2008 November | Masterful Facilitation Institute

I have been a long-standing member of the International Association of Facilitators, and enjoy the benefits of the Group Facilitation Forum. This morning, I contributed to a thread related to my previous blog post on Stakeholder Engagement and Purpose. One of the contributors, Penny Walker from England, had offered this distinction which was very helpful to the IAF thread on Deliberative Events:

Broadly, the market research gang are interested in understanding the group so that they (the consultant / client) can better design the product / service / policy and better communicate it to people once it’s been designed.
The participation & involvement gang are interested in helping the group to develop its understanding, share perspectives, air differences and find ways forward, so that they (consultant / client AND stakeholders/public) can jointly design the product / service / policy and better implement it.

(Here is my posted response) This thread underlines the vital importance of understanding one’s broad purpose for engaging stakeholders, and then adopting the appropriate method to support it. Our sister organizations, the National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation in the USA, and the Canadian Community for Dialogue and Deliberation have been examining these issues for some time. Building on their work, I have developed a table that may further contribute to this conversation, see Best Methods for Engagement.

Following Penny’s categorization:

The “market research gang” as she refers to them, often have as their purposes for engagement: to tell their story and to obtain input. Certain methods are more appropriate here such as Focus Groups, Town Hall Meetings, Open Houses, Public Hearings, Surveys, Websites. The methods that fall under these forms of engagement in general tend to be one-way and to some extent can be viewed as initially transactional in that they mainly serve the convening organization, though ultimately, the resulting products, services, policies should be better, if in fact, they have listened well.
The purposes informing why the “participation/involvement gang” may engage stakeholders (including citizens) are various, from building awareness and trust, learning together to build common ground, resolving conflict, collaborating, and working together over time. The methods that may be appropriate here are quite numerous and diverse. For example, the 21st Century Town Hall meeting that Gary spoke of is appropriate when input from large groups of people is desired to help formulate and decide upon the best course of action. Methods such as World Cafe, Open Space, Appreciative Inquiry, Charettes, Future Search and so on, are all exceptional in the results they can produce when chosen with care to serve the purpose, context and needs of the engagement.

A high degree of transparency about engagement purpose, how the results will be used, and whom they will serve is vital in my view to the success of any of these endeavours. As facilitators, the more we know about how various methods serve different engagement purposes, the more helpful we can be in assisting our clients create appropriate expectations with participants, and also in understanding the role that we may be called upon to play.

Two useful additional resources on this topic of engagement purpose may be found at:

IAP2 Spectrum of Public Participation (under Practitioner Tools)
Health Canada Public Involvement Policy Toolkit (see Public Involvement Continuum)

Finally, for anyone interested in learning many of these engagement methods, including when and how to apply them for better outcomes, please visit Facilitating Wise Action for Lasting Impact: Engaging Groups in Meaningful Conversation Around Complex Issues for an upcoming learning intensive in January, 2009.

Stakeholder engagement is a new competency area that many organizations are realizing they need to acquire in today’s connected, aware, and sophisticated world of networks and relationships.

Yesterday I had a long conversation with a program manager in an oil and gas company who is trained as an engineer, yet is routined called upon to mediate and facilitate multi-stakeholder meetings who have a multiplicity of interests and needs. He was exploring whether our upcoming program, Facilitating Wise Action: Engaging Groups in Meaningful Conversations Around Complex Issues, might provide him with useful tools. He asked me, “How do you turn these meetings where everyone is focused on their own WIIFM (what’s in it for me?) into a more productive conversation where we can also talk about what we have in common. For example, sometimes we should be asking, what are we all going to do together to leave something behind in situations where we all realize we can’t continue to do what we’ve all been doing? How do we get business, government and NGO’s to be willing to innovate, risk and do something different together?”
Two weeks ago, I spent a morning with some 40 members of a parks consultation community of practice interested in learning how Appreciative Inquiry might be an appropriate engagement method for their various stakeholder meetings.
A few months ago, a colleague in a large resource company commented to me that the time their senior Executive Team devotes to stakeholder issues now often overshadows all other priorities, which is in stark contrast to the way things were a few years ago. He attributed this to the much smaller world we live in, the rise of stakeholder awareness, sophistication and activism, and the increasing expectation by people generally to be consulted and involved on issues that affect them, not only by their governments, but also by businesses and social profit agencies. We were exploring how their company might develop a more effective strategy for building long-term, trust-based stakeholder relationships.

In all of these cases, a key part of my message has been the importance of knowing one’s broad purpose for engaging stakeholders, and then adopting the appropriate method to support it. As illustrated in the above table, if the starting purpose is to provide information, tell your story, obtain input and undertake some type of market research (all one-way or to some extent transactional forms of engagement), then certain methods are appropriate. If the reason for engaging is to build awareness and trust, learn together, build common ground, resolve conflict, collaborate and work together over time, then other methods will be more effective.