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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Fachliteratur
- Sprache: Englisch
Learn to uncover what your managers, clients, customers and other stakeholders need before doing what they ask
People don't know what they need. The wants we communicate to others are shaped by our subconscious and the familiar, and limited by what we think is possible. But they don't always reflect our actual needs.
In Stakeholder Whispering: Uncover What People Need Before Doing What They Ask, author Bill Shander demonstrates how to get from your stakeholders' "order"—what they're asking for—to what they really need. You'll learn how to uncover the needs and desires of your clients, colleagues, bosses, customers, and other stakeholders based on what they ask for and how they ask for it, and how to deliver products and services that meet those needs.
Inside the book:
- Help your stakeholders accomplish their goals and make the best decisions possible by helping them see what they really need
- Shift from executing on tactics driven by others' commands, to strategic action driven by underlying needs
- Transform your organization from one filled with "order-takers" into one where people work collaboratively to meet goal-oriented requirements
Perfect for managers, executives, and other business leaders, Stakeholder Whispering will also earn a place on the bookshelves of entrepreneurs, founders, designers, product and project managers, UX experts, data and business analysts, and anyone else hoping to better meet the expectations of their coworkers, managers, clients, and customers.
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Seitenzahl: 346
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025
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Table of Contents
Cover
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Preface
Acknowledgements
Whisper While You Work
Lowercase “w” whispering
Uppercase “W” Whispering
How to Read This Book
What’s a Stakeholder?
Pause and Think
The Margins Aren’t Marginal!
Notes
Part I: What & Why
Chapter 1: Nothing Is As It Seems
Atomic Scale
Quantum Scale
Universal Scale
Human Scale
Fast and Slow Thinking
Biases, Heuristics, Priming, and More
OK, So…
Oops!
Notes
Chapter 2: More Rolling Stones, Less Coldplay
The Wisdom of Coldplay
The Wisdom of the Stones
Living Up to That Ideal
But Don’t Rage Against the Machine!
Notes
Chapter 3: Everything Is UX
Whoa There, Fella…Design?
Who’s Running This Asylum?
User-centered Design
Phooey to Feature Lists
Test, Test, Test
Notes
Chapter 4: Who Are You?
Yes, This Book Is For You
Part II: How Ideas
Chapter 5: You Belong
Step into the Breach
Luck Favors the Prepared
(Not) Just Bowing to Authority
Finding the Balance
Speak Up!
Notes
Chapter 6: Just Asking Questions
The Socratic Method
I’m Confused
Questions Are a Two-way Street
How, in Broad Strokes
Notes
Chapter 7: Useful Paranoia
Predicting the Future
Useful Paranoia
Critical Thinking Is Domain Specific
Notes
Chapter 8: Kill the Cat
Missing Curiosity
Curiosity Rises in Tandem with Knowledge and Other Important Things
Notes
Chapter 9: Can You Hear Me Now?
Focus
Interruption-free
Attention
Nonverbal Cues
Total Meaning
Notes
Chapter 10: A Rigid and Flexible Process
Who’s There?
Terms of Engagement
Notes
Chapter 11: Peeling the Stakeholder Onion
Failure to Peel
How to Peel
Notes
Part III: How Hands-on
Chapter 12: How to Run a Therapy Session
The Socratic Method
A Weird (True) Hypothetical
Questions >> Tension >> Aporia >> Introspection
Notes
Chapter 13: I Feel You
Empathy, Conceptually
Developing Empathy
The Problem with Empathy
Notes
Chapter 14: Starting Broad, Digging Deep
Starting Open-ended
The Five Whys
The Dance of the Six Ws
Diverge and Converge
Questions to Guide You
Notes
Chapter 15: Chunky Segmentation
Chunking
Chunk Investigation
Note
Chapter 16: Gained in Translation
What’s in a Name?
Searching for Synonyms
Chapter 17: The Art of the (Im)Possible
Bummer, Dude
Unicorns and Rainbows!
Dance between the Unicorns and Demons
What If?
Notes
Chapter 18: Bobbing for Apples
The Dance of the Snotty Water
Prepare Your Apples
Watch for Rotten Apples
Note
Chapter 19: Silence Is Golden
Chapter 20: Good Questions
Fast and Slow Questions
Unconventional Questions
Leading (or Not) Questions
No Stupid Questions
Rhetorical Questions
How Matters
Notes
Chapter 21: Turn It Around
Flip the Script
Get Them Asking Questions, Even Without Role-Playing
Notes
Chapter 22: Whispering En Masse
Group Therapy
Magpies and Elk
Sculpt those Group Dynamics
Embarrass Yourself
Notes
Chapter 23: Let’s Talk About Bias, Baby
Notes
Chapter 24: What It’s Really All About
Chapter 25: Trouble
Imagination Deficit
Seeing but Not Caring
Fear
White-knuckled Control
Uncovering Sacred Cows
Need for Approval/Affection
The Reluctant Answerer
Were You Talking?
Whispering by Proxy
The Genius Leader
The Passive-aggressive Leader
Culture
You
Notes
Chapter 26: When You Know You’re Done
Define Success
They Adopt Your Language/Process/Thinking
Two-way Whispering
The Element of Surprise
Notes
Part IV: Now What
Chapter 27: Prequalifying Whisperability
Brown M&Ms
Techniques for Spotting the Un-Whisperable
Notes
Chapter 28: Influence Without Authority
When Influence Will Come Up
Fast Versus Slow; Click, Whirr!
It Ain’t Easy
Managing Up
Persuasive Techniques: Listening
Persuasive Techniques: Reciprocity
Persuasive Techniques: Commitment and Consistency
Persuasive Techniques: Social Proof
Persuasive Techniques: Liking
Persuasive Techniques: Authority
Persuasive Techniques: Scarcity
Persuasive Techniques: Two More Things
Yeah, But…
Notes
Chapter 29: Final Thoughts, Including Some Love for the Stakeholders
Be a Leader, Not a Manager
Note
Index
End User License Agreement
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Preface
Acknowledgements
Whisper While You Work
Begin Reading
Index
End User License Agreement
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Stakeholder Whispering
Uncover What People Need Before Doing What They Ask
Bill Shander
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Preface
“How can I convince my boss to do what you’re suggesting?” is the most common question I get when I’m teaching or speaking at conferences about what I do for a living. The answer, unfortunately, is that you kind of can’t convince anyone of anything. But you can help them convince themselves. And that’s what this book is really about.
Ah, so it’s a book about persuasion? Not really, though there is a bit about that in here. Mostly, this is book about the art of the conversation you can have with your stakeholders to help them figure out what they really need, which is often not the same thing they’ve asked you for.
Your boss says, “Put together a report about X, Y, and Z.” Before you hop to it, you should be asking yourself, “Is that what they really need? Or maybe it’s really a slide deck about A, B, and C?”
There is a magical way to conduct a conversation with your stakeholders to help them figure out what it is they’re really asking for (because they probably don’t know themselves), and WHY. This conversation will help guide them through a journey of self-discovery where the “aha moment” leads to great insights about the true underlying needs behind their requests. This will lead to more refined requests. Those refined requests will reduce waste, recapture lost time, save countless budgets, and increase your job satisfaction and the quality of work you do. It will make your stakeholders happy, and in the long run, it will improve your career.
How can I be so sure? Because this is what I’ve been doing for my entire career. For 30 years, I’ve been helping my clients uncover their real needs before jumping in and doing what they ask. My clients have included prominent brands and individuals across the entire spectrum of business, government, and nongovernmental organizations. Many are household names, and most are return clients. They hire me because of these conversations I have with them as much as for the actual design work I do (because this is part of successful design work). And then when we start executing on those tasks, I keep doing it every step of the way because it’s not a one-time thing. It’s a way of life.
“Bill, we need a dashboard about ABC.”
“Are you sure ABC is the right data? And is a dashboard the best way to present it?”
“Hmmm…maybe…I guess we should think that through…”
“Let’s start with who’s going to be using this dashboard…or whatever…tell me everything you can think of about them!” And so on.
So, is this book for dashboard designers and report creators? Yes. Is it only for them? Absolutely not. If you have stakeholders (don’t literally all of us have stakeholders?), and if you are a knowledge worker, then this book is for you. Because while my career has been focused on designing and creating user experiences, and some of the examples I share are about that, what I have learned applies to anyone doing any knowledge work. Why? Because all knowledge work is design.
Huh?
Yes, all knowledge work is design. Design is simply problem-solving; it’s not about making pretty pictures. It’s about understanding a challenge and creating a solution for that challenge. The ONLY way to do this is to REALLY understand the challenge – to unearth that underlying need behind the challenge. The simplest explanation in design is a client may say “make the button blue,” but the real need is they want people to notice a button exists and to click it.
In your world, when you’re doing your work and your stakeholders ask you to perform a task, you should be asking if that task, and the way they want you to do it, is going to solve the real needs driving the request. This book will make the case for how critical this is (because humans are flawed and the underlying needs are frequently hidden and distorted) and teach you the big ideas as well as specific tactics to conduct those transcendental conversations that will help you and your stakeholders succeed.
That is the art of Stakeholder Whispering. You need it. So, keep reading!
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank all of my stakeholders over the years. The Whisperable and the Unwhisperable. Working with each and every one of them has been a pleasure and/or a learning experience. I wouldn’t trade a single one. (And it really has been mostly a pleasure!!)
This book wouldn’t be what it is without Gary Zamchick’s illlustrations, Jasmine Powers’ organization, and the people at Wiley for believing in this idea.
I also must thank those who gave me their time and wisdom in interviews for this book: Bob Buday, Jessica Chen, Alan Cooper, Seth Godin, Lisa McLeod, and Angela Watson. And those who spoke with me about writing and publishing and the entire process, including Andrew Davis, Ann Handley, Robin Hunt, Guy Kawasaki, Gini von Courter, and Steve Wexler. And the amazing authors and speakers who I quoted throughout this book, without whose research and wisdom this book could not exist. And the official bibliography is only a partial list of the people and ideas that have influenced me as I developed these concepts over decades and wrote this book over the past year.
And more than anyone, I have to thank my wife for showing me since our very first date that nothing is as it seems and literally anything is possible.
Whisper While You Work
James Sullivan, who possessed the art of training the most furious horse, by being permitted to be alone with him for a short space of time, is thus recorded in the “Survey of the County of Cork,” by Townsend, who justly remarks, that, although the following facts appear almost incredible, yet they are nevertheless true, as he was an eye-witness to them: “James Sullivan was a native of the county of Cork, and an awkward ignorant rustic of the lowest class, generally known by the appellation of the Whisperer, and his profession was horse-breaking. The credulity of the vulgar bestowed that epithet upon him, from an opinion that he communicated his wishes to the animal by means of a whisper; and the singularity of his method gave some colour to the superstitious belief. As far as the sphere of his control extended, the boast of Veni, Vidi, Vici, was more justly claimed by James Sullivan, than by Caesar, or even Bonaparte himself. How this art was acquired, or in what it consisted, is likely to remain forever unknown, as he has lately left the world without divulging it.
– The Catholic Standard and Times, 18341
The first “horse whisperer,” James Sullivan, would shut himself in a barn with a horse, doors closed, and when the doors opened 30 minutes later, the previously wild horse would be fully under his control. He could be seen whispering in the horse’s ear from time to time, thus the appellation. As described in The Art of Taming and Educating the Horse by D. Magner, “Many people, even of intelligence, supposed that Sullivan’s control was supernatural…. It is stated as a fact that the parish priest, whenever he saw Sullivan coming toward him in the street, believing he was in league with the devil, would cross himself and take the opposite side, to protect himself from his supposed Satanic influence.”2
An American named Denton Offutt, who also happens to have been Abraham Lincoln’s first boss, was the best-known horse whisperer here in the United States. There is an excerpt from his book called Dialogue Between Man and Horse, meant to demonstrate what happens during horse whispering, reprinted in Magner’s book:
Man: Why do you pull back when I go into your stall?
Horse: I am fearful of you; if you will put your hand on my hip before you come in, and let me know you will not hurt me, I will stand.
Man: You appear to have been displeased with this stall ever since you got hurt and scared here.
Horse: I never like misfortune nor the places that cause them, for it is a bad memory that forgets them.
…
Man: Why are you fearful of the bridle?
Horse: My mouth has been hurt by it and the fingers, my ears pulled, sometimes my eyes – flies have hurt them; I am trying to take care.
Man: I will put on the bridle to let you know my will; check reins, martingale, and crupper to hold all fast; so you are compelled to hold still; then quietly handle the ears and lips; I find there is no hurt, all is right. I will in this case put on and take off another bridle over this until all is right. It may be important in some cases to do so with other things, or to spread a blanket over them, and over the head, and one down the back to the heels.
Horse: I am more cautious than fearful. I do not fear the blanket; after examining it closely you may fasten it to my tail after putting it over the head and down the back to the heels, and letting it fall at the heels and sides; but be careful in opening and spreading it over the body, and frequently letting it go to the tail; if it does not cause me to stir up the dust, or in some degree tend to alarm me, you may know it is all right. If you wish it to drag after me, first let there be a piece of cloth hung on each side of me, some six or eight yards long, so as to rub each side of me at the same time; after this is done, fasten it to my tail. Let me be as wild as I may in all cases, have me by the bridle, and rub me in the face, speaking kindly to me, and not make me move only by my own will.
Notice the use of questions, the detailed descriptions, the discussion of things that might be easy to make assumptions about, but that are clarified fully in a collaborative, respect-filled, rapport-based, trust-driven, two-way dialog between equals. This is a great conversation. It is a lot like the (capital W) Whispering I’ll be describing and advocating in this book. Lower-case w whispering is a very special mode of communication worth considering on its own.
Lowercase “w” whispering
Picture a boisterous holiday dinner table. Everyone is eating, drinking, laughing, and happily shouting over each other. One person at the end of the table, who hasn’t spoken much yet that evening, leans forward and captures everyone’s attention. The rooms quiets in anticipation. And she starts to whisper. Everyone else leans in and listens very carefully. The next person to chime in is much more likely to whisper themselves in response. A whisper demands attention (more than a shriek in some ways) and induces others to follow suit.
Walk into a church/mosque/temple or a patient’s hospital room and what do you do? You use that gentlest of spoken utterances not just to maintain the peace and quiet, but to show respect, to embody reverence.
For all of these reasons, we whisper. And humans are the only species known to whisper to communicate with each other.3
Uppercase “W” Whispering
But this is neither a horse taming nor a linguistics book. It’s about business. Well, really it’s about work, since this applies whether you’re in business, government, an NGO, or any other type of organization. You should be Whispering when you do what you do.
It could have helped Coors avoid its catastrophic ad campaign for its beer in Spain, which had a slogan that worked fine in English (“Turn it Loose”), but which didn’t work so well when translated into Spanish (“Suffer from Diarrhea”).4 A very simple conversation between the Coors execs and the advertising team on the ground in Spain could have avoided that one! Not sure that would even have required true Whispering.
It’s also about how to evaluate products like Google Glass, an augmented reality technology that was ahead of its time. People might have said they wanted the ability to see their email hands-free at all times and to check out reviews for a restaurant while reading the menu. But they seemingly didn’t want to spend obscene amounts of money to do it while looking like a nerdy idiot from a bad movie about the future. Whispering could definitely have helped with this one, although the technology wasn’t there (still isn’t) to improve much on it – useful AR/VR for most of us remains a bit out of reach. (Although, as I was writing this, META’s Orion AR glasses were announced; we’ll see if they live up to the hype but they still…seem…not…quite…there.)
There are plenty of books that teach things like putting the user at the center of a design process, managing and engaging stakeholders, working collaboratively as a team, yadda, yadda, yadda. But you almost never hear about how to conduct those conversations. That is what this book is about, along with a healthy dose of why it is so critical. Hopefully you will see everything you do differently after reading it.
How to Read This Book
Before we dive in further, I want to provide some guidance on how to read this book. “Who is this guy, telling me how to read this book?” you might think. “Start on page 1 and go, amiright?” Pretty much – I’m sure you know what you’re doing. But, indulge me for a moment.
The entire premise of this book is captured in words often attributed to Henry David Thoreau: “Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it.” Rules, instructions, tasks delegated by stakeholders, advice from me on how to read a book, they may be helpful sometimes, and other times they can be safely ignored, but they should always be investigated. This book is about how to conduct that investigation. And my advice about how to read this book (it’s obviously not a “rule” or a “requirement”) will help.
What’s a Stakeholder?
First, let me define stakeholder, which is a loaded term and implies different things to different people.
University of Virginia Professor R. Edward Freeman created stakeholder theory, the idea that there are multiple people and groups interested in everything an organization does, and you need to address all of their concerns in one way or another. As he wrote in his seminal work on the topic, Strategic Management: a Stakeholder Approach, “a stakeholder is any group or individual who can affect, or is affected by, the achievement of the corporation’s purpose. Stakeholders include employees, customers, suppliers, stockholders, banks, environmentalists, governments and other groups who can help or hurt the corporation.”5 This was a business idea written by a business school professor. Stakeholders trigger different ideas in different contexts. For instance, a PR representative for a mining company might think of stakeholders as the residents of the town where a proposed mine is being considered. And he might envision a public meeting where rotten tomatoes and wilted lettuce will fly at his head while he’s pitching the project.
Everything I’ll be talking about will apply in situations like that. It will also apply when the chief financial officer (CFO) of a public company is talking to investors, when an agency is developing a new brand identity for a company, or when a data analytics professional is doing some analysis for an NGO to determine what regions will receive the next batch of food aid. The key part of the definition you should remember is this: Any group or individual who can affect, or is affected by. When you’re working on something, anyone who “can affect or is affected by” that project/product/service/whatever it is, is a stakeholder.
Most of the examples I’ll share, and the way I’ll often talk about it, are focused on people requesting things of, or delegating tasks to, you. So, I’m usually talking about your boss, client, or product owner. But it’s not only them. All of these ideas will apply to help your product users, the media, investors, regulators, and possibly more. The list broadens from there to include other stakeholders you might not have thought about. For instance, if you’re building a house, the stakeholders include obvious ones like the homeowners, the designer, the construction crew, the town’s zoning and building safety bureaucracy, and perhaps some you might not immediately consider such as a potential future buyer of the home.
In the modern business world, there are practices known as stakeholder management and stakeholder engagement. Stakeholder management sounds a bit paternal and condescending. “Oh, those pesky stakeholders, we just need to manage them and steer them this way and that and everything will be good!” As one research paper reports, “Stakeholder management is inherently unilateral because when organizations conventionally manage their stakeholders, they ‘take steps to defend themselves from the demands of stakeholders.’”6
Later came stakeholder engagement, which promised a more collaborative approach: “a process that creates a dynamic context of interaction, mutual respect, dialog, and change, not a unilateral management of stakeholders.” Stakeholders had a seat at the table and their input was a valuable part of the process. They didn’t need to be “managed” or sidelined but were actually incorporated into decision-making. Research has shown that stakeholder engagement leads to improved financial performance, and there is plenty of evidence for additional benefits of this integrated approach for all kinds of organizations.7
Stakeholder Whispering, I believe, is the next evolution. Here we are collaborating so closely with our stakeholders that we are guiding each other to true insights, discovering hidden needs, so that we are able to deliver against those real needs, rather than quickly and thoughtlessly executing on every idea someone comes up with. The goal is collaborative deep engagement to probe ideas more intentionally, which will result in better outputs and more satisfaction and success on everyone’s part.
It’s worth acknowledging that not all stakeholders are equal. Kent State University’s Aubrey Mendelow introduced the Power-interest Matrix, which can help you judge where to maximize your Whispering time. Simply consider your stakeholders across two axes: their ability to influence an organization or project resources, and their level of interest in the success of the organization or task at hand. You obviously want to concentrate your efforts on those with high power and high interest and minimize efforts on those with low power and low interest. And you can make a judgment call on those who fall elsewhere in the grid.
There are two more things I think you should do when reading this book.
Pause and Think
Pause and think way more than you think you should. In fact, I would like to suggest that you read one chapter at a time – at least during the “What/Why” and “How (ideas)” sections. These first 11 chapters are the big ideas that need to percolate deep into your brain. They set you up with a new way of thinking about how to perceive the world around you and how to translate that into a new way of behaving in work. If you just crank through the book quickly, these ideas may not sink in quite deep enough to change your perspective. And Stakeholder Whispering requires a perspective shift.
So read a chapter, then take a moment and think about it. Don’t just put the book down and go watch a hockey game or scroll through social media. Literally take 10–15 minutes and think about what you’ve read and how it might apply to your day-to-day life.
The Margins Aren’t Marginal!
The other thing I want you to do is to pay attention to the margins of this book. Throughout, you will see little illustrations like the one to the [left/right]. Each of these is an icon to remind you of an important idea. I would suggest that, once again, you notice the icon, and pause and think about it. They’re not decorative; they’re a real guide to important ideas. For instance, this icon means “pause and think.” So when you see this icon, take a moment and pause and think about what the passage (or the entire chapter, if at the end of a chapter) it is aligned with is really talking about. And think about how that might apply to your work.
Following is the key that explains each of these icons and what they mean (and what you should do when you see each one). Dog-ear this page so you can jump back and reread these explanations whenever you see one of these later in the book. Really take a moment to abide by their intent as much as you can while reading.
Pause and Think
As explained above, sometimes you need to slow things down and pause and really think about things to fully grasp and metabolize an idea. In fact, this is kind of the entire point of the book: the need to distrust your fast-thinking response and activate your slow thinking, although even that is fraught…as you will learn later.
When you see this icon: Pause and think! Really!
Aporia
Aporia is Greek for “a state of puzzlement,” which sounds like a bad thing, but it is actually a great transition point during Stakeholder Whispering and is when true insights are found and progress is made. I’ll talk more about this later.
When you see this icon: This is what you’re looking for when Whispering – you want to get your stakeholders to have that moment when they’re surprised, confused, realizing they haven’t thought about something that way before…this is where the magic happens. So, think about that momentary surprise and what caused it in the case being explained.
Useful Paranoia
When you’re paranoid, you question everything. It can be overwhelming and unhealthy. Useful paranoia involves questioning everything but adapting and adjusting so that questioning is productive and useful, not crushing and destructive!
When you see this icon: Remember this is one of your most useful tools when Whispering. Question everything, but know when to stop questioning and accept.
Empathy
One of the most important attributes required to successfully Whisper is empathy. It helps when you’re guiding a conversation with a stakeholder, and it will help you read this book. Throughout, I’ll be sharing examples, many of which are not related to you. How could they be? I don’t know you! You may not be an architect or a human resources professional or a graphic designer or a sales person. So, you will have to try to embody the people I’m talking about as best you can. Try to imagine what it’s like to be them so their stories, which aren’t necessarily related to your experience, will still clearly show you how to do what you need to do. I believe every anecdote is accessible, if you just look past the surface a bit.
When you see this icon: Step out of yourself. Try to role-play a bit. Imagine you are the person being described. You should be able to translate the example into something you can directly relate to. Really take a moment and think about these examples and how they might be relevant to your life; don’t just rush past them.
Fast and Slow
Much of this book is about the juxtaposition between fast thinking (the intuitive reaction) and slow thinking (thoughtful reasoning), which I will explain and reference many times.
When you see this icon: Think about which type of response is at play and how it might affect what is being discussed at that moment.
[DON’T] Rage Against the Machine
Stakeholder Whispering, as you’ll read, is not about raging against everything your stakeholders say and do. They are not the enemy. And they are not always wrong. So, we don’t need to go full “Rage Against the Machine” on them (which I will explain later). We might push back and probe and inspect, but we ultimate trust our stakeholders and are working with them, not against them.
When you see this icon: It’s a reminder of the goodwill and respect we should have for our stakeholders. So remember to question everything, but in the spirit of helpful collaborator, not a punk rock agitator.
My career was built on successful Stakeholder Whispering. Also, the biggest failures of my career were due to Stakeholder Whispering miscues. I’m here to share what I’ve learned, and I hope it’s helpful! Let’s dive in!
Notes
1
. Sullivan the Whisperer. (August 28, 1834).
The Catholic Standard and Times
. Available at:
https://thecatholicnewsarchive.org/?a=d&d=cst18340828-01.2.26&srpos=2&e=-------en-20--1--txt-txIN-Sullivan+the+Whisperer-------
(accessed 29 Aug. 2024).
2
. Magner, D. (1884).
The art of taming and educating the horse
. Hagerstown, MD: Review and Herald Publishing. Available at:
https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/103766
.
3
. Tsunoda, K., Sekimoto, S., and Baer, T. (2011). An fMRI study of whispering: The role of human evolution in psychological dysphonia.
Medical Hypotheses
, 77(1): pp. 112–115. PubMed,
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mehy.2011.03.040
.
4
. MediaBeacon. (n.d.). Case study – Companies that failed internationally from a lack of social understanding.
MediaBeacon Blog
. Available at:
https://www.mediabeacon.com/en/blog/case-study-social-understanding
(accessed 29 Aug. 2024).
5
. Freeman, R.E. (2011).
Strategic Management: A Stakeholder Approach
. Nachdr., Cambridge Univ. Press.
6
. Kujala, J., Sachs, S., Leinonen, H. et al. (2022). Stakeholder engagement: Past, present, and future.
Business & Society
, 61(5), pp. 1136–1196,
https://doi.org/10.1177/00076503211066595
.
7
. Griffin, J.A. and Otter, K. (2014).
It takes a village: How stakeholder engagement is the key to strategic success
. Paper presented at PMI
®
Global Congress 2014 – North America, Phoenix, AZ. Newtown Square, PA: Project Management Institute.
Part I What & Why
To set the stage to talk about how to do Stakeholder Whispering, I first need define what it is. I can’t do that without talking about why it is worth thinking about. This is an important concept that starts out with some big picture context setting. We will visit the nanoscale and the entire universe to point out the big idea, then circle back to the human scale to talk about how that plays into everything we do and how we do it. I’ll even define you – the ideal reader of this book.
Chapter 1Nothing Is As It Seems
“I think, therefore I am.”
– René Descartes
Atomic Scale
Take your two index fingers and touch them together. You can see they deform based on the pressure. You can, of course, feel that pressure. There is definitely physical contact there—objects and matter touching each other. Right?
Not exactly. In fact, as you probably know, your fingertips (and your ears, your elbows, and everything else) are made almost entirely of nothingness…empty space. Atoms are made of infinitesimally small protons and neutrons surrounded by even smaller electrons, which orbit around them. The atom is often described as 99.99999% empty space. If the proton in a hydrogen atom were the size of a pea, the electron would be a football field away. That’s a lot of empty space and in all directions.
Some scientists say that’s not quite right. The more modern view is that rather than impossibly small points orbiting around the protons and neutrons, electrons are actually a “cloud” and behave more like waves than particles.
Either way, your fingers aren’t really touching. It’s not solid material pressing against solid material. What you have is electrical repulsion. So your perception is very different from reality, at an atomic scale.
Quantum Scale
OK, let’s pretend we’ve answered that definitively (we haven’t) and zoom in more.
Protons and neutrons are made of even smaller particles, called quarks. They’re the smallest things we know of (so far). And, like electrons, they behave in what seems like an impossible way. If you had two quarks that had become “entangled” (don’t worry about how or why, just Google it), and you were to induce one of them to behave in a certain way, then its partner would instantaneously react. Imagine the quarks were two flipped coins and they followed a rule that said if one of them turns up “heads,” the other would instantaneously turn up “tails.”
So where is the “impossibility” here? It’s that word “instantaneously.” That is literal. And it defies some very important known laws of physics. If these two coins were 10 billion light years apart, they would still react to each other instantaneously. For this to work, particles would have to be “communicating” with each other faster than the speed of light, which is impossible, as you know.
At tiny scales, nothing is as it seems…maybe at larger scales we’ll be better off? If only.
Universal Scale
The entire universe is also almost entirely empty space. There’s a lot of nothingness between all of the septillion+ (1 with 24 zeros after it) stars out there. But, just like with atoms, maybe not so fast. In fact, we know there is all kinds of stuff, including antimatter, dark matter, and dark energy out there. And we literally can’t detect the dark matter and dark energy but are confident they exist simply because they’re causing other things to happen that we can measure. Oh, and this undetectable stuff? It makes up literally 95% of the universe.
At massive scales, nothing is as it seems either.
“Don’t believe what your eyes are telling you. All they show is limitation. Look with your understanding, find out what you already know, and you’ll see the way to fly,” opined Jonathan Livingston Seagull,1 who knew nothing of quantum entanglement and dark matter.
The world is much, much stranger than what I think I see (and feel and hear). Taken to the extreme, I guess I can’t entirely trust the physical world around me. What do I understand? What do I know for sure?
Human Scale
I exist. Descartes said it best: “I think, therefore I am.” I know I exist because I have my own thoughts. I’m not sure about the existence of geodesic domes, burritos, even my own fingertips. I’ll have to just assume you, dear reader, also exist (only you would know, though)!
So let’s think about how you and I and other humans function. How real is our reality?
