Why It Matters to Know What People Think—and Why

• To maximize an organization’s impact, its leaders must discover what drives the behaviors and motivations of its stakeholders and then use that knowledge to design its strategies.
• After conducting a comprehensive review of its own stakeholders, the NGO Innovation for the Blind went from potentially being six months away from closing its doors to building up a year’s cash reserve.
• To get the most benefit from stakeholder engagement, leaders must not ignore criticism. Instead, they must set up feedback loops to ensure that stakeholder insights are used to drive strategies and processes.

When the QuadPara Association Western Cape, a nongovernmental organization (NGO) in Western Cape, South Africa, invested in a review of its members, its leaders were both intrigued and disconcerted with what they discovered. Their research showed that while QuadPara had been successfully engaging most members, around 25 percent were not engaging with the organization at all.