Speaking to stakeholders in their own terms
Jinfo Blog

By Scott Brown

Abstract

You have a communication plan for your stakeholders – now how do you actually speak to them?

Item

You have a communication plan for your stakeholders – now how do you actually speak to them?

We’re comfortable with the language of our departments. We know what we mean when we say “resources”, for example. We know what we do: typically, we provide access to information resources and research services. We know what that means. But to most of our stakeholders, saying “we provide access to information sources” doesn’t really mean much.

Face it, stakeholders care most about their organisational goals, and the things that make them look good, like increased revenue, cost savings and organisational efficiency. This requires a shift in how you might position the impact of your services and resources. For example, rather than reporting, “we conducted X number of research requests for Sales and Marketing”, you can illustrate the impact by saying, “our research contributed to a $24 million sale”.

It’s not always easy to make a direct correlation like this, but the more you can make clear the benefit of your services and resources, the more your stakeholders will “get it”.

Let’s look at two examples of transforming “our terms” into “their terms.”

See the difference? The first column examples are certainly more familiar to us in terms of what we do on a day-to-day basis. The second column examples start to talk about how our work benefits the organisation. The final examples really start to get at why our work is important, in terms the stakeholders can more easily understand.

It’s up to us to be able to translate the “language” of what we do so that our stakeholders can understand the impact. We need to keep our stakeholders informed about our work in terms based on the language of their needs.

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