I remember the very first time I was made aware of the importance of stakeholder management. Before that time, it had never featured as an important subject either during my studies, on my to-do list or as a topic that I wanted to learn more about.

Then came that magic moment that I realized that stakeholder management was something I was doing in my daily work and that it was making the difference. This insight came to me when I was working for Philips some 15 years ago. At that time, I had the honour of working closely with Cees Jan Mol.

I noticed that his meetings always went smoothly. People moved in the right direction, decisions were made without hiccups and people enjoyed being part of the process. Of course, there was more going on than just good stakeholder management. But, I felt this was something to I could learn from. Based on my personal interest in people and the drive to move forward together, I also felt the urge to dive into the theoretical basis behind this approach. This is when I came across and started using stakeholder mapping by Henrico Dolfing, for each project kick off.

Ten years later and many lessons learnt, Monique van Gestel – van Gils brought me a number of extremely valuable insights and shared this very appropriate metaphor from this booklet with me:

Especially as an interim consultant it helps me to quickly understand my environment, people’s positions and get up to speed instantly. Last week we held a team session within Tech to Market where we shared our biggest failures and also tips and tricks related to stakeholder management.

In our roles as online marketers we are always in the process of change. Guiding the business from now to next. Taking along the stakeholders. The better we understand each and every of these stakeholders, the better we can speed up and enjoy the journey.