Achieving Buy-in with your Forest Investment Strategy  

Why identifying key internal and external stakeholders to your strategy and ensuring they align with your objectives is critical to success.  

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You may have the best impact and profit maximizing forest investment strategy, but without one key ingredient, it is doomed to fail. 

Buy-in 

Everyone has their own agenda. Some may be in the form of subtly held ideals, be built on years of experience, and some may be mandated or regulated requirements. One thing is clear – when it comes to moving a revised or new forest investment strategy across the line, you’re going to need buy-in from those who will influence and be influenced by your strategy – your key internal and external stakeholders. 

In this week’s article, I’m going to talk about the dual task of setting financial and impact objectives for a forest investment strategy and getting buy-in from the stakeholders needed to execute successfully. Because these must be in alignment to succeed. 

Who are the key stakeholders? 

To identify the key stakeholders in your strategy’s success, I would draw from my work in ESG and, specifically IFC’s Environmental and Social Performance Standards around stakeholder identification and analysis. In this process, one must consider: 

• Interested stakeholders 

• Impacted stakeholders, and, 

• Stakeholders of influence 

In keeping with the IFC approach, it is important not only to create a long-list of all possible stakeholders, in this case, for the development and execution of a forest investment strategy, but to also consider the scope and scale of the stakeholder’s impact and influence. 

When we’re talking about creating a new forest investment strategy, or retrofitting an existing mandate to make it more impactful – its important to think first of the stakeholders that will have the biggest influence on your strategy’s success. You need buy-in from these stakeholders, and as such, your objectives must resonate with them. 

Internal Stakeholders 

Internal stakeholders are those within your organization. They will be the committees or individuals making approvals, marketing your strategy to prospective investors, providing you with the expertise and analysis to give the strategy teeth. You will want to ask yourself these questions as you make your objectives, so that you can be sure to design them in such a way that your objectives are in alignment with these stakeholders: 

1. Within my organization, what individuals or groups are contributing to the design of the strategy? 

• If there is a lack of seriousness or high-quality work from technical contributors, their contributions can dilute the robustness of the strategy, and consequently putting it at risk of not succeeding. Make sure they can see how their contributions will move the needle forward on the objectives (that they will also believe in). 

2. Within my organization, what individuals or groups are required to approve the strategy? 

• If the decision-making bodies don’t believe in or align with the objectives of the strategy, and don’t believe they align with the ethos of the business, your strategy will not get approved. 

3. Within my organization, what individuals or groups are going to be promoting the strategy? 

• If your marketing team either doesn’t fully understand the investment thesis, or doesn’t believe in it, they will have a difficult time communicating it with prospective investors and they likely will not be able to convert investors. 

Without this buy-in, your strategy can drag out, fizzle out, or if implemented – not succeed. 

External Stakeholders 

External Stakeholders are outside your organization, but either have an interest in your strategy or may be impacted by it. This list is wide-reaching, but for now – let’s keep in mind our priorities at this stage, and identifying the stakeholders with the biggest impact on the strategy’s success. 

1. Does the strategy require external investment? If so, what is the profile of the investor the strategy will seek? What financial and impact objectives do they seek? What are the key organizations or who are the key people to contact? 

• If you are not seeking investors who are aligned with the objectives of your strategy, it goes without saying that they will not invest. 

2. Does the strategy require any strategic partners? If you are combining financial and impact objectives and ultimately executing investment activities to meet these objectives, are there any strategic partners that can help you execute, and further achieve more buy-in from stakeholders? 

• If your team lacks capacity to fully execute your strategy successfully, and you cannot achieve the buy-in to engage a strategic partner who can fill those gaps – you will challenge your ability to succeed. 

3. Will your implementing partners be on board? Will they buy-in to executing the activities to meet both your financial and impact objectives? 

• If you can’t achieve buy-in from your operators, you risk that your objectives will not be met. 

4. Will your anticipated off-takers buy products (ie. wood products and carbon credits), and will your anticipated successor investors acquire your assets, so that you can exit successfully? 

• If you can’t capitalize on your return drivers, nor exit your assets to a successor, both your financial and impact objectives may not be met. You may have achieved impact benefits in the short term, but without financial sustainability, any impact gains might be lost. 

Theory of Change to get Buy-in 

Did you know that one of the quickest and best ways to communicate your investment thesis to key stakeholders is through a concise, yet well-articulated Theory of Change? 

The Theory of Change is an excellent planning tool to combine financial and impact objectives from your forest investment strategy. If you build it while keeping in mind the elements that are important to your key stakeholders, they will be able to see themselves in it and to visualize how the objectives of their held agenda will be met through its execution. 

If you’re interested in learning more about how the Theory of Change can help get you the buy-in you need to get your forest investment strategy executed successfully, I will be holding a webinar this autumn on just this. Registration just opened, so Register today. – Register today! 

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