Building a Business for the Future: The Value of Stakeholder Networks
7/2023, Originally published on AXA XL
By Rose Hall and Gary Kaplan
In an era distinguished by rapid technological shifts, changing market demands, and growing social awareness, the ability to access a wide range of viewpoints is invaluable. Building and engaging stakeholder networks give incredible opportunities to collect different diverse perspectives, enhancing decision-making processes with a more comprehensive understanding of different experiences and standpoints, and perhaps most importantly, initiate action.
In our experience, listening and collecting diverse thoughts has the power to provoke some very innovative thinking and more importantly, problem-solving. We’ve seen the power of building both internally focused and externally focused stakeholder networks and how instrumental they can be in facilitating collaboration, building partnerships, and sparking change.
Internal networks
Networks build connections. For any organization, strong internal connections are key to sharing expertise, retaining talent, and building stronger teams that support business goals.
Passing down knowledge is particularly key in the insurance industry right now. We’ve all heard about the talent crunch that we are facing. Internal networks can be very helpful in transferring knowledge. In fact, that was exactly our thinking when we launched the Catalyst Network, a network of anyone and everyone interested in learning from each other and improving their project management skills.
The intent of the network was to help participants learn new skills and improve current facilitation, change, and project management abilities to be ready to participate in special projects or other business initiatives when they arise.
The network, comprised of 56 invited members, became the impetus for what today is a corporate-wide focus on using networks to improve customer and internal knowledge. As part of the network, colleagues discuss a variety of topics throughout the year, including conflict resolution, task management, launching a project, Project Planning, Change Management and more. What’s been particularly exciting to see is how some of our Catalyst Network participants have immediately used their new project management skills to step up to challenges or even career changes.
Our Business Resource Groups, Americas Green Committee and our newest, a Parents Network, are among the internal networks that are drawing together colleagues with similar interests, sharing their knowledge and looking for ways that they can collectively influence our organization.
External Networks
Diversity of thought from a broader coalition of members can advance conversations, brainstorming, and innovation. What better way to help our clients than to hear from them directly. What challenges are they facing? What problems are they trying to solve?
That’s why within the AXA XL Ecosystem, we have built a number of Knowledge Networks designed to address today’s most pressing trends and exposures. The Knowledge Networks aim to share ideas and brainstorm solutions for the construction industry.
Our Innovators Circle is made up of a number of industry-specific networks of innovation leaders within the construction industry. The goal: to determine the best way to share best practices and innovation within the construction market.
The recently launched. Sustainability Circle is focused on gathering the sustainability and climate leaders across all the industries AXA XL serves to better address how to improve sustainability and address growing climate-related concerns within the industry.
These peer-to-peer roundtable networks touch on various aspects of the construction industry and hope to elevate both the industry knowledge of and response to new innovations, sustainability practices, emerging risks, climate-related exposures, and best practices within all of these areas.
That knowledge does not stay within the network – instead, we communicate externally with our customers and brokers some of the findings, innovations, and best practices that such networks have brainstormed. Stakeholder networks provide a key channel for communication. Effective communication with stakeholders fosters trust, understanding, and cooperation, all of which are critical for an organization's survival and growth. Such a platform for dialogue enables organizations, like AXA XL, to keep stakeholders informed, manage expectations, and receive valuable feedback.
We have also created stakeholder networks across industries. Through our Client Advisory Councils, we bring together risk management leaders across different industry for the purpose of sharing ideas, collecting feedback and getting their insights on the most critical risk exposures they are facing. The feedback loop between businesses and their stakeholders facilitates continuous improvement and adaptation to changing societal expectations, fostering long-term business resilience and success.
Network Versus Team
While we are all part of our own team, networks are a different animal. Teams are typically coworkers in a specific area or areas of your organization. The team is focused on a corporate goal. Networks are a larger cross section of people, often from a wide variety of teams.
A network could include underwriters, but also underwriters from various lines of business as well as construction client members, construction association members, and sales. With internal networks, the wider representation affords members a different view and possibly a new set of best practices within the company through a more horizontal conversation around business. External networks benefit by talking with people from other companies in the same industry. There is a more cross-sectional conversation and sharing of ideas.
For example, a team of underwriters and risk engineers talking every day within that team can amass good information and knowledge, but they may not come in contact with the viewpoints of the primary counterparts because there has not been a reason to do so. Teams can accomplish quite a lot, but there will always be a limit to the amount of information they can share within their own silos.
The network becomes that reason and allows for more dialogue. It brings about collaboration, diversity, and inclusion into the conversation. That is the strength of a network – bringing together a group of people who want to better themselves to provide more for their customers and their companies.
Successful networks need to draw in members because of the content, interactions, education, and/or meaningful collaborations to be had. The best networks have members who are thoughtfully selected for what they can contribute and what they hope to achieve.
Facilitating a Winning Network
Networks also need a real effort at organizing the conversation. We recommend the following plan for building a successful internal or external network:
Ownership. Successful networks have one or more people who facilitate the network operations and set agendas for meetings. Owners should be fully committed to making the network interesting and useful from both a content and member perspective.
An agenda. Just as you would for a successful meeting, you need to provide an agenda, topics and times, and a routine schedule of meetings to make it more likely that members can attend with advanced notice. Keep meetings to a reasonable amount of time and the number of meetings to a manageable level. Respect your members’ valuable time.
Member-driven topics. The success of the network depends on whether your members are talking about the issues they want to address. We suggest reaching out to members to have them come up with topics and content, as well. Engaging members in this way solidifies their participation and the success of the entire network.
A platform. How and where you will meet as well as where notes, ideas and communications will happen is critical. There are platforms specific to running a network that are available. Choose one that works for all members.
Speakers. Engaging speakers can ignite your membership and improve brainstorming results. Choose speakers who have the ability to generate excitement and interest. Time each presenter to ensure that all speakers are able to present their ideas. Vet your speakers – a bad speaker can turn off members and result in a drop in membership participation.
Visual aids. Support topics with visuals that are clear, brief, and able to be viewed on computer screens. When possible, make the visuals easy to download for members to save to their devices for future reference.
The Network Business Boost
A successful shareholder network can bring significant value to organizations and entire industries. With a broader coalition of diverse thinkers and shared knowledge, members can brainstorm solutions and build better responses to risks, opportunities, and innovations.
Networks, like our Innovation and Sustainability Circles, can elevate the collective industry knowledge as well when solutions and best practices are shared with an industry as a whole. As organizations strive to improve on business as usual, an expert network with carefully selected membership and thoughtful facilitation can bring the much-needed boost to business that your organization has been looking for.
Final Thoughts
In the digital age, reputation is everything. Stakeholder networks contribute significantly to reputation management. As stakeholders share their experiences, opinions, and perspectives, they shape the public image of an organization. A positive stakeholder relationship translates into a positive reputation, contributing to customer loyalty, attracting potential employees and investors, and enhancing overall brand value.
Stakeholder networks can provide considerable value to organizations. By actively engaging with these networks, businesses can leverage the collective intelligence, experiences, and influence of their stakeholders. In today's rapidly changing world, the organizations that acknowledge, engage with, and learn from their stakeholder networks are the ones most likely to thrive.
