To Stakeholder: A new verb… I like a lot

In working with one of my clients over the last week I encountered the noun "stakeholder" being used as a verb: "to stakeholder". Perhaps others of you have encountered this but it was a first for me and I loved it. In large matrixed organizations, decision-making can be a cumbersome process. Lines of decision making can be numerous— sometimes straightforward but at times more murky depending on culture and informal influence structures. Success in a matrixed environment requires the thoughtful consideration of who all should be involved in a decision. 

Early on in my career, I remember regretting acting without sufficient communication or failing to involve a key person for support and input. I learned the lesson of "stakeholdering" the hard way by letting my energy and enthusiasm sometimes run ahead of a thoughtful plan for enrollment and input. When I was at Xerox, then-CEO Ursula Burns would often say "alone we go fast, together we go far". It was another reminder of the importance of good stakeholder management. 

Of course, one of the frustrations of complex structures is the slow pace of some decision-making—"stakeholdering" can take time. But that is where new enterprise social tools like Slack or MS Teams can eliminate the cycles in "stakeholdering" for creating mini-communities around topics and ideas. At the end of the day, "stakeholdering" is a lot about demonstrating consideration and empathy. It demonstrates that we value another's input or at a minimum feel they should be aware of something. When we consider all stakeholders, we put the emphasis on a greater outcome that is beyond our own individual or teams' success. Let's all do more "stakeholdering".