It’s time to stop calling them “stakeholders.”
Recently, Steve Gustavson, the executive creative director of the enterprise side of the Adobe Studio (and my boss), sent around this article from the InVision blog about the benefits of creatives spending one on one time with their stakeholders. It’s a great article with which I completely agree. But the whole time I was reading it, I kept wondering if there was someone writing a similar article about how stakeholders should proactively be spending one on one time with their creative partners. I don’t know if there is. I didn’t check, but I kind of doubt it. (I hope I’m wrong.)
That led me to consider again what a poisonous, terrible word “stakeholder” is and I vote we never use it again.
Forget sticks and stones.
Design and creative teams have been fighting for that proverbial (and sometimes literal) seat at the company table for a long time. In many ways, we’ve been successful, but in some pretty significant ways we still have a long way to go. Winning the Civil War didn’t put an end to racism. And winning a seat at the table doesn’t change deeply entrenched cultural attitudes.
To be clear, I am unequivocally not comparing the plight of creatives today to African Americans and slavery. But I am saying that putting something on paper is usually the first step to changing thoughts, actions, and behaviors, not the last. There’s still a ton of work that needs to happen to disrupt and remake culture. And one pernicious but often neglected area that needs disruption is language. Sticks and stones may break bones, but words can and do hurt because the reveal the underlying biases of a culture.
We talk about this in ethical design and accessibility all the time. Just the other day my team had a conversation about how using words like “lame,” “dumb,” or “gypped” exposed potentially hurtful blind spots in the way we think, which then often become hurtful actions. For good or for ill, these terms and the biases they expose are the undergirding of a culture.
And so it is with “stakeholder.”
To risk the loss of.
Traditionally, a stakeholder is someone who has invested money in something (i.e. a “stake) and so has something to lose. In the context of this discussion, the word usually refers to a marketer (or similar player) who pays an agency or other pair of hands to create something. In this context, stakeholder accurately describes what’s happening. It suggests that one party has something to lose (money, brand reputation, points with the boss) and the other does not. So it puts all the power in the hands of the marketer. It’s their resources on the line, so they get the ultimate say.
And this leads to the need for the Invision blog above. In this kind of world, creatives need to cultivate relationships with “stakeholders” in order to understand their expectations better, too subtly inject their view. In other words, to learn how to serve them better.
But a few things have changed in recent years that shake up this traditional view, making it less and less relevant. For one thing, many businesses are embracing the design-led mindset. And as they do, creative teams are coming in from the cold. Instead of relying solely on a stable of agencies, companies are building out teams of creative people in house to build content, shape the brand, and so on.
In this world, marketers and creatives (or product managers and designers, or whatever pairing you want) are each on the hook for related parts of the process. Both sides would be motivated to have a mutual relationship because each sees the other’s views as crucial to the success of the project. In other words, in this organization, designers and content creators have just as much a stake as anyone in the success of the business, content, campaign, or other initiative.
Or we should. We should all be stakeholders.
Changing culture.
Here are a few things to consider along those lines.
If a business is still clinging to the old-fashioned, bureaucratic organizational structure—which often embraces the waterfall process—this demeaning term will likely continue. The powers that be at the top of the waterfall will continue to claim ownership, define the exact form a final piece of content should take, and view those executing that form as nothing but a pair of hands. In order for designers to have a stake, businesses need to adopt some model—like a continuous deployment model, whether in product or customer experience—that allows each member of the team to hold complementary but distinct roles. From the outside, many up-and-coming brands like Slack and Airbnb seem to have figured this out (though I have no idea if the term “stakeholder” persists there).
On the other hand, we designers and content creators can’t ask for a seat at the table without being willing to take on the risk. Too often, we build our stuff in a silo and don’t assume any responsibility for its success or failure. If the content fails, then it was the powers that be who gave us poor requirements or strategy. If it succeeds, then it was obviously because of our efforts. In my experience, creative teams are often reticent to take ownership of their work, washing their hands of each project once it’s “done” and moving on to the next. If we really want a seat at the table, this can’t continue. We need to believe and act as if we have a stake in what we’re doing as well.
New habits.
Old habits die hard. Over the last few years, I’ve tried to change the way I talk and think. I try to use the word “partner,” instead of stakeholder, even if the expectations in my organization don’t always support that change. I sometimes give in, especially during rush projects, but I think it’s important to try. Because I don’t want to be a pair of hands. But if my language reinforces that view, then it’s too easy to think and act that way too.