Helping Stakeholders Help Themselves

John Jantsch (00:00.878)

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch and my guest today is Bill Shander. He’s a data communications expert, information designer and founder of Beehive Media. Over 25 years of experience, Bill has helped leading organizations, including United Nations, World Bank and Deloitte turn complex ideas into clear, actionable stories. We’re going to talk about his latest book today, Stakeholder Whispering, Uncover What People Need.

before doing what they ask. So Bill, welcome to the show.

Bill Shander (00:34.34)

Thank you, John. I’m really happy to be here.

John Jantsch (00:36.736)

So I just, sometimes people have things in their bios that I have to ask about. So what does a data communication expert do?

Bill Shander (00:45.654)

That’s a good question. So, you know, everybody these days has data, whether it’s your sales data, your marketing data, your HR data, everybody has data. We’re always packaging it up in PowerPoint presentations to present to our bosses or reports for the board or whoever. And people don’t really do a very good job of it either because they’re not really thinking about communicating ideas. They’re worried about shoving numbers at people. And so I help people.

John Jantsch (01:09.314)

Yeah. Right.

Bill Shander (01:12.216)

tell stories of data, as well as visualize that data in an impactful way.

John Jantsch (01:16.462)

Yeah. And I think there’s probably a lot of people, myself included, that I want to hear the story. Like, what does this data mean? you know, rather than just saying, look, we got this much traffic. Okay. Is that good? Is that bad? Yeah. So what inspired you to write the book? I mean, is there, is there something going on today, you know, in the business world that you think it makes this idea more critical?

Bill Shander (01:22.553)

Yeah.

Bill Shander (01:29.014)

Exactly. How many clicks is good? Are clicks even useful? We don’t know.

Bill Shander (01:44.378)

That’s a good question. I don’t know if today it’s more critical in that this has always been an issue, honestly. I’ve been looking at it for 30 years and took me a long time to realize that this is the thing. Like I’ve been thinking about doing a book for a long time and this was finally the idea of the nugget that said, yes, this must be done. It’s been an issue that’s been around forever. Is it more important today than ever? I would say maybe possibly because of AI. mean, okay, we’re already talking about AI, know, it’s 2025, of course you have to, but.

Honestly, when you ask AI to do something, it just does it. AI is an order taker. And we as humans, what can we do better than AI today? Maybe we can still discern, what really should be done? And maybe we can ask good follow-up questions on all the kinds of things that I talk about in the book that we have to do in order to make sure we’re delivering against the right tasks. AI is just going to do it. So it’s even more important for that reason.

John Jantsch (02:19.064)

Yeah. Yeah.

John Jantsch (02:38.198)

Yeah. You know, it’s interesting. mean, I think you can make a case for being more important today and in some ways, because what you mentioned AI actually allows us to crunch a lot more data than we ever would have been able to in some cases. so we certainly have that even the smallest of companies have access now to big crunching. But I think also, I noticed a lot of people, stakeholders included, you know, have much shorter attention spans. And so,

Bill Shander (02:57.082)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (03:04.258)

You know, that 27 page PowerPoint deck, you know, can be condensed into a story or a metaphor. You know, that might actually be a better way to present the information.

Bill Shander (03:15.748)

Well, that’s it. so stakeholder whispering is, you the basic idea is your stakeholders ask you to do things based on their automated response. How do we usually do it? Well, usually we put it to 27 page PowerPoint deck together. And the problem is to what you said, you know, first of all, attention spans are shrinking a hundred other reasons why that may not be the best solution. But on top of that, like,

I mean, they don’t even know what they need. They’re just going to go with the automated response. And so our job as workers, and it doesn’t matter what role you’re in, if it’s marketing, great, but HR people need this, IT people, finance, et cetera. Whatever we’re working on, we need to question the ask, know, question that automated response. Maybe it is a PowerPoint deck that’s needed, or maybe not to your point.

John Jantsch (04:03.928)

So you mentioned the word order taking, know, I actually, ironically, somebody just said this to me the other day. We have to, you know, we have to sell them what they want so that we can get the trust to sell them what they need. You’ve probably heard that before and you’re kind of advocating for the idea that, no, we need to lead them to what they need and not, you know, and maybe use numbers to help do that. Talk a little more about that idea of beyond order taking.

Bill Shander (04:15.502)

Yeah. Yeah.

Bill Shander (04:28.738)

Yeah. And what you just said is also true, right? Like you do have to gain trust before you can lead them effectively. But yes, the fact is our stakeholders don’t know what they need and our job is to guide them. I often say it’s like therapy. I have a whole chapter in the book about how to conduct a therapy session because it is very much like therapy. Someone comes to a therapist because they have an issue and they need help. And the therapist doesn’t tell them what to do.

They ask them questions. say, well, how does that make you feel? Right? And the questions, right. And the questions allow you to look inside yourself and say, wait, yeah. How does that make me feel? And so in work, okay, you know, we’re launching a new product marketing, make us a brochure. Okay. You know, why would a brochure be better than an app or better than this, that, or the other? Huh? Yeah. Maybe, maybe we should do an app. that introspective opportunity is what guides us down the road towards maybe another option.

John Jantsch (04:56.406)

Yeah. Why do we want that?

Bill Shander (05:24.634)

you know, when you’re new, like you’re in a new role, new boss, whatever, you haven’t gained that trust yet, maybe all you do is you try one thing, one question, which is, the question could be, how do we measure success? How are we gonna know this is gonna, when this has worked, how are we gonna measure that? And just that one question, it’s not gonna get them all the way to some new way of thinking maybe.

but it’s an initial ask. It’s at least one step beyond overtaking. And then over time, you’ll gain more trust and you’ll be able to sort of expand on that guidance way of thinking about it.

John Jantsch (05:58.144)

You know, what I have found is, is that’s a, that’s an incredible technique in selling. you know, a lot of times people will come to us and say, want this, listen, this. and if, if we have the posture or the courage to back up and say what you said, how will that, how will we know that’s successful? What would success look like? How are we going to measure that? have you considered, I find a lot of times people will put their guard down then and like, we’re going to actually have a conversation about.

Bill Shander (06:04.793)

It is.

John Jantsch (06:26.764)

what we should be doing, I don’t have to pretend I know what to tell you to do. And I find it very disarming in a sales conversation. I mean, not to the level of being obnoxious, you know what I mean? But definitely to the level of saying, let’s think about insights instead of actions.

Bill Shander (06:30.658)

Right.

Bill Shander (06:36.42)

Totally, you’re building trust.

Bill Shander (06:40.9)

Yeah.

Bill Shander (06:45.806)

Yeah, you’re building trust the moment you do that, especially in the sales context when there’s, there’s that built in lack of trust in a way. And on top of that, you know, what, what I found in my career, the only success I’ve had in my career is because I was good at the skills, stakeholder whispering. And, know, part of that is no question. It’s the consultative approach. I’m not here.

to sell you widgets, I’m here to solve your problems. I’m here to actually help you succeed. And when you really honestly are doing that, then that includes, yeah, that asking questions like that, will lead to the right solution, not just a solution that puts dollars in my pocket.

John Jantsch (07:22.552)

So of course you’re implying that you have to actually care about getting them a result, right? Yeah. So we’ve covered one side of it, asking better questions, but what role does actually being a better listener play in this?

Bill Shander (07:26.818)

You do. You have to care and you have to be curious. Those are two things that go sort of hand in hand.

Bill Shander (07:41.848)

Yeah, active listening is something is a phrase people talk about. But do you really listen? know, and you know, what’s interesting is like, here we are, we’re having, of course, and like, you’re an interviewer in this context, and you have to do that, right? And like, when I’m talking to a client, I got to be taking notes, I got to be thinking about my next question, response, or you can’t avoid some some of that. But at the same time,

John Jantsch (07:49.07)

No, I’m thinking about the next question I’m going to ask.

Bill Shander (08:07.61)

What I encourage people to do is as best you can within that reality, you try to really listen. And a friend of mine just recently told me his phrase is, listen with your ears, not your brain. So really hear, and yeah, you’re gonna jot notes, you’re gonna notice a little trigger word, they said X, put a little circle on that, whatever, but don’t start formulating your next question as much as you can avoid it until they stop. Truly listen for that whole time.

John Jantsch (08:18.766)

Mm-hmm.

Bill Shander (08:35.354)

It’s really hard to do. None of us could do it perfectly, but we can strive towards that ideal.

John Jantsch (08:41.132)

I think it’s a little bit cultural too. think, you know, Americans are just like, we need noise. They’re like silence, you know, just kills us, right? I read a study the other day that said Americans, I think the average like silence before they become very uncomfortable is three seconds. And in Japan, it is very common for somebody to get asked a question and to literally wait for eight seconds before answering to give it thought and to give it, you know,

Bill Shander (08:50.702)

Yeah.

Bill Shander (09:04.536)

Wow.

John Jantsch (09:08.486)

emotion and I thought, you know, that’s probably I mean, most people if I sat here for eight seconds of dead air, people were like, what’s wrong? It’s pretty interesting. Yeah. Yeah.

Bill Shander (09:16.495)

Yeah.

So I have a chapter called Silence is Golden. And not only do I talk about that, but even the chapter, the book is put on the pages in a way that each page is just one sentence with silence all around it. Because it is that important, but it is uncomfortable, it’s true.

John Jantsch (09:29.42)

Yeah. Funny. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I’ve taken I’ve do some public speaking and I’ve taken some training on that and frequently a coach or something will say no let that pause let that sit let the audience digest that boy when you’re up on stage it’s like can I do it. It’s really hard. It’s funny. So so what are the

Bill Shander (09:55.186)

It is, but yeah, good, Go ahead. No, I was just gonna say, yeah, that strategic performance, which includes pauses, silence, pacing. I can speak really quickly and I can slow it down. And that has an effect on your audience for sure. Whether it’s an audience of one stakeholder or a room full of people.

John Jantsch (09:59.084)

Go ahead and finish, sir.

John Jantsch (10:15.278)

Right. So what are, let’s go with the negative. What are the common mistakes that people make? They might get the essence of this book and then charge in. What are some of the things that you see are pitfalls?

Bill Shander (10:28.312)

I mean, you one of the biggest problems people face is that they think that their job is to do what their boss tells them to do. And like on paper, there’s some truth to that, but, clients, not just bosses, clients, investors, whoever your stakeholders are, there’s a broad range of them. Obviously your job is to execute on tasks for your organization, but it’s not just to be that order taker that we talked about. So you have to, the most important thing I’m hoping people remember after reading the book.

is that they just need to do this. Like, see the world in a new way. Your job is not to execute those tasks your boss tells you to do. Your job is to succeed and help your organization succeed. And that includes probing. know, just asking, is this the right thing to be doing? Is this the right way to be doing that thing? So, step number one, acknowledge that this is a thing and just try to do something about it.

Another challenge is that some people are less whisperable than others, right? Some bosses are not so even into having these long conversations, like, you know, just do what I said, right? And obviously that takes confidence to push back and really engage your stakeholders, which also of course takes trust like we talked about. And I would say one of the third things is that, you know, it’s challenging for

John Jantsch (11:33.614)

you

Bill Shander (11:53.004)

ourselves, just sort of acknowledge to ourselves that, you know, essentially we’re all walking around being driven by our subconscious. We’re like literally all of our lives is driven by our subconscious. Tons of research shows us that we’re not very good at reasoning. We’re not really very good at deliberative thinking. We’re just being driven by our subconscious. And so if we can just think about ways to tap into the subconscious, yes, even in work, it’s like therapy, then we’re all going to do a better job doing what we need to do for.

ourselves and our organizations. And it is for ourselves also, like you’re going to be promoted if you’re the one who actually challenges the status quo, brings strategic thinking to the table and delivers against that. know duct tape marketing, the basic idea, right, is be strategic, don’t just execute on tasks, right? And so it’s a very similar way of thinking.

John Jantsch (12:40.782)

So I’m curious, have you ever considered children to be stakeholders that we have to whisper to? As I heard you say that, just do what I said. was like, that’s probably not the most current way of thinking about parenting, it?

Bill Shander (12:46.382)

They certainly could be. Yeah. I mean, and that’s

Bill Shander (12:58.264)

Yeah. And actually brings up the fourth really important thing to be thinking about and a risk, you know, a problem with this is that we don’t recognize, acknowledge, define, and prioritize all of the stakeholders. Right? So my boss tells me to do something, I do it. I am thinking my one stakeholder is my boss. No.

Your boss asked you to do that because his boss asked him and his boss, her boss. And so it’s four chains deep. And by the way, the board of directors is going to show this to their investors. Like the stakeholder list is actually this long. And now you can’t worry about all of them, but which ones are the two or the three whose opinions and actual goals really matter the most. Really zoom in on those ones and really make sure you understand their actual needs.

Like if it’s ultimately about the investors, even though your boss has you do it, they’re the real stakeholder. So make sure you understand what they really need and make sure your boss understands that they’re his stakeholder. And so that they’re involved in that stakeholder whispering with them.

John Jantsch (14:01.176)

So that brings up an interesting quant. How do you balance the fact that the objective might be to create a better experience for the customer? However, what my boss is doing, my objective has to be to keep my job. And so now I’m kind of torn between that. This isn’t really the right approach for that stakeholder. But if I want to meet this objective, how do you balance that?

Bill Shander (14:26.49)

Yeah, it’s the million dollar question. It’s hard one, right? So like some bosses, some people are not going to be very whisperable. And yeah, you could jeopardize your job with that person theoretically. I would say long term, most of the time, if you serve the customer, you’re not going to jeopardize your job.

John Jantsch (14:31.598)

Yeah.

Bill Shander (14:47.884)

and everything’s going to be for the better. Like you’re going to be the one who gets promoted. You’re going to take your boss’s job, right? Essentially, because you’re going to really solve problems. Should. Occasionally it won’t. And you either are willing to face that risk for the potential reward and or if your boss isn’t whisperable, guess what? I say, find a new boss, right? Because that’s really honestly the answer. You don’t want to work in a culture like that.

John Jantsch (14:52.782)

should work that way, right. Yeah.

John Jantsch (15:07.362)

me. Right.

John Jantsch (15:13.09)

Like so many, I would put this book into a leadership category. Hopefully that jives a little bit with what you’re thinking. And it seems like most leadership ideas really start with the culture of the organization.

Bill Shander (15:22.51)

Yeah, definitely.

Bill Shander (15:29.166)

They definitely do. Yeah. And I have a chapter at the end, which is called some love for my stakeholders or some love for the stakeholders. And I talk about the fact is first of all, I do, I love my stakeholders and it’s not just like blowing smoke. I’ve really enjoyed the work that I’ve done for the last 30 plus years. I’ve enjoyed working with the vast majority of my clients and I really, am curious and I do care and I want to help them. And so.

When I think, when I talk to them in the book, I say, first of all, thank you for teaching me for all these years how to do what I do. But then I also do turn the page a little bit on them and say, okay, now you may be reading this because you’re a middle manager. Guess what? You’re somebody else’s boss, aren’t you? Also, you are somebody’s stakeholder today, even though you’re thinking of as the order taker. So how whisperable are you? And so companies need to develop the culture where they create.

know, cultures of whisperability. And I have some clients who have amazing cultures where they, listen to me, they listen to their employees. It’s not about hierarchy or anything else. And I’ve worked for, you know, as a vendor for some companies that were really not whisperable at all. And I didn’t work for them for, for very long for a variety of reasons, but it’s really hard to be in that type of environment.

John Jantsch (16:45.262)

You have a chapter about, I mean, so many people are working either hybrid or remote or does that change kind of the framework at all or the structure or does it just add kind of another layer of complexity?

Bill Shander (17:01.978)

think it adds another layer complexity for sure because communications is harder, right? Like right now, I’m not looking at you, I’m looking at my camera, but the viewer is looking at my eyes. So at least there’s some eye contact it feels like happening. And so, you know, when it’s all on Zoom, it’s harder to have that real, really productive conversation, certainly better, you know, the body language and all kinds of other things disappear. So there’s definitely that added complexity.

But the process is still the same. You’ve got to have conversations. You’ve got to ask good questions. And something we didn’t talk about, but there’s a key part to the question asking, which is when I ask my stakeholders questions, I’m not doing it to learn the answers. It’s actually the other way around. It’s more of a Socratic dialogue. I’m asking them questions so that they can learn the answers. I want them to figure out what they actually need from me. I’m not trying to guide them. I’m not trying to tell them. I want them to figure it out. It’s like therapy.

John Jantsch (17:44.483)

Yes.

Bill Shander (17:58.848)

Once they figure it out, then I’ll do that. And so the question asking is a very, it’s a two-way street for sure, but the goal is really to help them learn as much as to help me learn.

John Jantsch (18:11.406)

Yeah, you you call it therapy, but it really strikes me. It’s a lot like coaching in some ways. mean, you’re almost coaching people to think about things that maybe haven’t even considered. know, one of my favorite phrases or least favorite phrases is, that’s the way we’ve always done it. Or that’s the way everybody in our industry does it. And, you know, just to even say, anybody ask why? So we’ve always done it that way. It’s amazing how often people will go, you know, I don’t know.

Bill Shander (18:16.591)

Yeah.

Bill Shander (18:28.515)

Right.

Yeah.

Bill Shander (18:36.697)

you

Bill Shander (18:41.55)

Yeah, it’s true.

John Jantsch (18:41.586)

the answer to that. So do you have any in the book or anything you want to anybody you’ve worked with clients that you’ve worked with kind of a real story or example where you know stakeholder whispering has really led to a far better outcome.

Bill Shander (18:58.99)

Yeah, I I tell one story in the book and it’s funny on the surface. It’s a really boring story. It’s not the most dynamic anecdote in the history of the world at all, but it’s one of the most, the moment when this happened was like really eyeopening for me. so was working on project. was doing this data dashboard essentially for this client and we’re having this conversation about whether we should show the rank position.

of countries on this one metric being measured. So this country is number one, two, three, four, five, or should we show the actual score they got on this measurement? So let’s imagine it’s about web analytics. Should we show the number of clicks they got or just the ranking in terms of clicks? And their argument was the way this type of data usually works, the way it’s always been done, is we always just show the rank because people care if their country ahead or behind their favorite country that they want to compete against. But the scores…

John Jantsch (19:37.526)

Thank

Bill Shander (19:55.364)

were universally really, really high. Very few countries had a low score. So you might’ve been ranked 150th. That looks terrible, that sounds awful. But guess what? You had a super high score, just like everybody else. Only a few countries were actually bad. And so was trying to make the case that maybe we should show the actual score because the fact that this country was ranked low didn’t mean they had an actual problem. And so the data…

John Jantsch (20:17.184)

Yeah, they could close 50 places pretty easily.

Bill Shander (20:20.886)

Exactly. They could close it easily and it didn’t matter where they were anyways, as long as they were above X score. And so, you know, I’m asking all these questions. We’re having this really long debate and she almost convinced me five times. I almost convinced her five times. But the point was, you know, it was a very open ended conversation, mostly each of us asking each other questions. and in the end, you know, there was this one moment where she said just literally, she said the word something to the effect of, I never saw it that way before.

John Jantsch (20:24.59)

Yeah.

Bill Shander (20:50.446)

You’re right. And it wasn’t gratifying because I was right, although that’s nice, you know, but it was really because there was this moment of just incredible open-mindedness to your point. Like, why have we always done it that way? Who the hell knows? Like, well, why should we do it that way? Maybe we should consider, maybe we won’t change it, but maybe we should at least look at doing it this other way. And even that I consider a win.

John Jantsch (20:50.819)

Thanks.

John Jantsch (21:15.222)

Yeah, awesome. Well, Bill, I appreciate you taking a few moments to stop by the show. You want to invite people to connect with you somewhere, find out more about your work, obviously find out more about stakeholder risk.

Bill Shander (21:26.136)

Yeah, you can always find me on my website, BillShander.com. And I’m always happy to connect with people on LinkedIn as well.

John Jantsch (21:32.3)

Well again, I appreciate you stopping by. Hopefully we’ll see you one of these days out there on the road.

Bill Shander (21:36.794)

Thank you very much, John. Nice talking to you.