Leaders who listen, transform organisations.
How well do you listen? To yourself and your stakeholders.
What if truly listening was all you needed to do, to be successful as a leader?
What if listening was the key to agility, innovation and lasting success?
It sounds too simple right. But what if listening was the answer?
Newmella & Associates, is an Innovation Consultancy focused on Executive Development and Business Intelligence for Innovation. We help Executives and Organisations listen, to themselves and others.
We have a longstanding relationship with the CEO of a Fintech. He is an exemplary example of what it means to lead through complexity and uncertainty. He recently said to me in conversation, “Wendy, business is doing so well at the moment, but you know when you have that feeling that the other shoe is going to drop, that things are going too well?”
In that moment the Stakeholder Signal Check service offering was birthed. I replied, “Why wait for the noise, intentionally check stakeholder signals now, and ensure you listen to the signals before they become noise, keeping you agile and innovative, and never feeling like you are waiting for the other shoe to drop.”
Innovation, otherwise known as value creation must work for the entire stakeholder ecosystem to be sustainable for a business. If you are not listening to stakeholder signals, you will not be aware of when you are no longer providing value to a stakeholder or you will miss opportunities to provide additional value.
Your stakeholder relationships do not crumble overnight, a slow erosion happens over time when a stakeholder does not receive what they value. During this slow erosion, the stakeholder sends signals, that are not listened to, those signals will eventually become noise. Noise is when your star employee resigns, when your key customer takes their business elsewhere, when margins become strained, when your reliable supplier becomes unreliable and when your competitor launches a new offering that corrodes your turnover.
Innovation, and more specifically, innovation that serves all stakeholders has been recognised as a defining priority for organisations today. Stakeholder-centric innovation (SCI) empowers all parties to thrive sustainably, particularly in uncertain and evolving times. SCI can address increasingly complex problems, deliver long term value to all stakeholders and move innovation from short-term financial returns to solving real problems, thus ensuring business sustainability.
Organisations that design with stakeholders will outlast and outperform those that design for shareholders alone. Stakeholder-centric innovation isn’t just ethical. It is strategic. It builds loyalty and market differentiation through co-creation. It enhances trust and resilience, supports agility, innovation and better decision making.
What organisational systems ignore, organisations will eventually pay for with dis-engagement and resistance, business fragility and corrosion. The biggest business risk businesses face today, is believing that their stakeholders are aligned when they are not. By the time concerns become visible, they have usually become expensive. The organisations that navigate change best don’t assume alignment, they measure it.
If you need any support, let us know. There is not only an art to facilitating psychologically safe conversations that ask the right questions and elicit the right information, there is an art to interpreting that information into real tangible insights that can be acted upon.
Our Stakeholder Signal Check uses structured online interviews to uncover:
Emerging concerns
Hidden risks
Untapped support
Opportunities leaders can act on
Executives don’t need more opinions. They need evidence.
The Stakeholder Signal Check (SSC) delivers a clear view of where:
Alignment exists
Resistance is forming
Communication and engagement will have the greatest impact
Efforts need to be prioritised and recommendations how
The SSC creates an evidence-based foundation for strategy, change and decision-making.
Every Stakeholder is sending signals. The question is: Are you hearing them, before your competitors do ?
Understand what different stakeholder groups care about, focus your efforts on where it matters, reduce risk early, gather support strategically, take advantage of opportunities and take informed action. The strongest organisations don’t wait for conflict. They listen early. They build trust deliberately. They make better decisions because they understand the people who determine whether their strategy succeeds or not.
Leaders who Listen, transform organisations.
Dr Wendy Mahoney (PhD)
