New Game-Plan: Engaging Stakeholders

Services

About Us

Our services and capabilities:

• Helping organisations engage stakeholders, using an innovative toolkit

• Using collaborative and deliberative techniques - not just 'capturing views'

• Enabling anonymous - and honest - Workshop contributions, using our special technology

• Developing understanding of values and issues, and of how people make choices

• Providing a means to engage any group of stakeholders - quickly and efficiently

• Building trust and accountability

How to engage stakeholders?

In recent years there has been an explosion in stakeholder engagement by governments (at EU, national and regional levels), and by public agencies, voluntary bodies and major businesses.

Stakeholders used to be considered relatively late in the process of developing policies and new technologies. Consultation exercises tended to involve groups with a defined position, or individual technical experts, rather than wider interests and the general public. Controversies surrounding the disposal of oil rigs, and the development of GM crops, are well-known examples.

Today, in contrast, the emphasis is on early, proactive and extensive involvement, aided by the internet. Indeed, 'consultation overload' is now a real problem for many stakeholder organisations. As a result, 'more consultation' does not always mean 'better engagement'!

Out-dated and unimaginative approaches also still predominate. Too often, capturing stakeholder views on any initiative is seen as an end in itself. Similarly, securing participants for a workshop or on-line debate, noting the comments made, and writing up a report, simply captures existing 'positions' and generates little new creativity.  These approaches deliver little value. 

Some of the long-established approaches to communicating with stakeholders enable the sponsors to 'deliver messages' but typically are not designed to achieve true two-way dialogue.

Generating greater value from stakeholder engagement involves tackling several challenges:

• How to escape from meeting formats stuck in the mould of 'one-way presentations with comments from the vociferous minority'?
• How to go beyond mere 'capture' of ideas and actually integrate and build on ideas collaboratively?
• How to synthesise conclusions from multiple inputs, expressed in different ways, without losing 'essence'?#
• How to work across groups with different, even conflicting cultures, values, styles and agendas?
• How to manage engagement over timescales of years rather than the Government-standard '12-weeks'?
• These challenges point to the need to rethink the entire approach, and to employ a fresh and purposeful set of processes and tools

How  does our approach 'break the mould'?

We provide innovative thinking and practical tools for productive stakeholder engagement. We focus not on 'being seen to consult' but on developing new knowledge and forging collaboration.

We ensure clarity about why, when, how, and with whom to engage, aiming not for 'volume' but to target influential people with something to offer. We stress 'learning' rather than 'persuasion', recognising that those leading engagement, and those targeted by it, both gain through mutual understanding and dialogue.

Our independence ensures that the engagement process is totally impartial - and seen to be so. This avoids any suspicion that participants will be led to reach predetermined conclusions 'imposed' by the sponsors.

Our tools and training equip individuals with appropriate skills. Our practical approach leads to better experiences - and outcomes - for sponsors and participants alike. For example:

• Pre-project strategic planning: we use a framework which ensures clarity about who to engage, why, how and when
• Stakeholder mapping: rather than involve 'everyone', we target those with real influence and a real contribution to make to the project, using relevant databases (e.g. viewing 'academics' as resources, thought leaders or customers as appropriate)
• Structured interviews and surveys: we design, operate and analyse surveys - face-to-face, and via teleconferences and the web
• Creating Networks : we go beyond 'one-off exercises' to create living Networks within and/or between organisations
• Brain-Pool Workshops: We mix presentations, discussion, and creative work in our structured Workshops to enable real 'deliberation'. We often use special laptops, linked by a wireless network, to input, review, build on and assess contributions collaboratively
• Distance Brain-Pool: we offer virtual Workshops to facilitate collaboration between widely-dispersed individuals
• Training: we equip individuals with the skills needed for effective engagement
• Programme management: we design and manage entire programme - whether for one event, theme or organisation, or many.

To engage stakeholders effectively, imagingative new approaches are needed. It's not just about high-profile showpiece events, but also about doing practical work with stakeholders.

Examples of applications for our Brain-Pool Workshops for collaborative working with stakeholders include:

• Developing Innovation Programmes: developing and validating Innovation Programmes to deliver a Vision for the Agri-Food sector in Northern Ireland to 2020. This assignment demonstrated the value of our partnership model of working with stakeholders.
• Creating Roadmaps: providing Brain-Pool Workshops for Knowledge Transfer Networks to enable stakeholders to share knowledge, build networks, develop Roadmaps and set priorities for future innovation through research.
• Defining Research Priorities: working with 200 stakeholders from 125 organisations in six Brain-Pool Workshops to identify strategic research priorities for UK Farming and Food. We distilled 200 cogent research proposals from the 800 suggestions which we captured, to enable priority-setting by the Sustainable Farming and Food Research Priorities Group. 
• Engaging the public in policy: engaging the public in the debate over priorities for farming, food and the countryside. This convincingly demonstrated the value of the Brain-Pool approach in engaging citizens in policy debates.
• Consulting industry stakeholders: enabling UK Trade & Investment to present proposals for strategic change to trade associations and to gain immediate feedback - and constructive ideas for tackling the concerns raised - all in only one morning