The value of good stakeholder relations can’t be underestimated. Who should do it, what should it involve and who does it well?
Sometimes, the term ‘stakeholder’ gets used in a very depersonalised, almost token manner in business
I do titter when I listen to business mumbo-jumbo – ‘drill down’, ‘helicopter vision’, ‘pain point’, ‘mission critical’, ‘deep dive’, and so on, blah, blah, codswallop, piffle, tripe. Idiotic soundbites like this are used in documents and meeting rooms the length and breadth of the nation, and at times, I’ve been guilty of uttering them. Another is the term ‘stakeholder’, which may not necessarily be an ‘on-point’, buzz word, but it is something uttered exclusively by corporate dullards to describe ‘other people’ (i.e. ‘anyone except me’) who they think they are supposed to get on with. Public transport has long loved the word ‘stakeholder’, and whole swathes of office-based goons have made a career out of schmoozing such folk.
Sometimes, the term ‘stakeholder’ gets used in a very depersonalised, almost token manner in business and in a way that reveals a company thinking it is doing the right thing but, in fact, not knowing its audience or overly lumping them in one category. The unassailable rise in CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) has propagated this lunacy. My favourite hobby, county cricket, is the biggest offender – it’s a simple, innocent pastime, followed mainly by cynical old-timers enjoying nothing else than filling time without a care in the world, apart from what sandwiches to make for their packed lunch and the batting averages of their favourite players. Yet, all too often, fans are subjected to material communications from county cricket clubs telling them about their carbon reduction plans, stakeholder engagement programmes, and diversity and inclusion targets. These are all very important causes, but the fact that customers or fans think that the company they are parting their hard-earned money with is more interested in these than taking wickets and winning matches just alienates them. It’s the same for public transport, where sometimes ‘good causes’ are celebrated so loudly as if to drown out the fact that buses and trains are late and fares are unaffordable.
I’ve had many conversations with businesses around stakeholder management and, more specifically, social value
Recently, I’ve had many conversations with businesses around stakeholder management and, more specifically, social value – which is a big-ticket item these days, particularly when it comes to scores allocated to this subject in tenders and grant awards. From foodbanks at bus stations to community halls on stations, rehabilitation schemes providing jobs in transport for ex-offenders to volunteer days for staff in the community, these are all excellent initiatives. However, they must be part of a broader strategy within transport companies to be more engaging, proactive, caring and responsible across all facets of their business – in essence, ‘on the front foot’ and with conviction, be it to delight customers, employees and the wider community per se. Too many ‘good causes’, lack conviction and are to win bids or are quickly forgotten the moment the photoshoot and press release have taken place. This is the problem with ‘stakeholder management’ – it can arouse suspicion around motives with the public and the stakeholder on the receiving end.
Indeed, stakeholder management is not for the faint-hearted or someone who thinks it’s all about creating the biggest Excel spreadsheet of contacts and literally working through a list, sending a copy-and-paste email and then thinking the job has been done. Expectations need to be managed, and when a business or individual has been opened up to and made to feel they are a stakeholder, they then expect to be granted with ‘c’ word status – a consultee and with this there is, in many cases, a sense of entitlement around being part of decision-making processes. Many stakeholders in public transport are grumpy, miserable so-and-so’s who will think nothing of draining the life out of a beleaguered rail or bus manager for their overinflated cause?
Sometimes, I yearn for the days when, in the transport industry, responsibility for regional stakeholder management sat within the remit of local area managers
Very recently, in one of my roles, I was grumbled at by one organisation for not consulting with them on a decision about travel arrangements. It’s sometimes a fine judgment regarding when consultation slows down decision-making, particularly if the decision being made is clearly the right one and where the likely stance of the would-be consultee will be impractical and overly parochial. Indeed, by overly consulting, a risk is run of suggesting that those in charge, in this case the train operators, look as though they are bereft of autonomy if they feel they have to run everything past any external stakeholder.
This elevation of stakeholders and a desire to consult incessantly led many train companies to employ dedicated, specialist stakeholder managers. Sometimes, I yearn for the days when, in the transport industry, responsibility for regional stakeholder management sat within the remit of local area managers who undertook a dual role of managing the customer proposition and simultaneously being embedded in the community – the ambassadorial face of the company. Not only did this make for a more attractive and enticing role for managers, but it developed them as rounded leaders with a breadth of career-enhancing attributes. Such skills are transferable – if you are an engaging leader with stakeholders and invest time and skills in cementing relationships, you will also do so with staff and customers.
Owning and managing relationships with stakeholders has previously been one of the few opportunities for bus and rail managers to unlock and pursue their entrepreneurial skills, particularly those managing railway stations where the days of them being regarded as ‘retail managers’, leading a mini-P and L, have disappeared. It’s a joy to witness a local manager enthusiastically regale on LinkedIn how they hunted down a business leader in the community and met them to discuss a partnership that might improve the customer experience or put bums on seats. And then, I watch, unsurprisingly a month or so later, disappointment etched on their face, as they explain that the initiative has been killed by some green-eyed, ‘not invented here’ HQ boss who has never generated revenue or customer satisfaction in their entire career or by a useless central marketing team who might as well reside on the moon for all their understanding of the local markets they are supposed to serve.
In recent years, there’s been a streamlining of roles within transport, inevitably creating a less versatile and lower quality local management. This has also accelerated the creation of dedicated stakeholder managers, particularly in companies where the ‘stakeholder matrix’ (more corporate jargon, I know) is complicated. For some time, though, several organisations have had experts at a company level taking on responsibility for all stakeholder relationships or supporting local folk. Grandees of stakeholder management were spawned, particularly in rail, monumentally experienced, astute at networking, patient and resilient expert communicators – Mike Lamport, Samantha Hodder, Jonathan Denby, Rupert Brennan-Brown among others, spring to mind. These stalwarts spent their entire working weeks for countless decades uncomplainingly turning up at conferences, seminars, events and forums, saying the right things and presenting their employer positively, often in adversity.
Recently, the approach to stakeholder relationships has diversified. Last year, I attended a sumptuous dinner hosted by Chiltern where after an impressive opening few lines from its smooth-talking managing director Richard Allan, those of us in the room – an eclectic collection of stakeholders all with diverse backgrounds – had the opportunity to discuss how we might get more people out of their houses and on trains to drive the regional economy. Chiltern, like many other train operators, regularly organises workshops and seminars with stakeholders.
Forming deep, long-lasting and meaningful relationships with key people in the community and beyond isn’t easy and requires time and energy
The value of good stakeholder relations cannot be underestimated. As mentioned, it’s a truism that those businesses who care about customers, staff and stakeholders tend to be the highest performing. The most divisive and despised train operating companies have been those that derived perverse macho pride in firing staff with impunity, whilst taking pleasure at sticking their fingers in their ears and ignoring the community and being punitive and hostile towards customers. The same in the bus sector.
Many businesses refer to their customers and staff as stakeholders. They do it in a flouncy way to suggest that it is all about ‘collaboration’- again, it’s corporate balderdash. Customers feel uneasy about being called ‘stakeholders’, almost suspicious as if they are some kind of business commodity. When I board my train on a Saturday, Haribos, can of coke and Daily Mail in hand to watch my local non-league football team 12 minutes away, the thought that some corporate clone in an office classifying me as a stakeholder is patronising. We leisure customers on our day off travel by train to escape the nonsense world of business. The pointlessness of my existence is epitomised by a trip that couldn’t remotely be further away from the world where I might be a ‘stakeholder’. Staff aren’t stakeholders either. Don’t kid yourself that the smiling assassin or HR director thinks you are equal when they have a ‘protected conversation’ the moment you step out of line.
As mentioned previously, the most successful companies have leaders who instinctively get on with the job and do the right thing. They realise that however much you dress it up, managing stakeholders is merely a natural extension of oneself and continuing to be a decent, thoughtful person. I always admired the partnership between Andrew Haines as Network Rail CEO and his boss, Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill, which was an example of excellent stakeholder management. A more polished, likeable leader than Haines you’d struggle to find.
There are many gifted transport top dogs out there who have this knack of managing to keep trains and buses moving, yet still invest time so well at proactively making literally hundreds of stakeholders feel they are part of their journey too – Mark Hopwood, Andy Mellors, Richard Allan (again) are classic examples in rail. In bus, the cupboard is also well stocked with polished, accomplished stakeholder savvy head honchos. At the opposite end of the spectrum, there are scallywags who just use ‘stakeholder management’ to draw attention to themselves.
In summary, though it’s important to focus first and foremost on getting it right for customers, the stakes are high when it comes to stakeholder management, and in this increasingly moribund, centralised ‘command and control’ structure within bus and rail, there’s little to differentiate one transport provider from another. Forming deep, long-lasting and meaningful relationships with key people in the community and beyond isn’t easy and requires time and energy, but it can create a legacy and drive the success of an organisation on all fronts whilst, most importantly, showing how much heart and soul it has beneath the corporate façade. Hopefully, for you, my dearest stakeholders, there are lots of takeaways and low-hanging fruit from my article, and we can circle back at a future time and take it offline if you have the bandwidth.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Alex Warner has over 30 years’ experience in the transport sector, having held senior roles on a multi-modal basis across the sector. He is co-founder of transport technology business Lost Group and transport consultancy AJW Experience Group (which includes Great Scenic Journeys). He is also chair of West Midlands Grand Rail Collaboration.
This story appears inside the latest issue of Passenger Transport.
Looking after the ‘stakeholders’
by Passenger Transport on May 2, 2025 • 1:32 pm No CommentsThe value of good stakeholder relations can’t be underestimated. Who should do it, what should it involve and who does it well?
I do titter when I listen to business mumbo-jumbo – ‘drill down’, ‘helicopter vision’, ‘pain point’, ‘mission critical’, ‘deep dive’, and so on, blah, blah, codswallop, piffle, tripe. Idiotic soundbites like this are used in documents and meeting rooms the length and breadth of the nation, and at times, I’ve been guilty of uttering them. Another is the term ‘stakeholder’, which may not necessarily be an ‘on-point’, buzz word, but it is something uttered exclusively by corporate dullards to describe ‘other people’ (i.e. ‘anyone except me’) who they think they are supposed to get on with. Public transport has long loved the word ‘stakeholder’, and whole swathes of office-based goons have made a career out of schmoozing such folk.
Sometimes, the term ‘stakeholder’ gets used in a very depersonalised, almost token manner in business and in a way that reveals a company thinking it is doing the right thing but, in fact, not knowing its audience or overly lumping them in one category. The unassailable rise in CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) has propagated this lunacy. My favourite hobby, county cricket, is the biggest offender – it’s a simple, innocent pastime, followed mainly by cynical old-timers enjoying nothing else than filling time without a care in the world, apart from what sandwiches to make for their packed lunch and the batting averages of their favourite players. Yet, all too often, fans are subjected to material communications from county cricket clubs telling them about their carbon reduction plans, stakeholder engagement programmes, and diversity and inclusion targets. These are all very important causes, but the fact that customers or fans think that the company they are parting their hard-earned money with is more interested in these than taking wickets and winning matches just alienates them. It’s the same for public transport, where sometimes ‘good causes’ are celebrated so loudly as if to drown out the fact that buses and trains are late and fares are unaffordable.
Recently, I’ve had many conversations with businesses around stakeholder management and, more specifically, social value – which is a big-ticket item these days, particularly when it comes to scores allocated to this subject in tenders and grant awards. From foodbanks at bus stations to community halls on stations, rehabilitation schemes providing jobs in transport for ex-offenders to volunteer days for staff in the community, these are all excellent initiatives. However, they must be part of a broader strategy within transport companies to be more engaging, proactive, caring and responsible across all facets of their business – in essence, ‘on the front foot’ and with conviction, be it to delight customers, employees and the wider community per se. Too many ‘good causes’, lack conviction and are to win bids or are quickly forgotten the moment the photoshoot and press release have taken place. This is the problem with ‘stakeholder management’ – it can arouse suspicion around motives with the public and the stakeholder on the receiving end.
Indeed, stakeholder management is not for the faint-hearted or someone who thinks it’s all about creating the biggest Excel spreadsheet of contacts and literally working through a list, sending a copy-and-paste email and then thinking the job has been done. Expectations need to be managed, and when a business or individual has been opened up to and made to feel they are a stakeholder, they then expect to be granted with ‘c’ word status – a consultee and with this there is, in many cases, a sense of entitlement around being part of decision-making processes. Many stakeholders in public transport are grumpy, miserable so-and-so’s who will think nothing of draining the life out of a beleaguered rail or bus manager for their overinflated cause?
Very recently, in one of my roles, I was grumbled at by one organisation for not consulting with them on a decision about travel arrangements. It’s sometimes a fine judgment regarding when consultation slows down decision-making, particularly if the decision being made is clearly the right one and where the likely stance of the would-be consultee will be impractical and overly parochial. Indeed, by overly consulting, a risk is run of suggesting that those in charge, in this case the train operators, look as though they are bereft of autonomy if they feel they have to run everything past any external stakeholder.
This elevation of stakeholders and a desire to consult incessantly led many train companies to employ dedicated, specialist stakeholder managers. Sometimes, I yearn for the days when, in the transport industry, responsibility for regional stakeholder management sat within the remit of local area managers who undertook a dual role of managing the customer proposition and simultaneously being embedded in the community – the ambassadorial face of the company. Not only did this make for a more attractive and enticing role for managers, but it developed them as rounded leaders with a breadth of career-enhancing attributes. Such skills are transferable – if you are an engaging leader with stakeholders and invest time and skills in cementing relationships, you will also do so with staff and customers.
Owning and managing relationships with stakeholders has previously been one of the few opportunities for bus and rail managers to unlock and pursue their entrepreneurial skills, particularly those managing railway stations where the days of them being regarded as ‘retail managers’, leading a mini-P and L, have disappeared. It’s a joy to witness a local manager enthusiastically regale on LinkedIn how they hunted down a business leader in the community and met them to discuss a partnership that might improve the customer experience or put bums on seats. And then, I watch, unsurprisingly a month or so later, disappointment etched on their face, as they explain that the initiative has been killed by some green-eyed, ‘not invented here’ HQ boss who has never generated revenue or customer satisfaction in their entire career or by a useless central marketing team who might as well reside on the moon for all their understanding of the local markets they are supposed to serve.
In recent years, there’s been a streamlining of roles within transport, inevitably creating a less versatile and lower quality local management. This has also accelerated the creation of dedicated stakeholder managers, particularly in companies where the ‘stakeholder matrix’ (more corporate jargon, I know) is complicated. For some time, though, several organisations have had experts at a company level taking on responsibility for all stakeholder relationships or supporting local folk. Grandees of stakeholder management were spawned, particularly in rail, monumentally experienced, astute at networking, patient and resilient expert communicators – Mike Lamport, Samantha Hodder, Jonathan Denby, Rupert Brennan-Brown among others, spring to mind. These stalwarts spent their entire working weeks for countless decades uncomplainingly turning up at conferences, seminars, events and forums, saying the right things and presenting their employer positively, often in adversity.
Recently, the approach to stakeholder relationships has diversified. Last year, I attended a sumptuous dinner hosted by Chiltern where after an impressive opening few lines from its smooth-talking managing director Richard Allan, those of us in the room – an eclectic collection of stakeholders all with diverse backgrounds – had the opportunity to discuss how we might get more people out of their houses and on trains to drive the regional economy. Chiltern, like many other train operators, regularly organises workshops and seminars with stakeholders.
The value of good stakeholder relations cannot be underestimated. As mentioned, it’s a truism that those businesses who care about customers, staff and stakeholders tend to be the highest performing. The most divisive and despised train operating companies have been those that derived perverse macho pride in firing staff with impunity, whilst taking pleasure at sticking their fingers in their ears and ignoring the community and being punitive and hostile towards customers. The same in the bus sector.
Many businesses refer to their customers and staff as stakeholders. They do it in a flouncy way to suggest that it is all about ‘collaboration’- again, it’s corporate balderdash. Customers feel uneasy about being called ‘stakeholders’, almost suspicious as if they are some kind of business commodity. When I board my train on a Saturday, Haribos, can of coke and Daily Mail in hand to watch my local non-league football team 12 minutes away, the thought that some corporate clone in an office classifying me as a stakeholder is patronising. We leisure customers on our day off travel by train to escape the nonsense world of business. The pointlessness of my existence is epitomised by a trip that couldn’t remotely be further away from the world where I might be a ‘stakeholder’. Staff aren’t stakeholders either. Don’t kid yourself that the smiling assassin or HR director thinks you are equal when they have a ‘protected conversation’ the moment you step out of line.
As mentioned previously, the most successful companies have leaders who instinctively get on with the job and do the right thing. They realise that however much you dress it up, managing stakeholders is merely a natural extension of oneself and continuing to be a decent, thoughtful person. I always admired the partnership between Andrew Haines as Network Rail CEO and his boss, Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill, which was an example of excellent stakeholder management. A more polished, likeable leader than Haines you’d struggle to find.
There are many gifted transport top dogs out there who have this knack of managing to keep trains and buses moving, yet still invest time so well at proactively making literally hundreds of stakeholders feel they are part of their journey too – Mark Hopwood, Andy Mellors, Richard Allan (again) are classic examples in rail. In bus, the cupboard is also well stocked with polished, accomplished stakeholder savvy head honchos. At the opposite end of the spectrum, there are scallywags who just use ‘stakeholder management’ to draw attention to themselves.
In summary, though it’s important to focus first and foremost on getting it right for customers, the stakes are high when it comes to stakeholder management, and in this increasingly moribund, centralised ‘command and control’ structure within bus and rail, there’s little to differentiate one transport provider from another. Forming deep, long-lasting and meaningful relationships with key people in the community and beyond isn’t easy and requires time and energy, but it can create a legacy and drive the success of an organisation on all fronts whilst, most importantly, showing how much heart and soul it has beneath the corporate façade. Hopefully, for you, my dearest stakeholders, there are lots of takeaways and low-hanging fruit from my article, and we can circle back at a future time and take it offline if you have the bandwidth.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Alex Warner has over 30 years’ experience in the transport sector, having held senior roles on a multi-modal basis across the sector. He is co-founder of transport technology business Lost Group and transport consultancy AJW Experience Group (which includes Great Scenic Journeys). He is also chair of West Midlands Grand Rail Collaboration.
This story appears inside the latest issue of Passenger Transport.
DON’T MISS OUT – GET YOUR COPY! – click here to subscribe!