Eye-glaze warning: Some of these terms cause people to tune out from whatever follows. Commonly used in mission statements and corporate mumbo-jumbo.
Shareholder: Someone who owns shares (or stocks) in your organisation.
Stakeholder: Someone who's impacted by your organisation or project.
(I switch between these two terms a lot below which got confusing as I was re-reading, so rather than stick with confusing, I added emojis to also make it annoying).
You may see share🤑holder and stake🥩holder used interchangeably, but they're different.
A share🤑holder generally cares about the financial stuff - revenue, growth, margin, capital, etc. They put money into your org and expect to get money back.
A stake🥩holder however, is anyone who might be impacted by decisions your organisation makes, the work it does, or the products or services it delivers. Stake🥩holders might include employees, customers, service providers, suppliers, as well as those in surrounding areas (like when a road is being repaired late at night and you can hear the jackhammer - you're a stake🥩holder in that project).
Organisations that seek to "maximise share🤑holder value" are almost always talking about dollars. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it might skew decision-making. Eg, they may prioritise relentless billing at the cost of worker health and safety.
Organisations focused on stake🥩holders over share🤑holders may be more interested in seeking engagement, feedback and reassurance, rather than providing financial returns.
Or put another way, a stake🥩holder-focused org ensures it's providing maximum benefit and minimal harm to as many stake🥩holders as possible, and wants to regularly check in and know if they're actually achieving that.
Whenever the word share🤑holder is used is when I personally start to glaze over, especially if it's part of some marketing material or a mission statement. Sometimes I see the word stake🥩holder and think I've just seen the word share🤑holder, so still glaze over, but probably just because they're such uninspiring, boring words.
Stake🥩holders and share🤑holders are also known as people.
You're a people - do you regularly identify as a "stakeholder" in anything? I know I don't.
Mostly a public service announcement today, in two parts:
(And to edit myself, stakeholders aren't always people. A place can be a stakeholder too!)
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