Principles and Practices of Stakeholder Engagement

Stakeholder Engagement: the Necessary Ideal

The ideal is for every stakeholder to be engaged as a competent, constructive, creative, committed collaborator in the solution-discovery process.  Stakeholders may be engaged as individuals, or as part of a common interest group, represented by one or more members of the group.

Stakeholder engagement is NOT a strategy to maneuver stakeholders so they buy into measures handed down from on high for the advantage of some elite.  It IS a way to tap into the reservoir of knowledge, skills and creativity residing in the stakeholders. It IS the way to build stakeholder ownership and support of a solution they had a hand in creating themselves.

Who are the stakeholders?  They are all who have an interest in the issue at hand, whether they know it or not, and all who feel they have an interest, whether they do or not.  This inclusive definition has two benefits.  First, on the positive side, it brings in all the knowledge, skills and passion that the stakeholders can provide.  It ensures that all the pertinent stakeholder interests are recognized, articulated and respected.  On the negative side, if stakeholders are ignored or left out, they become a dangerous reservoir of discontent, resentment and disruption.

Any endeavor must make winners of all its stakeholders if it is to endure and thrive.

This is a law of human affairs, having almost the force of a physical law of nature.  Now you, Dear Viewer, may feel you can challenge this declaration with counterexamples, say,  of authoritarian or despotic regimes that seem to endure, even while making losers of most stakeholders.  Look again.  Such regimes are always beset by existential threats and can hardly be seen as thriving, and sooner or later they will fail.

Closer to home, The Muddle Buster finds, in actual experience, convincing demonstrations that making winners of stakeholders is crucial.  By far the most common cause of failure of needed and beneficial but controversial ventures is failure to develop stakeholder support from the very beginning.  The common impulse among leaders is to avoid engaging the troublesome and disruptive public too soon.  First get the project planned out in sufficient detail, work behind the scenes to line up needed approvals and political support, and prepare a slick and convincing presentation to sell the project to the public.  Then roll it out.  Who could object to what is clearly a wonderful idea and obviously in the public interest?  Well, just about everybody with a shred of interest in the outcome who wasn’t included  in the planning will object.  It is human nature to see something new and unexpected as a threat, to react with opposition, and to create a rationale that justifies the opposition.

Excluding stakeholders; penny wise and pound foolish

When stakeholders are excluded, the efficiency achieved early on from the absence of troublesome stakeholders at the beginning is wasted.  Such a project may take off quickly and appear to be headed for success, only to hit the wall of stakeholder opposition.  There it may crash and burn, sinking into oblivion.  Or it may be rescued after a long and costly struggle, eventually succeeding while leaving a legacy of rancor.

The value of stakeholder inclusion

It is much better to view the stakeholders as possessors of valuable knowledge about the problem, applicable expertise, and a font of creativity to contribute to the solution.  It is worth the investment to recruit the stakeholders and facilitate their constructive engagement from the beginning and throughout the CSD project.  Treat them with respect and lead them through the Solution-Discovery process as participants, incrementally building a consensus for support for the solution that finally emerges.  Such a project will start off slowly but gather momentum, reaching a better solution, quicker, and at lower cost.

Buy-in is Good, Ownership is Best

Generally, people who are advancing a proposed resolution for a sticky issue are striving for buy-in.  That means the people who developed the proposed solution present it to the stakeholders as advantageous and hope to convince them of that.  Those stakeholders who accept it, support it and are willing to use and abide by it are said to “buy in,” and that’s good.  However, the stakeholders who buy in may still harbor reservations, and may be lukewarm in their commitment if things begin to go sour a bit.   If it gets too sour, they may very well pull out.

A higher level of acceptance and commitment is ownership.  With ownership, the stakeholder’s attitude is “I helped to build it.  I understand it, I know how it works, I can use it.  I trust it and depend on it, and if it starts to break down I can help to fix it.  It is mine.”  That is clearly the gold standard of stakeholder commitment.

CSD strives for and is capable of achieving stakeholder ownership in the solution that is discovered.  That occurs to the highest level for an issue that is the concern of a particular limited and well-connected group.  All members of that group are stakeholders who are actively involved in the solution-discovery process.  They have all been introduced somehow to CSD, and through experience with developing the solution-discovery process for their particular issue, have internalized CSD and made it second nature.  Then, by using that internalized CSD tool they arrive at a solution that meets all the criteria for ownership by the stakeholders.  The project of the Torrance Unified School District, where CSD is the tool they used to achieve their goal of better math education in the district, is a real-world example where ownership is the result.  That project is described in more detail elsewhere on this site.

Ownership can also be achieved in a CSD project involving a much greater number of stakeholders, perhaps spread over a wide geographical area.  Generally, political issues are of this sort.   This kind of CSD project is executed by a core group consisting (more or less) of a team of skilled CSD practitioners who carry out the solution-discovery process and a cadre of actively engaged stakeholders.  Often these stakeholders are representatives of the various stakeholder types in the wider population, together with self-appointed and highly interested individuals.  The wider stakeholder population participates, to the degree they choose, as observers, as respondents to solicitations of input from the core group, as critics/evaluators of the work of the core group, up to an including the selection of the final solution.  With this kind of project, stakeholders in and near the core group may reach the level of ownership in the solution, while those farther out may rise only to the buy-in level, or lower.

The ranking of stakeholder commitment has ownership and buy-in at the top, with lesser levels roughly defined as below.

  • Ownership: enthusiastic, complete and loyal commitment to the solution.
  • Buy-in: willing and convinced acceptance of the solution, with perhaps some residual reservations.
  • Tentative acceptance: OK with the solution but looking for more evidence on which to base the decision to either increase or withdraw support.
  • Grudging acquiescence:  willing to go along with the solution but looking/hoping for something better.
  • Rejection and resistance: definitely not accepting the solution but with fervor that may rise only to passive resistance and complaint.
  • Active rebellion: seeing the solution as so harmful and/or shoved down their throats so that it must be actively opposed.

The old adversarial power politics paradigm generally achieves solution acceptance somewhere in the lower levels.  All to often the level of acceptance depends on party or tribe.  Winners in the conflict may exhibit acceptance as high as buy-in, and even ownership for those within the inner circle.  Losers, however, will be at the bottom of the list, fighting to reverse the outcome or at least sabotage it.

Actively recruit and assist stakeholders with getting organized.

The common but totally ineffective approach to engaging stakeholders is to simply post a notice and expect all the right people to show up. Then, when they don’t show up, the organizers simply throw up their hands and say, “Well, we tried.” Sometimes this is with an attitude of resignation, but sometimes it may be with cynical triumph because now the organizers have the excuse (“We tried”) to disregard the stakeholder who didn’t show up and go ahead with their own agenda.

                                                                 
                                                                                                   This weak attempt is usually ineffective

This usually results in very low participation. People lead busy lives and they don’t need something else to deal with. If they’ve already heard enough about the issue to realize in might be important in their lives, they may attend the meeting. If they are somewhat energized about the issue, they may look for someone else who is going to the meeting to represent their interests. Usually the notice will just be ignored, but even if they do show up it will be with no expectation that their interests will be respected unless they are prepared to fight for it.

The attitude a CSD project’s leaders take toward stakeholder engagement is important. If the attitude is a sincere desire for inclusive stakeholder engagement, if the attitude is commitment to doing whatever is necessary to achieve that goal, the necessary measures will be taken and stakeholders will pick it up, making project success much more likely. From that high point, the project leadership’s attitude can descend on a decreasing scale from unenthusiastic, indifferent, apathetic to cynical. Their attitude may be “If they’re not interested enough to show up, they aren’t worth including in the process. Too bad for them if the outcome doesn’t suit them.,” At the bottom of the scale the attitude is downright hostile. This state is too often found with large projects, conducted by powerful interests with no intention to honor stockholder interests, merely going through the motions for show.

Stakeholder attitudes and participation will reflect the attitudes of the project, as demonstrated in their practices for stakeholder engagement. For the sake of a good project outcome, full and enthusiast stakeholder participation is the goal. Stakeholder skepticism, based on a past history of poor experiences, is a barrier to achieving that goal. Competent stakeholder engagement practices, persistently applied, can overcome the barriers.

An effective stakeholder engagement process might very well include the following.

  • Make an inventory of who the stakeholders are, either as individuals or groups sharing common interests. Base the initial version on the knowledge of the project’s core group. As real information comes in, expand the inventory accordingly.
  • Issue a direct invitation to every stakeholder, describing what the issue is and how they will be engaged in the solution-discovery process. Follow up with inquiries to those who don’t initially show up.
  • Appoint surrogates for stakeholders who persist in not showing up. They may come around eventually and will be gratified that their interests have been served in the meantime.
  • Help stakeholders organize so they may work together to clarify their interests and participate in the solution-discovery process. Use the knowledge learned from inventorying the stakeholders to set up contacts among those with common interest. Help them establish their own internal organizations within their groups for active participation.
  • Establish two-way communication on a regular basis between stakeholder groups and the solution-discovery project core team.

Soliciting stakeholder inputs and responses

Go for the deep and significant stakeholder expression that is below the superficial. The project needs to know the concerns, interests, problems, values, priorities, fears and aspirations of the stakeholders. It may be a hard go to extract information at this depth from people who may not be experienced at thinking in this way. Seek out references on the techniques suitable for this sort of inquiry, such as active listening.

It is very common for stakeholders to express their interests in terms of some particular design feature for the solution. That is premature in the process but should be respected. Point out that such suggestions will be welcome later in the process, and then ask what are the qualities of that desired feature that are important to the stakeholder. That’s what the people who will craft the solution need to know, so they are free to explore several paths to the desired qualities, in order to find the better one.

Maintain and use good documentation

Record the raw inputs from stakeholders. Digest, summarize and organize that material into a coherent story, the basis for subsequent decisions along the path of the CSD project. As the project moves forward, new opportunities and needs for stakeholder inputs will arise. Respond with further stakeholder interaction, and keep the documentation current. This is an important function of Knowledge Management.