Andy Burnham faces a challenge familiar to any business leader: having a plan is one thing; building the support needed to deliver it is another. Burnham has made common purpose central to his early pitch to the country. His ambitions – from delivering good growth in every postcode and reindustrialisation to tackling homelessness and devolving power from Westminster – cannot be delivered by government alone.
They depend on building coalitions of people and institutions, across the public and private sectors, prepared to help make them happen: businesses, local leaders, communities, investors, public bodies and voters themselves. “Let’s see if we can do this together. Let’s see if Britain can do this,” were Burnham’s words in his rallying call for organisations to come together to tackle homelessness, acknowledging the government cannot achieve it, nor pay for it, alone.
Support matters to Burnham because it turns his ambition into something others are prepared to help deliver. The same is true for business. The organisations that succeed over the coming months and years won’t simply be those with the best access to the government. They’ll be those that build the broader base of support necessary to make growth possible.
Whether it’s artificial intelligence (AI), defence or infrastructure, businesses across sectors increasingly need to earn support from a coalition of customers, employees, suppliers, investors, communities, policymakers and regulators.
For years, corporate affairs has relied on measures of trust and reputation to understand the relationship between organisations and their stakeholders. Those measures remain important. But in the end, they tell us how people feel. They do not predict action.
Businesses don’t grow simply because their audiences think highly of them. They succeed because customers back them, employees advocate for them, policymakers listen to them, communities are prepared to support them when it matters and shareholders invest to back them.
That’s why we believe support deserves far greater attention from corporate affairs professionals and business leaders than it currently receives.
At 5654 & Company, we have spent the last year exploring what support really means. Not simply as another measure of sentiment, but as the willingness of audiences to actively defend, advocate for and, as a result, enable the growth of a business or industry. That thinking led us to create the 5654 Support Index.
Through in-depth opinion research and analysis, we wanted to understand what drives support, what holds it back and why some organisations can mobilise support while others struggle to turn this into meaningful action.
We asked more than 9,000 people what motivates them to support or oppose, businesses. Across 15 sectors of the economy, our findings show that sentiment does not always predict action. The research results also demonstrate a much more sophisticated picture of support.
Support begins with delivery. If you do not reliably deliver the core product or service which your consumers and stakeholders expect, then you will struggle to gain backing and trust for any aspect of your organisation. Opposition to an organisation, meanwhile, is more influenced by broader societal and values-based issues.
The findings also shows that support moves in thresholds. As support strengthens, there are points at which people become willing to take supportive actions involving greater effort, visibility or personal reputational risk.
That has an important implication for corporate affairs. The objective isn’t necessarily to make everyone like an organisation a little more. It is to understand which audiences matter, what will move them towards active support and when they cross the threshold from positive sentiment to a willingness to act for you.
And critically, elite audiences move faster than the public towards support or opposition, which in turn influences stakeholder decisions and shapes public opinion and debate.
For corporate affairs leaders, this data can inform smarter strategies and campaigns, drive valuable action to further a company’s objectives and help identify when an organisation risks becoming genuinely opposed. Businesses that succeed are not always those with the highest approval ratings.
They are the businesses that create supporters who are prepared to be active and who out-compete those organisations campaigning to build opposition against them.
In a world where expectations are high and scrutiny is rightfully intense, businesses need more than trust alone. Mobilising active supporters significantly enables growth and unlocks opportunities.
It is clear that the same can certainly be said for this new Labour government, and Andy Burnham, who depend on building support to deliver his ambitions.
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