19 Aug 2020
Stakeholder engagement quick tips
Tips for engaging stakeholders for change
- Engage early and engage often
- Some stakeholders are best engaged by others
- Never start an engagement with your solution
- Collaborate and co-create value
- Demonstration trumps argument
- Respect that past
- You may forget important stakeholders, but they won’t forget you
- Outcomes sought influence your approach
The above image describes a not too uncommon situation. Hopefully, we’ve gotten better at engaging early. When is early? As early as possible, but there are also situations where too early may not work to your favour. One such situation is where change is announced, interest is cultivated, but then followed by a period of inaction. That’s too early. Trying to then recover from this situation is difficult, as in the change ‘game’ you sometimes only get one chance to impress. This can be more difficult in environments where uncertainty may be high, coupled with learning and survival anxiety.As soon as a change is announced, information needs to be available or at minimum stakeholders need to know when more information will become available.
Engaging stakeholders early, is an important means to involve, understand desired outcomes, identify needs and concerns, to learn, receive early feedback and importantly co-create solutions to realize value. As your change situation continues and people have had more to time to consider the change, it’s natural for more questions to arise. New ideas may appear, those interested previously may be less interested now and those who previously did not express interest are now interested. Engagement is not an activity that occurs at a single point in time, nor do interest and influence levels remain unchanged through the life of a change program. To be successful and realize the value of change initiatives, engagement should and can only be seen as continuous processes, where engagement methods, frequency and roles adapt to the change environment.
You may forget important stakeholders, but they won’t forget you
Ever been in this situation? One definitely to avoid. We know elephants have long memories, so do your stakeholders! Importance of stakeholders can be assessed in different ways, but let’s put these different assessment parameters aside for now and explore who important stakeholders might be. Perhaps top tier managers, middle managers, team leads, frontline staff, external players (customers, industry sectors/associations, lobby groups, the community). Let’s keep it simple, and describe them as anyone that can influence outcomes because of a position of power, ability to influence others, technical know-how, or perhaps they are integral to achieving new capabilities sought. The outcomes sought will help identify who these important stakeholders are. They are all important in different ways and using tools such as an influence/interest matrix can help with profiling and informing how to focus your engagement efforts.
Keep in mind influence can be rated from either a potential positive or negative impact and a single stakeholder or group may have different impact types on the different outcomes sought. This adds to the complexity of the situation. Understand who they are, what they hear, what they feel, they say and do, their potential to influence and the role they too can play. Over-look an important stakeholder, and you my just have another situation where recovery is problematic.
Some stakeholders are best engaged by others
This tip is about strategizing on how to utilize the influencing potential of others. A team lead or a peer of the ‘change target’ is likely to have a more informed view on how an announced change may impact their team and colleagues. People working with or in a team are likely to be more effective change agents, as they are better placed to have the credibility, personal connection, insights and local intelligence on how best to approach, influence and support change. These insights include team and individual motivators, goals, concerns, needs, ecosystem constraints and an understanding of the political environment. Valuable information, which a change manager or leader working in a different office, floor or geographic location, may have difficulty to attain.
Never start an engagement with your solution
Ownership of the change at all levels is one critical success factor for any change type. Approaching a situation with a ready-made solution can be one approach to promoting a change, though it’s less likely to foster ownership of the change. Even if the solution is obvious to a change manager, the best change managers involve ‘change targets’ in defining problems, solution definition and designing the approach to change. The aim of such an approach is to allow ‘change targets’ develop an understanding, that they are key contributors to the solution and not just the receivers of change. Such an approach has proven to be successful, as the ‘change targets’ now have ‘skin in the game’ and ownership and success is more likely to become a personal objective.
Collaborate and co-create value
People want to be involved, want to create value, they seek a purpose and a role to play. Involve them in the solution as they are likely to have a more informed view of constraints and challenges. There’s also a strong possibility they’ve been contemplating a solution for sometime, but haven’t had the time or opportunity to experiment and apply. This could be their time and the opportunity they’ve been seeking to enable value. Co-creating solutions and customer value increases the chances in developing solutions people want and need.
Demonstration trumps argument
Let’s not forget we are are emotional and social beings, with different life experiences and different views of the world.What may be logical to one group may not be to others. Learning and survival anxiety may shift to resistance, followed by arguments around change readiness, change approach, the chosen solution.
Where emotion can trump reason, demonstration has been shown to be an effective means to trump argument. Change leaders should have available to them a mix of techniques to demonstrate how change can be achieved and its value to customers and employees. References such as case studies, prototypes, trials, connecting to other employees are just a few simple techniques that can be utilised to demonstrate success and address arguments, whilst also potentially addressing anxieties.
Respect the past
Building solutions requires time, effort, emotional investment and maybe some personal sacrifices. Past solutions may have been the right solution for that time, they may have even realized value that went under appreciated. We don’t live in a static world, times change and enhancements or new solutions may now be needed. Do not belittle past solutions, they may have well had a time and place. Build on their capability where and if possible and explain in clear and consistent messaging why change is needed. People involved in the past may have ideas for the future, though again they may have never been given time, resources or authority to implement.
Outcomes sought influence your approach
There is no one-single approach for engaging stakeholders. We need to use a combination of methods with consideration of the outcomes we seek and the environment we need to operate within. The level of change adoption we seek may be a simple compliance step, where employees are expected to consider and comply to a change in policy, for example how data should be recorded. For changes of this type an email or bulletin may be an appropriate approach to communicate your message. However, where we seek behavioural change to achieve outcomes sought, e.g. ‘a more considerate approach to servicing customers’, emails and bulletin boards may be a good means to communicate the behaviours sought to a large audience quickly, though unlikely to lead to the behavioural change sought. Behaviour is influenced by different factors and one important approach for influencing behaviour is ‘lots’ of face-to-face engagement and opportunities to observe. Behaviour change is also highly dependent on leaders and peers to influence and support embedding the behaviours desired. Hilogic Australia provides a 3-day APMG accredited Stakeholder Engagement Training in Australia. Contact us for more information on Stakeholder engagement courses in Australia and Malaysia.
