Posts tagged “stakeholder”

The New Economics Foundation is a wonderful organisation working practically and conceptually to enable us to rethink what our economy should do for us.  It calls itself a ‘think-and-do tank’. Amongst its many interests are participation and consensus-building as part of the renewal of democracy.

It’s in that spirit that my near-namesake, Perry Walker (no relation) has developed the Crowd Wise tool:  a way of enabling groups to propose alternative solutions and find consensus using a combination of a slightly sophisticated voting system and discussion which allows people to take the aspects they like about a proposal and combine them to form new proposals. Sounds a bit complicated in theory!

It is much more easily understood when you try it out in practice, which is exactly what I did at the launch a couple of weeks ago.  You can try it out on 23^rd September in London – see here – where our subject will be electoral reform.

Using a fictional example – the role of nuclear power

The launch was a mini-workshop where we were given some prepared options on the role nuclear power should play in a low-carbon, energy secure future.  (Of course, in a ‘real’ situation, we’d arrive at a discussion about a topic we had chosen to be present at and come with our own views which would then form the basis of the initial options.)

We were then asked to vote for the options in order of preference.  There’s a rather complex voting system, where you assign the options a preference (1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd preference etc) although you are not obliged to rank all of them.  Depending on how many you rank, the ones you rank are assigned points.  For example, if you give a preference for five options, your 1^st preference will score 5 points, your 2^nd preference will score 4 points and so on.   If you decide to express a preference for only two options, your 1^st preference scores 2 points and your 2^nd preference scores 1 point.

The maths wizards may immediately see the significance of doing it this way: when the scores are amalgamated, it’s possible to see the degree of consensus.  In fact, the results are presented as a ‘consensus coefficient’, between 0 and 1.

In our nuclear power example, the results in the first round of voting varied between 0.19 (for an option based loosely on the views of the World Nuclear Association) and 0.59 (for an option based loosely on the views of Amory Lovins – demand reduction and a ‘soft energy’ path.  Since this was a demonstration workshop, we were then randomly assigned an option to brief ourselves about and represent.  We spent some time in small groups of (fictionally) like-minded people, understanding our option and discussing possible negotiating tactics. The groups were then mixed up and we had a chance to explain our option and discuss it with people who had different views.

Then came the negotiations!  This descended into horse-trading a bit, as we raced against time to find common ground with other groups.  In the end, the five options we began with were reduced to three.  One of these was from the original five, and two were new amalgams.  The consensus coefficients this time varied between 0.47 and 0.92.

The seemingly popular choice had elements that many of those supporting it did not like – perhaps this element of compromise is essential to consensus.  If we had had time for subsequent rounds, I think that more options would have emerged and perhaps what we would have ended up with would include a more precise understanding of the things that we really don’t agree about, as well as broader areas of common ground.

That’s a summary of the technical process.

Real-world example – AFC Wimbledon

We also had a fascinating insight into a real use of this tool as part of discussions about the strategic direction of a member-owned football club, AFC Wimbledon.  This process is ongoing.

The six options which the strategy group began with were generated by drawing on themes identified using a classic meta-planning technique, with the initial post-it brainstorm informed by gathering views from members and fans.

Options include “selling up to any sugar daddy who would build the club a 25,000 seater stadium” as well as something based more on the importance of the club as a community resource.

Pondering

There was a very interesting discussion afterwards, as people who might well use this technique in practice explored its features.  We wondered whether it was in itself a decision-making tool, or a tool to inform a decision.  We agreed that the provenance of the options was important and needs to be clear.  It was also clear that the expertise and information about the detail behind the options, the nuances and assumptions, need to be ‘in the room’, in order for new permutations of options to be created and for well-informed voting.

NEF stress the usefulness of this tool in consensus-building, because of the in-built incentive to find common ground: your score only goes up if more people express a preference for your option.  This is the case even if the preference is quite weak.

In my group, I observed one person who was extremely keen on ‘winning’, i.e. crafting the most popular option.  This led to him being willing to include elements of other options which our initial option completely excluded, because this would increase the common ground.  I was uncomfortable with these ‘compromises’, but perhaps that’s because I was more committed to my (fictional) position than to finding common ground.  I’m not sure whether this is a strength or a weakness of the system!

Try it out for yourself?

Perry is running another taster session so you can try out Crowd Wise for yourself.  In conjunction with AMED and NEF, there will be a workshop in London on 23^rd September, from 2.00 – 4.30.  It’s just £15 (£10 for AMED and NEF members).  Find out more here.

As you may have noticed, I’m a process aficionado.

I love to hear about innovative ways of helping people have the conversations they need.  I love to try out new processes as a facilitator and a participant.  I network with fellow facilitators through AMED, the IAF and a facilitators’ group on linked-in.  I read about unorthodox approaches, and sometimes I even try them with paying clients.

On Monday, I had the great treat of being a participant in someone else’s workshop.  There I saw for real – not in a training setting – open space, world cafe, graphic facilitation and live plenary mind mapping all used during the same meeting.

The event was the first ‘assembly’ for Tasting the Future, a collaborative whole-systems attempt to innovate the food system.   It was organised by WWF, ADAS, the Food and Drink Federation and Food Ethics Council. Facilitation was provided by Hara Practice and Natural Innovation and other members of the hosting team.  There were also some people doing graphic recording, from Intuitive Intelligence Training.

Some exciting conversations and actions emerged, and you can read more about them on the Tasting the Future ning.  I’m going share some of the things I learned about process.

Dressing the room

When we arrived we sat where we liked at small tables covered with flip chart paper, with a small stack of coloured pens, crayons and chalk. There were small bowls of sweets and a colourful cartoon diagram introducing us to world cafe. And on each table there was a unique food or herb seedling, grown at Hackney City Farm, which you could buy to take home if you liked. Plants included apple mint, chamomile, lettuces, cabbage and tomato.

There was also this great picture story of our lunch: very appropriate for an event like this.

Setting the tone

There were a couple of phrases I scribbled down during the opening session.  The hosting team asked us to be strong enough to work with our differences, to become a community of innovators, to speak with intention.  We were invited to ‘listen louder’ if we disagreed with what someone was saying, so that we could better understand their perspective rather than blot it out with our own.

Meta-planning

Following couple of rounds of world cafe, we were asked to come up with our best ideas about what we wanted to change in the current system.  We wrote these on A5 size stickies, and these were then meta-planned (clustered) in plenary. Bear in mind there were over 100 participants, and the facilitators among you will recognise the audacity of this.  The hosting team had mikes and runners, and the lead facilitator began as usual by asking for any one idea.  She then asked people with the same idea on their sticky note to shout ‘snap!’.  This was a great way of gathering up the clusters very rapidly.  A supporter did the actual sticking up, while the facilitator asked for the next idea.  It didn’t take long for all the ideas to be gathered and clustered.

Whole group mind-mapping

Another daring bit of process for such a large group was the method used to identify topics for the subsequent open space session on action planning.  We all gathered around a long wall, where a large blank area of paper was taped up.

The focus question was posed: “Where do we need to take action?”.  (Actually there was an adjective in there, but my memory and my photo have let me down.  Could’ve been ‘where do we need to take collective action’ or ‘urgent action’.)  Then the facilitator asked us to write our name legibly on a sticky note if we had an idea we wanted to add to the mind map.  Rules for the mind map included that there’s no such thing as a bad idea, it’s fine to disagree with a previous idea, and the owner of the idea gets to say where on the map it goes.  There were support facilitators  collecting up the names so the lead facilitator could call people by name. Other members of the team had mikes and ensured each person making a contribution could be heard.  Two of the team were scribes, with four colours of marker pens.  As a new theme and idea was added, the scribes would write it up on the evolving map.

One at a time, those who wanted to offered ideas for action, and said whether they were twigs to add to existing branches, or new branches.  This went on for about 30 minutes.  It was beautifully controlled, and everyone who wanted to had an opportunity to contribute.

When the mind map was complete, we were each given three dots and invited to use them to indicate which actions we thought were the most important.  Over tea, the dots were counted and around a dozen action areas were identified which had enough support to be the topics for the subsequent open space action planning session.

Open space

Over tea the room was rearranged so there was one large circle in the middle.  The topics which had emerged from the mind map were written up on large pieces of paper, each with a number which corresponded to a numbered part of the room.  The method of sorting out who went to which session was simpler than I’d seen before.  There was no signing up of participants to different topics, or assigning topics to time slots.  Instead, there was one 50 minute time slot.  Within that time, participants could go to whichever topic they wanted, and leave it whenever they wanted.  This is the law of two feet.  Topics were hosted by volunteer hosts, who put themselves forward while the open space was being organised.  If a topic didn’t have a host, it didn’t run.  There was also the opportunity for hosts to offer additional topics, and I think one was proposed at this stage.

Very soon we were ready to go to our spaces and discuss our topic. The host had a prepared flip where they were asked to record key information: topic title, who hosted, who participated, three key points to share and actions the group would take (if any).  The guidance was very clear on actions: they were to be things someone in the group had agreed to take on, not recommendations for action by others.  As the facilitator said “We’re the ones we’ve been waiting for”.

Graphic recording

As the day progressed, a team of graphic recorders captured the highlights in this lovely illustration.

There’s a part of the UK’s business ministry, BIS, which provides expert guidance on public dialogue, as well as promoting and supporting dialogue projects.  The Sciencewise Expert Resource Centre has supported dialogues on a wide range of science and technology subjects, including nanotechnology, hybrid embryos and how to make the shift to low-carbon energy sources.

There’s a set of principles to guide people who are setting up a dialogue, so they can keep it open and multi-directional.  Crucially, there needs to be a policy ‘owner’ in Government who will use the outcomes of the dialogue to help form policy.

Plenty of case studies are available on the Sciencewise-ERC website.  Since every project has to be independently evaluated, there are also evaluation reports.  And there’s a team of Dialogue and Engagement Specialists (I’m part of this team) to advise.

Find out more in this article I wrote for the environmentalist, published in June 2010, “Wise up! Engaging the public in science and technology”.

I was pointing people towards the six sources of influence in some behaviour change training recently, and went back to some original sources to remind myself about the distinctions between the six sources.

To recap, the six sources are arranged into a two-by-three table, with ‘motivation’ and ‘ability’ divided into personal, social and structural.  In this explanation on the VitalSmarts blog the two ‘social’ sources of influence have been merged.  This bothered me – is there really so little distinction between social motivation (peer pressure) and social ability?

It seems to me that the distinction is brought most sharply into focus when critical mass is needed to make a behaviour viable.  Want to buy more locally-produced food?  A farmers’ market or a local veggie box scheme needs a critical mass of producers and customers to be viable.  Setting up a lift share scheme?  You’re going to need more than two members.  Freecycling?  Hackney Freecycle has over 17,000 members (yes, really) generating about 1,500 messages about free stuff for giving and taking a month.

Now this kind of critical mass isn’t going to be important for all the behaviours you want to change, which is probably why the distinctions isn’t so clear in some of the descriptions.  But where it is, then special attention needs to be given to recruiting the mass.

• How will you make it as widely-known as possible?
• How will you make it simple for people to let you know they’re up for it?
• How will you make it easy to store information about a pool of people and then ‘activate’ them you have enough mass to start things?
• And how will you use their good ideas and information to shape the system, so that it works for enough of them?

There’s a virtuous circle which can come into play here.  This was brought home to me by a stakeholder engagement planning meeting which I ran last week with a community organisation which has been awarded substantial funding through the Low Carbon Communities Challenge.  We did a quick brainstorm of all the non-carbon related ‘social capital’ in their village – the formal and informal organisations which bring people together and build a sense of community.  The population is about 2,000 and the group came up with over thirty formal groups, clubs or regular events (one for every 67 people!) and a host of informal groupings.  Active community organisations build community channels and hubs for conversation.  Members will have more connection with each other, and more trust, than people who are merely residents of the same place.  So a critical mass of ‘warm’ people is much easier to find.

I was bowled over by how many active societies there are, and we all felt very positive about the potential for drawing on this wonderful resource for the low-carbon activities the group has planned.

Actions we take which help build community – in our neighbourhoods or workplaces – all add to the web of interconnections which form fertile soil for future behaviour change.

Strands of work on stakeholder engagement and behaviour change have been woven together in a couple of different pieces of work I’ve been doing with public sector clients recently.  I’ve ended up developing some new frameworks and adapting some existing ones to help people clarify their aims and plan their campaigns.

If you want to influence someone to change their behaviour, there are models and approaches which can help.  For example, the six sources of influence help you identify the right messages and pay attention to the surrounding context which supports and enables – or discourages and gets in the way of – the desired behaviour.

When you are working for a public body (the NHS, a Government department) and you are trying to influence the behaviour of people who you have at best a distant relationship with (mothers, or people who buys cars) then you will go through a multi-stage process:

1. Should we be trying to encourage this behaviour change, which we see as desirable?
2. If yes, what role(s) should we be playing (legislator, educator, convenor, funder etc)?
3. If yes, what are the most effective ways of influencing the behaviour?

Should we encourage this behaviour change?

Given current discussions about social engineering, this question is important.  It might seem entirely obvious and uncontroversial to us that wanting to promote energy efficiency that more efficient light bulbs should be promoted.  So obvious that we don’t stop to consider possible unintended consequences or misunderstandings.

So an important early stage is to engage stakeholders in helping to inform the decision about whether to encourage a particular behaviour change at all.   For this, classic stakeholder identification and mapping techniques (e.g. see figure 1 in this paper from WWF) will help ensure that you hear from more than the usual suspects.

Stakeholders can share perspectives about the policy goals, identify which behaviours might help to achieve them, and whether action to encourage those behaviours is a good idea.

What role should we be playing?

Some public bodies draft new legislation and regulations, others deliver services.  Some enforce regulations and others provide advice and public education.  Some bring other organisations together, convening conversations and partnerships.  Others commission and fund research.  There are lots of roles that public sector organisations could play in a given situation.  Which role or roles make the most sense, in meeting the policy aim in question?

Listening to the views of stakeholders in relation to that question is enormously helpful.  And those stakeholders may be professionals who work in that field of expertise – but removed from the coal face – or they may be practitioners on the ground whose direct experience can bring a dose of reality to the conversations.

A great example of this is the Low Carbon Communities Challenge, launched on Monday 8^th February.  It will (amongst other things) draw on the experiences and insights of 22 communities which are being funded to install energy efficiency kit and renewable energy equipment en masse in their areas.  They’ll also be encouraging people to adopt low-carbon behaviours.  Each community will be doing something different, guided by its particular circumstances and enthusiasms.  Excitingly, each community will also be asked to identify the barriers to and enablers of progress, in particular what government could do differently to make this kind of low-carbon push as successful as possible across England, Wales and Northern Ireland. I’m delighted to be a facilitator on this project.

What are the best ways of influencing this behaviour?

A cool analysis of the system of players and pressures which lead to the current patterns of behaviour is a good starting point, and involving a team (including some stakeholders) will help ensure that the picture built up is rich and complete.

In a workshop a few weeks ago, we used the classic ‘pestle’ headings to brainstorm the pressures and players which influence a particular behaviour which my client is interested in changing.  Let’s say that the behaviour is keeping one’s car well-maintained, so that it runs as fuel-efficiently as possible.  Specific behaviours include keeping the tyre pressure optimum, and removing the roof box when it’s not needed.

In the workshop, people identified players and pressures and wrote them on post-its, sticking them up under the headings of Political, Economic, Social, Technical, Legislative, Environmental and Other.  The headings and team-work both help to ensure that no aspect of the system is forgotten.

Once that was done, we stood back and looked at the results, and pictures were taken on a camera phone.  Then I invited people to bring the post-its to a big blank sheet of paper, and to begin mapping the relationships between the players and pressures, starting with “the most interesting” element of the system.  [The idea of asking for ‘the most interesting’ came from a book about coaching which I’ve been reading.]

One post-it was brought to the empty map, and was soon followed by others.  Lines of connection were drawn, and amid the chaos some patterns emerged.  Most importantly, the team realised that these behaviours were more like DIY and home maintenance than like ‘eco’ behaviours, so when targeting different audiences they should seek our market research which segments people according to things which are relevant to that kind of behaviour, rather than segmentations which have been developed with an environmental purpose in mind.

Mapping stakeholders for behaviour change

This brought us smoothly to looking at which stakeholders to engage as a priority, to add muscle to the campaign to  influence people to adopt (or reinforce) the desired behaviours.

Many of these stakeholders were ‘players’ identified in the earlier exercise.  Some were organisations and people who the team thought of as the system was being mapped.

As a variation on classic impact /influence matrix, and building on the ‘who can help me’ matrix which I use with organisational SD change champions, is this diagram.

Brainstormed onto post-its, stakeholders are then mapped according to the team’s view about their influence and attitude.

You then overlay the coloured ‘zones’ onto the matrix, and these are linked to typologies of engagement like the ladder of engagement.

The people and organisations which are the highest priority to engage with, are those who are highly influential and have the strongest opinions (for and against) the desired behaviour change.  In-depth engagement which involves them directly in designing and implementing the behaviour campaign will be important.

Those in the ‘enhanced’ zones need to be involved and their opinions and information sought.

Those in the ‘standard’ zone can be engaged with a lighter touch – perhaps limited to informing them about the campaign and the desired behaviour.

The workshops helped these clients to identify new stakeholders, reprioritise them, and consider more strategically who to engage and to what purpose.

Frequently, my work involves large group workshops and teams of willing volunteers acting as support facilitators.  They may be drawn from the client team or from the wider consultant team.  They are often technical specialists or traditional communications specialists, and sometimes – but not always – they have facilitation experience.

In a recent workshop, I was faced with quite a challenge:

• Up to 50 participants who we’d invited to help with the larger project;
• A complex set of questions which the team wanted them to address;
• A desire from the project team to start with a blank sheet of paper, rather than building on existing thinking, which is possibly flawed or at least too narrow.
• A desire for people to be challenged by the diversity of perspectives in the group – which I responded to by building in a carousel process;
• Plus the need to spend some time establishing the group formally and informally, as it is intended to have a life of three more meetings over the next year;
• A facilitation team which included technical specialists with unknown facilitation experience.

Now I’m a slightly risk-averse person who manages my anxiety by making lists.  And (as anyone who has worked with me will tell you) my ‘detailed meeting plans’ can run to 20+ pages.

So my approach was to think through the break-out group processes in a lot of detail, and to provide as much pre-prepared support materials as I could for my trusty support facilitators.  As well as the overall meeting plan, they got a very detailed briefing document, a briefing meeting and a stack of pre-written flip chart sheets with task instructions and blank templates to be filled in.  We also had worksheets to be filled in during conversations around tables.

This reduced my anxiety.

I’m not sure what it did to their blood pressure when they received the briefing documents!

So, I felt 100% prepared for the things I could control in advance.

Once you’ve asked the question, it belongs to the group

With such detailed preparation and planning, it can be tempting to think that the design job is over once the workshop begins.

Of course, that’s not the case.  In a brief conversation with one of facilitators during a switch-over between sessions, we agreed that “people interpret questions in such different ways” and “once you’ve asked the question, it belongs to the group.”

Responding to the emergent conversation

During this workshop, we discovered that the timings I’d anticipated for the carousel tasks were just too short.  A scheduled 30 minute morning break meant that the first carousel session could be extended by up to 10 minutes, without throwing the rest of the programme.  But the second and third sessions required co-ordinated timing among the groups.

As the second session was running, I visited each group briefly to see how they were getting on.  Rich conversations, but taking much longer than I planned for!

Initially I responded by slipping each facilitator a note giving them an extra five minutes.  But it was clear that some more radical process redesign was needed.  Could I really do this to my inexperienced facilitators – ask them to throw away the carefully planned and prepped process and substitute something else, on the fly?

Having considered this for a few minutes (it really helps to have a quiet space and a trusted colleague to talk things through with) I decided that not only could I do this, it was absolutely the best option.  So we rapidly wrote out four sets of staccato briefing notes on sticky notes, and four new ‘instructional’ flip chart sheets.  We delivered these substitute materials each to carousel facilitator, and the workshop was back on track.  We had facilitators who knew what was happening, and we had responded effectively (if not very gracefully) to the emerging and unfolding conversations in the carousel groups.

Some practical things which made this possible:

• A quiet space out of the way of the break-out groups
• Facilitators working in pairs in the carousel groups
• Spare flip chart paper, pens and post-its which weren’t being used in the break-out spaces
• A 60 minute scheduled lunch break, which we could steal 10 minutes from without it being too uncomfortable
• An experienced facilitator as well as the lead facilitator not allocated to a break-out group, to notice what was happening in all of the groups, talk about what we could see, make a decision and implement it fast.

And of course, it wouldn’t have been possible without the positive attitude of the facilitation team who didn’t grumble or complain but stepped up to the challenge brilliantly.

In the debrief at the end of the day, it was generally agreed that changing the process at that point was a good call, and no-one raised the change or how it was done under our traditional ‘what went less well’ heading.  So I’m satisfied that, on that occasion at least, my dance between preparation and responsiveness worked well enough.

The latest ‘engaging people’ column has just been published in the environmentalist, and it’s about ecosystem services and stakeholder engagement.

It was a lot of fun writing this article with the erudite and ebullient Mark Everard, who I first met when working with The Natural Step.  Mark is one of that rare – but thankfully increasing – breed of technical experts who really understand the importance and value of stakeholder engagement. 

The article explores engaging people in using an ecosystems services approach to understand places, problems and solutions.

It was great to compare experiences of running stakeholder workshops which are either centred on ecosystems services, or included a nod to that way of thinking.

Mark’s experience has been more extensive than mine, and he seems to have witnessed more positive resolutions.  When a farmer asked “what is the job of a river” in the workshop I was running, he gave his own answer: it’s to carry water away from farmland as fast as possible.  There wasn’t the opportunity to enable a longer conversation which could acknowledge watery multi-tasking, and the benefits people from it.

We all rely on ecosystem services, whether we like it or not.  We all eat food.  We all drink water.  We all breathe air.  Mostly, in a country like the UK, we just don’t realise that these are ecosystem services – carrots come from the supermarket, not an ecosystem. 

But it seems to me that some people feel threatened by the weight given to ecosystem services which seem – to them – to be more ‘about birds than people’.  Dialogue which enables deeper understanding of our dependence on the natural world is enormously helpful, but in my experience it is hard to engage people in this kind of conversation when they are suspicious that the process it is part of is an excuse for stopping them meeting what they see as their more immediate and direct needs.

So I’m excited to hear about Mark’s successes in moving beyond mistrust.

The latest issue of the environmentalist includes an article I’ve written, entitled “who can help me make this change?“.  In it, I share an approach I’ve used successfully in training courses and (as my daughter would say) in true life: it helps people to systematically identify key internal and external players who can help them bring about the change they want to see.

If a particular person or group are crucial to making the change happen, then you want them to be supportive of it.  Ask them what they’d like to see happening, and how you can help them.  Find common ground and enlist their support.

If someone is already very supportive, but not really needed, then see what they can do to influence or recruit those who are needed.  Or enlist them to support you.

Remember, the art of engaging people to help create transformational change involves listening and letting go.

It won’t have escaped your notice that not everyone in the UK loves wind turbines.  So if you’re planning to add to our renewable energy capacity, you might want to think about how to involve your neighbours early on.

In 2005 my article (pdf) in the environmentalist described some interesting initiatives specifically designed to help those promoting or planning wind energy developments, to engage their stakeholders.

Too often, I meet with people who see stakeholder engagement as a more sophisticated way of selling their messages to potential critics.

That’s not the game I’m in!

Don’t bother asking people what they think if you’re not willing to change your plans as a result.

This article explains why you need to act in good faith when you’re listening to your stakeholders.