Key Elements of
Stakeholder Pre-Engagement Preparation
1. Intent of
Stakeholder Engagement
Stakeholder engagement activities are an integral part of sustainable
development of new projects, new business ventures, and maintaining relationships
with local communities. Strategies to pursue stakeholder engagement vary
widely, and follow many frameworks developed by many different organizations.
As I embarked on my graduate project focusing on pulling together the high
level guidance and best practices, I had the idea of developing a short primer
to share some of these learnings with the rest of the BGI community through my
blog. I hope you find it useful as a high level summary pulling from the best
resources I have identified in my work.
Every stakeholder plan and engagement process will vary
according to the nature of the local community, goals for the project, and
resources available to complete it. This being said, one common link for all is
that a key factor in successful execution of stakeholder engagements is the
groundwork and background preparation prior to actually starting. This groundwork is critical for a successful engagement,
and all best practices recommend not rushing or overlooking this important
phase. This post (primer part 1) provides an overview of steps and factors to
consider as you prepare for engagement, and will provide an introduction to
some of the best tools that I have found to dive deeper. The identification of
stakeholders and groundwork prior to actually starting a formal engagement
process will ensure optimal results of the goal focused engagement itself.
2. Pre-Engagement
Preparation
1.
Understanding Context
Strategies to fulfill stakeholder
engagement will vary according to the nature of the project in each community.
In dispersed communities, organizations typically identify key stakeholders and
work with them one-on-one. When operations of impact or the project occur near
concentrated populations (for example, in a city), the focus tends to be on
forums that touch more people at once. Stakeholder engagement liaisons can join
or create collaborative forums to connect with multiple stakeholders. Since
every venture is different, is can be helpful to review case studies of
engagement successes with similar situations to help plan for your approach.
2.
Defining Vision
Setting a vision clarifies the
specific objectives you are trying to achieve by involving stakeholders. As you
define your engagement, important considerations include: identifying the top
priority(ies) in why engagement is needed, specific and granular scope of
engagement, and who is responsible for engagement success.
3.
Setting Expectations
Clear definition of expectations around the level of
engagement you anticipate ensures your stakeholders will understand their time
commitment, role and level of interaction during the process. The following
table details the various levels of engagement, and can help you appropriately
determine the level targeted for your situation. Consideration should be taken
to ensure appropriate resources to execute selected level are available (time,
financial support, expertise, staff support). This table was created from a
variety of sources, and is my interpretation of how to clearly communicate the
differences of each.
4.
Stakeholder Mapping: Who should be
engaged?
With a vision for engagement and expectations
for level of engagement anticipated, mapping stakeholders will assist you in
understanding who needs to be engaged, and to what extent in the process. Stakeholder
mapping is a collaborative process from multiple perspectives to determine a
key list of stakeholders representing the entire stakeholder spectrum. The IFC
standard referenced in the resources section provided a very clear, and
detailed process for this. This is a high level summary of how mapping can be
broken down into four phases:
1. Identifying: listing relevant
groups, organizations, and individuals
2. Analyzing: understanding
stakeholder perspectives and relevance and their key issues or concerns
3. Mapping: visualizing relationships
to objectives and other stakeholders
4. Prioritizing: ranking stakeholder
relevance and identifying issues
There are many tools and approaches to support stakeholder
mapping. Please reference additional recommended resources at the end of this post.
5.
Next step: Engagement
With these initial considerations and background preparation
considered, you will have a general understanding that will serves as a strong
foundation for the stakeholder engagement process. The next step is to
formalize your approach in a stakeholder engagement plan, that will allow you
to track success, communicate goals and manage resources for execution. Development
of this plan requires rigor similar to that of the stakeholder identification
and groundwork completed above. So stay tuned for primer #2 on stakeholder
engagement planning!
3. Resources
2. Accountability Stakeholder Engagement
Standard http://www.accountability.org/standards/aa1000ses/index.html
Wow, Lauren! Great blog post. It was clearly laid out and easy to follow. This makes me even more excited about your project.
ReplyDeleteDo you know how you're going to do the mapping step (2.4)? Greg and I are going to try to do something similar for BGI student assets and I'm trying to figure out the best way to make it visual.
Thanks!