Stakeholders

Supported by Greenhaven Road Capital, finding value off the beaten path.

This pdf, or podcast; iTunes, Overcast, or Soundcloud, offers examples and stories about thinking about stakeholders.  If you like the blog, you’ll like this. It’ll take about 20 minutes to read.

From the introduction:

A stakeholder is anyone or anything you commit to. Stakeholders take many forms but are denominated in one currency; time.

Financial costs are stakeholders. Each month of Netflix requires some amount of work, which you get paid for because of the time you’ve spent training.

Relational costs are stakeholders. Each mother or brother or spouse or neighbor is a relationship and relationships grow or whither when watered with time.

Experiential costs are stakeholders. Each job or hobby has travel time, participation time, preparation time, recovery time, and so on.

Hopefully we – mostly – choose our stakeholders. We pay for Netflix. We select a partner. We pick our jobs. What this ebook will attempt to do is enhance our point-of-view regarding stakeholders.

One weekend morning my ten-year-old daughter wanted cereal. I told her ‘sniff the milk’ before she poured it. What?
‘Sniff the milk!’ What’s that?

She didn’t have a frame of reference for spoiled milk. With a swift sniff, I showed her.

That’s what we’re going to do here. Instead of milk, we’ll think about stakeholders. Subscription magazines that pile up, unread. Weeks go by between watching Netflix (or HBO). Timeshares expire. Some stakeholders are treacherous. Some stakeholders are happy tradeoffs.

Thanks for reading.