? This is different for each client, but they generally include: customers, government and political representatives, regulators, academics, media, industry associations etc.

Our experience tells us a few truths:

• without exception, we always gather vital intelligence that the organisation needed to know but did not;
• stakeholders are invariably grateful for being asked their views;
• when organisations are brave enough to seek the views of their detractors or critics, they always learn important lessons;
• good leaders want to hear the results in an unvarnished, frank way and share all the results with their management teams;
• even though the interviews are conducted confidentially, most senior stakeholders are happy for their remarks to be shared verbatim; the verbatim comments are where the ‘real gold’ is found;
• the best organisations take on the sentiments gathered in the survey, take the necessary action and share what they have done with their stakeholders;
• by contrast, where the insights are disputed and ignored, the stakeholder sentiment tends to be further eroded.

Politics and process
Beyond the policies we make the following observations on key political and process issues:

• Albanese is a natural consensus builder, and he will deal with respect with the expanded cross bench. Even if the ALP has a workable majority in the House of Representatives it will likely seek to engage on issues of importance to the cross bench, particularly climate action, integrity, equality. It could start by taking Helen Haines’ draft Integrity Commission bill as a sign of good faith. Trickier will be trying to nail a new 2030 target on emissions reduction. It will be conscious to avoid a successful Teal challenge to Labor seats in 2025

• First Ministers’ meeting – the PM will bring together the National Cabinet face to face quickly. He will see many familiar faces noting that Labor MPs are now half of all MPs in the nation’s eight parliaments.
• How will the Liberal Party respond to its dire situation? Will it move further to the right or pursue policies that have a chance of winning back the support of small Liberals who have drifted to the Teal independents. Incoming leader, Peter Dutton, faces significant challenges.
• Senate outcome. Final numbers are still to be determined but it seems likely Labor will still be able to secure most of its legislative agenda with Greens support and other cross benchers if the Coalition opposes it.
• The Parliament is more diverse: more female (up to 44%), more indigenous, and more ethnically representative. The 47th Parliament will first meet on Tuesday 26 July.
• The restoration of a more traditional Cabinet government with an emphasis on ministerial responsibility, accountability and equality (with 10 ministers in the 23 person Cabinet). It also seems likely the role of an apolitical public service will be underscored. The appointment of Prof Glyn Davis AC as the new Secretary to the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet (and de facto, head of the APS) is a nod in the right direction.
• The polls were largely right! Most of the key polls predicted the 2PP outcome within the margin of error albeit the Labor primary vote was over-estimated.

We don’t recommend conducting a stakeholder survey just for the sake of it; it is important that it leads to some practical outcomes. We have witnessed the following improvements as a result of conducting and acting upon a stakeholder survey: modifications to corporate strategy; new corporate collateral to better align with stakeholder feedback; changes in senior roles where stakeholders have identified personnel problems and roadblocks; and new internal programs to enhance the quality of stakeholder engagement by managers.

Mature organisations quickly see the value of a stakeholder survey, but I am also reminded of the adage of a former boss who warned that a stakeholder survey could be like ‘buying a parrot to call you a bastard’! But sometimes, being called a bastard is exactly what you need to reflect and get better.