From collecting insights to building advantage: How Stakeholder Proximity drives faster, safer and more confident decisions in complex organisations

A practical guide for senior leaders in financial services, regulated industries and complex environments who want to reduce decision risk, speed up execution, and stay ahead of changing expectations by getting closer to the stakeholders that matter.

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INTRODUCTION

Organisations gather more data, conduct more research, and commission more analysis than ever before. Yet many still struggle to turn that information into confident decisions, coherent strategies, and meaningful commercial outcomes.The issue isn’t a shortage of insight. It’s the distance between insight and the stakeholders who shape success. In complex and regulated industries, competitive advantage increasingly belongs to the organisations that stay closer to their stakeholders than anyone else. Not through volume of data, but through the rhythm of conversation, interpretation, and adjustment. Stakeholder proximity helps leaders reduce uncertainty, align teams, anticipate what’s coming, and act with greater confidence.

WHAT STAKEHOLDER PROXIMITY MEANS

Stakeholder proximity is the practice of staying close enough to the people who affect your success – customers, regulators, intermediaries, partners, internal leaders – to understand how their expectations are shifting and what this means for your decisions. It creates three core capabilities inside an organisation:

Clarity: Understanding what matters most to your stakeholders today and what will matter next.

Confidence: Making decisions based on evidence and real context, not assumptions.

Community: Building a steady rhythm of conversation that compounds learning over time.

Proximity transforms research from one-off projects into an ongoing advantage.

WHY PROXIMITY IS NOW A COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE

1. Reduces decision risk
   Boards and executives move faster when uncertainty falls. Proximity replaces guesswork with grounded evidence, avoiding the delays that slow large organisations down.

2. Improves execution accuracy
   Products, propositions, and service changes land better when shaped by the realities of customers, brokers, partners, and frontline teams.

3. Strengthens regulatory alignment
   Understanding how expectations are shifting helps you anticipate rather than react.

4. Sharpens value propositions
   Regular proximity reveals what stakeholders genuinely value and what no longer resonates.

5. Accelerates internal alignment
   Teams work from a shared external truth, reducing friction and opinion-led debates.
   

INSIGHT VS PROXIMITY

Insight is what you know at a moment in time. Proximity is how often you update what you know and how quickly you act on it. Most organisations run research in cycles: a large programme, a report, a presentation, then silence for months. Proximity replaces episodic knowledge with a steady, reliable perspective that leaders can trust. This shift often delivers more value than any individual research project.

WHAT PROXIMITY LOOKS LIKE IN HIGH-PERFORMING TEAMS

High-performing organisations across financial services, energy, technology, and regulated environments tend to work in similar ways:

• transformation teams validate assumptions with customers, SMEs, brokers, or intermediaries every few weeks

• CX leaders close the loop in days, not quarters

• product teams test value propositions with real decision makers before committing resources

• regulatory affairs teams track shifting interpretations early rather than reacting late

• commercial and marketing teams anchor propositions in live stakeholder sentiment

These are operational rhythms, not one-off exercises. They create the conditions for confident decisions.

HOW TO BUILD STAKEHOLDER PROXIMITY

1. Track the right signals

Focus on the signals that genuinely change decisions:

• customer expectations

• regulatory expectations

• market narratives

• competitor moves

• adoption barriers

• frontline realities

• partner and intermediary sentiment

2. Identify who influences outcomes

Stakeholders generally fall into recognisable groups: customers, regulators, partners, compliance, risk, brokers, suppliers, internal leaders, SMEs. Knowing who holds influence is half the work.

3. Create a repeatable rhythm of conversation

A steady cadence of conversations - weekly, biweekly, or monthly - creates more clarity than one-off programmes. This is where organisations stop being surprised by change and start anticipating it.

WHAT CHANGES WHEN ORGANISATIONS WORK LIKE THIS

When stakeholder proximity becomes a habit:

• strategy reflects real-world truth

• initiatives move faster because risk is reduced early

• propositions resonate more accurately with customers

• regulatory conversations become more proactive

• customer outcomes improve through genuine understanding

• teams align around shared, current insights

The advantage isn’t more data. It’s better perspective. And better perspective leads to better decisions.

Competitive advantage in complex, fast-moving markets comes from being closer to the people who shape your success. Organisations that build proximity make faster decisions, adapt sooner, and execute with greater confidence. Insight is valuable. Proximity turns that insight into advantage.