Who are a Company's Most Important Stakeholders?

I wrote a blog a number of years ago, and the title was this: Who are a company's most important stakeholders? And it's turned out to be one of the most popular, or most controversial, blogs I've ever written. It's had over 470,000 views, so obviously created a lot of interest. And in it, I ranked the stakeholders in in order of priority, and I want to briefly go through that with you here. I said the single most important stakeholder for any company is its customers. The purpose of a business is to create customers, and if you don't have customers, you don't have the wherewithal to employ people or to make products or anything. The customer can always go elsewhere with their business, so your customer is your number one priority. Looking after them is your most important task for your leadership team, for your management team. The second most important group of stakeholders are the employees, because they're the people who actually create the goods and services that supply your customers. And you want the very best employees that you can get, and you've got to look after them well. But if you have someone who's a poor performer, you will get rid of them because they're not serving the customer. But your job is to look after your employees and to create an environment where you can attract and retain the best talent. The 3rd stakeholder in the priority sequence I gave was the shareholders. The shareholders own the company. They probably set up the seed capital to start the company, and they expect you to give them good returns. So they are important. They can fire the CEO. They can fire the executive team. They can sell the company. So So they've got a lot of power, but by and large, if you're meeting your plans, if you're meeting your objectives, if you're hitting your targets, they'll leave you alone and you can get on with things. So you don't have to worry about them on a day-to-day basis. You should focus on the customers and the employees. The 4th group in sequence are your business partners, your distributors, your agents, your suppliers, the people you work with. It's very important to have good business relationships with those people. They depend upon you, you depend upon them. but they have their own priorities, and they can always go and dance with somebody else if they want. The 5th most important stakeholder group is the local community. You want to be known as a good employer, a good company in the local area, looking after the environment, doing good things, and that's important. And the 6th and least important stakeholder is the government and the regulatory authorities. You want to stay on the right side of them, you don't want to get in trouble, they're not high priority. It's not your job to pay a lot of tax. You pay whatever tax is due, and you will minimize that because you want to give as good a return as you can to your shareholders. So that's the priority I set out. And when you have a conflict, and there are conflicts between the needs of the various stakeholders, you should observe that priority. First, customers. Secondly, your employees, your staff. Third, your stakeholders. Fourth, your business partners. 5, the local community, and 6, the government and their regulatory authorities. And I think that will help with your planning and your strategy if you're very clear about which stakeholders take priority.