Specifically, not at an owner/exectutive level, more in middle management, adjacent roles are often referred to as partners or stakeholders. How can you distinguish objectively between the two? Examples appreciated.
I’m having trouble distilling this concept down, thus why its in eli5. One example of a partnership I know gets referenced frequently is: engineering manager is a partner to a product owner. I’ve heard SEO experts, or marketing being stakeholders but im not sure if thats correct.
In: 1
A partner generally means the person has some ownership share of the business. It could be large or small amount of ownership. The term partner is usually used for people who are currently active in the business, such as working there, or an important or significant person within the business.
A stakeholder is an overly broad term for someone who has an interest (or in short, they care about) in the businesses’ success. They may or may not have ownership of it. They may (and often do) work at the business, or maybe have invested in the business, or have some other reason to care about the business. Generally someone who is a stakeholder may have the ability to influence the actions of a business, but they don’t necessarily have to. For example, the CFO of a business would be a stakeholder, even if they don’t own the business. They work there, can influence the business, make big decisions and if the business goes up or down, it may affect them and their job.
Note: Stakeholder and shareholder are not the same. Shareholder means ownership. Stakeholder does not directly imply ownership, only that they have a reason to care about the success of a business. Stakeholder is a very broad term.
Latest Answers