What Stakeholders Want

To begin with, how would you know a stakeholder if you tripped over one?  In the spirit of simplicity, I offer you this definition of a stakeholder:

A stakeholder is a person or organization with a vested or enlightened interest in the outcomes produced by another person or organization.

How is that for simple?  The key to satisfying stakeholders is to understand the nature of their interest and how the subject person or organization can satisfy that interest in such a way as to benefit from the process.  

So, how in the heck do you do that?  First, it is important define what an organization is in the context of the stakeholder world.  Here it is, short and sweet:

An organization is a group of people whose primary objective is to provide predictable, balanced and sustainable value to its stakeholders.  

Therefore, an organization can be viewed as a series of end-to-end process (Value-Add Delivery Systems – VADS), each intended to produce outcomes that benefit one or more stakeholder groups.  Since most organizations are hierarchical in structure, these VADS span functional specialty areas (divisions, departments, etc.) and thus require people and technology to work together in a cross-functional manner.  There's the rub.  Since organizations…