Successful stakeholder engagement – you’ve planned it; how do you achieve it?

Identifying key stakeholders and stakeholder groups is one thing – in some ways that’s the easy part. What’s much harder is successfully engaging them on a continuing basis.  I think stakeholder work is similar to doing strategy – breathe a big sigh of relief once the plan has been done and then get on with the day job…

But nasty things happen if we lose sight of stakeholders. What’s that stat about how many programmes are regarded as being successfully completed? I’ve seen a few estimates over the years but all of them say the percentage is pretty low. I’d bet that a lot of it is due to losing track of where the stakeholders are at.

So what can we do about it? Here are some things:

• Treat stakeholder groups and individual stakeholders differently. Since we can’t communicate with everyone individually we can gather some people into a group and work out how best to keep them informed – and maintain a dialogue if necessary. This is not going to be the one-on-one relationship that you need for the really important stakeholders (the ones whose individual support you really need for success)
• Use a range of channels for your stakeholder groups – a mixture of one-way comms that provide the consistency of message and two-way so that they get tailored messages that are specific to their situation (answering the ‘what-does-it-mean-for-me’ question)
• Enlist the experts to maintain the one-on-one relationships. This can be easier said than done, since both parties are likely to be busy. You can facilitate it by seeing if you can provide them with a good reason (latest update?) to maintain that contact – and it can be just a short phone call, it doesn’t need to be a big briefing session or anything time-consuming
• You can also use this call to ask your stakeholders what’s new at their end. They may not be aware that something changing in their world will have an impact on yours
• Match people up – for example, marketing people tend to have a different focus than the techies. And also, if there are technical changes, a techy is more likely to spot if there will be an impact on you (or vice versa)
• If your work is not already on the agenda of senior level meetings see if you can get a short update on there – even a half-pager that can be handed out if not read out. It’s better if you can have someone in there face-to-face but that’s not always possible
• Don’t rely on the fact that having stuff on the intranet or Sharepoint or whatever will keep everyone up to speed with progress. It won’t
• Keep re-visiting your stakeholder map to make sure that programme changes haven’t shifted where people sit on it. It’s often the case that things don’t quite go as expected, however much you try and manage risks or anticipate problems (sorry, challenges). You might find somebody has become more influential than you expected (e.g., there will be more of an impact in their area), and that’s dangerous to ignore. I’ve never worked on a programme that went from beginning to end as we expected it to, not ever ever
• Remember that it’s easier to get people’s attention at the beginning than some weeks down the line, when something else new and shiny has come along that may seem to be more interesting. That’s just human nature. See if you can find a different angle to bring something fresh (do an interview with one of the team?) – and this is where social media can help as well…

Anyway, hope some of that helps. As always, I’d be interested to know what you have found that works well – or didn’t if you’re happy to share!

Three levels of stakeholder engagement planning… four if you count mine

I was discussing stakeholder engagement with a client recently and they asked me whether a full-on stakeholder engagement plan was actually worth the effort. Good question, I thought.

Certainly a stakeholder engagement plan is always part of any communications strategy that I develop. But of all the elements I think this is the trickiest one.

Why? Because it’s hard to do it well and simply. Most companies I’ve come across recognise the importance of engaging stakeholders but don’t know how best to go about it. A few others have had a go and then lost interest as other priorities take up their time.

Too simple and it won’t work; too detailed and it’s time-consuming and a pain in the proverbial.

So why bother?

Something is going to be different in the future. You need to tell people about it. If they have a role to play in this future, you need them to tell you what they think of it. So far so obvious, maybe.

But the value of stakeholder work is that it seeks out right at the beginning those people who aren’t front of mind but whom you ignore at your peril. Approaching them only once you become aware they are a potential showstopper means you have to go through the whole story with them – plus there is the added risk that they are miffed you are only just speaking to them now or wary because it’s all gone on without them so far.

What’s the solution?

Here’s a suggestion that you can tailor to most situations.

Level 1 – I’ll skip through this because you’ve probably done it (or similar) before… 

• Run a session with as many interested parties as you can muster and come up with as many possible stakeholders as you can – don’t dismiss any at this stage 
• Now you need to analyse or map them. Lots of ways to do this: suggest you start with the simple (1) high or low power/influence versus (2) high or low level of interest (you can refine later if you want – see below). Stick ’em in the appropriate quadrant
• Step back and review – chances are that everyone is aware of the high/high quadrant. It’s the high influence/low level of interest you need to focus on – plus of course any stakeholders that had been forgotten up until now
• Agree what action should be taken for all stakeholders. At the high/high end, this might be a briefing session for a specific group (who’s going to do that and when?) while at the low/low end it might be an intranet news article to keep people up to speed

Level 2 – variations on a theme

• If you want to go to the next level of refinement, you can do further analysis of each group and look at their  size and position relative to each other. Just gives you a better understanding of the overall stakeholder landscape and the size of the task
• Alternatively, you can go for a different sort of mapping that is particularly suitable for individual stakeholders rather than stakeholder groups. Rather than the four-quadrant tool suggested above you can look at the level of impact on them versus their current level of commitment to the change. One tool I’ve used shows three levels of impact (high, medium, low) and six levels of commitment: resistance, compliance, agreement, personal buy-in, personal participation and full commitment
• When you place people in here then review it will be clear where you need to focus your efforts (anyone in the resistance/high impact column is an obvious one)
• It’s worth mentioning at this stage that the relationship with individual stakeholders needs to be managed at an appropriate level. If you need to work on a Board member to shift him/her along the commitment axis you’ll need to persuade someone of equal seniority who is directly involved in the change to go speak with them

Level 3 – here’s the rub

• This is all useful and a good start if you haven’t done it before. But there’s a big but…
• To do this really well you also need to look at where they are compared to where you want them to be – people don’t stay in the same place, and indeed they shouldn’t if you are expending some effort in engaging them
• So this type of stakeholder plan needs to account for their current level of engagement and your desired level of engagement for them. Interestingly, you sometimes find that there are some people you would actually like to be less engaged
• And having done that, you need to re-visit the plan regularly to see what progress (or not) is being made and take action as appropriate (and track those actions)

You can end up with a mega-spreadsheet that covers all of this and if there is appetite to review this regularly within the group then that’s great. Alternatively you can review it on your tod and highlight any concerns with the appropriate people.  Personally I most often go for a lighter touch and maintain a fairly simple stakeholder contact tracker. It lists all the stakeholders and stakeholder groups, then has columns for who last contacted them, when and how. Then at least I can see pretty quickly if we have dropped the ball.

Next time I’ll share some thoughts on how to achieve that engagement….

Measuring and managing

“You can’t manage what you don’t measure,” they say. Generally speaking, I think most of us would agree with that. Maybe you have sat down with the senior management team while they go through their Key Performance Indicators and tut over a failing sales campaign or rejoice in a customer satisfaction survey. They need to know what’s going well and what not so well in order to fix it. Obvious.

Not quite so easy with internal comms, however. I’ve included measurement in every single comms strategy I’ve ever written but (don’t tell anyone) I don’t think I’ve ever completely cracked it. Of course, you seek feedback from people and measure site hits on the relevant intranet pages, but all it takes is someone with an axe to grind and they will be able to pick holes in your findings (I do love a good mixed metaphor). If they challenge your findings you need to be able to justify them.

Measuring what you have communicated is not much use as what’s important is not what you’ve communicated but whether the message has landed as you intended it to. We may communicate perfectly what we would like people to do and they may understand it. If they then carry on regardless and go on doing what they always did it doesn’t matter how much you have communicated or how beautiful it looks – it’s essentially a waste of money. We can say we have communicated x key messages in line with the comms plan, but it’s whether behaviour or attitudes have changed and whether the outcome is different that’s important.

Another reason that communications efforts are notoriously difficult to measure is that absorption of the information we are trying to share is subjective and influenced by how negative or positive the message is.  If you’re telling people that they have a pay rise you get their attention immediately and, if it’s equal to or (less likely these days) more than they expected, they are likely to be happy with this communication. We need to consider carefully what we ask people and be specific on the topic.

It also depends what we are measuring for: the successful communication of a programme or an activity, or the performance of the communications department?  You’d ask different questions, I think.

So we have a good reason to be selective about what we measure and what conclusions we draw from it. By all means measure site hits, but don’t conclude from that the higher the hit rate the better. There are a number of reasons people might return to it – not always different people checking it out because they have been told it’s so good (unfortunately).

Where appropriate, it’s a good idea to focus on whether the outcome matches expectations. To what extent are people following the new process (as an example)? Focus groups or other F2F stuff help with digging below the surface to find out what could have been better. Both qualitative and quantitative methods have their place.

I’m a bit suspicious of hanging too much on surveys from the time that I ran two versions of a survey across matched samples and found that the results were quite different: where I had asked a number of questions leading up to the final ‘overall what do you think?’ question the results were much more positive than where I had asked this question first, and then gone through the separate components afterwards. The questions were the same; they were just in a different order. My conclusion? Asking the question up front gave an instant reaction, a reflex. Asking it last, after people had been reminded about all aspects, seemed to have made them think that overall the change had been positive. Further exploration was needed.

The result is that it seems to be wise to (a) be clear why you are measuring things, (b) be selective and focused on a few important things (unless you’re doing a simple comms audit), (c) use a wide range of methods to help you cross-check your findings and (d) be careful in your conclusions, taking account of other factors that might skew the results.

Social media (again) – cart before the horse needed?

I was re-reading Elizabeth Lupfer’s interesting article on building a roadmap for internal social media (re-posted on ragan.com) and a thought struck me. Her approach is eminently sensible and follows the straightforward comms approach of identifying the need and then working out the best solution (i.e., channels) that meet the requirements.

However, it did make me wonder if there is enough experience of and familiarity with the wide range of available SM channels and their pros & cons to enable us to decide which would be best. We all know when a newsletter fits the bill, or an intranet article, or a workshop, or a presentation. That’s because, like all old friends, we know their foibles, when they are right and when they are best left alone.

But we have a load of new guys on the block all wanting to be our new friends. The list of social media products grows every day. Some, like Yammer, seem to be gaining broader acceptance and we are getting to know them better. Others, like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are perhaps more familiar outside of the business context. One client of mine swore by HootSuite; another liked Storify. There are tons of them, and no doubt there will be more. How to choose the right ones? If I identify that an organisation could do with a more collaborative environment – and let’s face it, which doesn’t – how can I arrive at the best solution when I haven’t experienced them all?

Now I know these all do something different, and this leads me to another thing.  I’m wondering if some of these new-fangled tools fit needs I didn’t even know I had.  Like the iPod when it was first introduced. Or, I daresay, the intranet. I don’t think we started with a bunch of requirements and then thought, ‘what we need is an intranet to sort this out’. I think we learned it was possible and thought ‘what a great tool this could be if we use it right!’

This makes me wonder whether there’s a case for introducing some of these tools on a small-scale basis and seeing how they get on. Then we can work out if we need them or not. Or is that just heresy?

That’s what happened to me with Yammer. One of my clients used it, and it was growing like mad because people liked it. So I hopped on board to see what it was all about. Now I would recommend it I think fairly widely because it has potentially such a broad reach if used the right way.

Perhaps we should we acquire a few carts and see if the horse likes pulling them…

Social media – what you can and can’t manage…

The best thing about internal social media is its ‘by-the-people-for-the-people’ nature.  As communications managers this can go against the grain somewhat – it’s much more comfortable to have channels that we can control, where we know what’s going to be said because we are the ones saying it. But recent studies (for example, ACPO, Gagen MacDonald and a piece in the HBR that I talked about below) show that social media is increasingly expected by the younger workforce to be available within their workplace and it’s getting to be a differentiating factor for them when choosing an employer (US-based but the rest of the world will follow if not already there). It’s not going to go away.

Internal Communications can’t and shouldn’t have control over social media content – this takes away the whole point of having it. A bit like your mother checking your Facebook updates before they go up – who wants that! But we should review it and take action if necessary to keep it a resource for people to use freely without fear of castigation.

So we’ll be in the situation where we manage channels used to convey messages and tell our stories, while participating in and accounting for (but not directly managing) social media channels where our people will talk about our messages and stories, sharing their views and opinions.

How comfortable will we be with this free-for-all? Depends on the culture and maturity of the organisation in question. Where this is positive there will be self-regulation and it’s less likely that something unsuitable will go up there. (Trolls will stay under their bridges.)  

Of course in an unhappy organisation there is more risk. Here’s a vicious circle: senior leadership doesn’t trust its people, which leads to employee dissatisfaction, which would lead to negative comments on open communications channels, which would prevent leaders from allowing these channels, which leads to more dissatisfaction and even more distrust.

How to break this? Well, you need to sort out the source of the problem.

Sometimes it’s due to where the organisation is at: major transformation programmes often lead to nervousness within both management and their people and so not the best time to introduce ISM. But if it’s already there you can’t quash it.

Another stumbling block is with those in management who see social media as a time-waster. (The same used to be said about the intranet.)

A key part of the solution is implementing a policy. I know that sounds really dull and boring (that well known double act) but at least everyone knows what the rules are and it’s easier to redress things that go wrong if you can show that the policy hasn’t been met. If you haven’t already got one, it’s a good idea to ask for people’s help in setting one up – particularly those who are really interested in social media. This gets them on your side of the fence and their knowledge will help you get it right!

The challenge (as with all policies) is to keep it comprehensive, short and clear. Make sure that you say something about removing offensive content and perhaps try and keep it on a positive footing by suggesting all the things social media is good for. That might help the senior doubting Thomases as well as dissuade people from posting what they are going to have for lunch that day…

Managers still need to manage

I was interested to read a blog in the Harvard Business Review on the role of the manager in communicating to their staff. One of the points made is that social media will remove the power of the manager in communicating to their people as the latter learn and believe more from social media. This statement in particular caught my eye: “Managers will no longer be able to communicate with just a small circle of trusted advisers — they'll be expected to interact digitally with a much broader range of people both inside and outside the company.” Hmm. That’s some assertion. And possibly purposefully provocative.

I am a fan of social media  (this is a blog!) and there’s lots of stuff in previous posts below about social media. But managers will always need to manage their people and you don’t do that through social media, you do that by having a proper face-to-face conversation.

And I don’t buy that younger people only communicate through social media. I just think they make less of a distinction between written and spoken communications. My sons (20 and 17 now) carry on a conversation that they were having face-to-face by texting the people they just left. To begin with I thought this was weird – but then if you want to keep a good conversation going why not carry it on via your phone when it’s so easy?

Also it’s not just younger people. People in older age groups are increasingly getting involved in Facebook and Twitter – though possibly not quite to the same extent.

Managers know their people and the good managers have always worked out the best way of communicating with employees, depending on who they are – what they do and what kind of people they are. If you manage a department full of techies, you’ll probably manage them differently than if you have a department full of sales folk. If you know that Bertie likes to have things in writing then you’ll probably give it to him that way, to get the best out of him. If Julie’s always in a rush to get on with things you’ll probably be more succinct so she’s not clawing at the door to get away after 20 minutes.

Social media just adds another few ways of keeping in contact with people. But it’s not a replacement for speaking with people, gauging their mood and reacting accordingly.

People not channels?

I’ve seen a lot in the last couple of days about channels. Social media is clearly “the in thing”, and quite rightly internal comms folk are looking to make sure that they incorporate this into their thinking and take advantage of the active audience participation that derives from it.

There have also been a few things about PowerPoint recently. Unlike social media, this is now seen to be a bad thing. And quite rightly internal comms folk are advising that this is not always a good tool for presenters to use in support of their message.

But it made me wonder whether this emphasis on the method of delivery is distracting us from concentrating on our audiences/stakeholders. Social media is not for everyone. Lots of people don’t get Twitter or Facebook and we can’t force people to participate. PowerPoint is not always wrong. Bad PowerPoint is, but you can still do good things with it. A good presenter using PowerPoint is going to be better than a bad presenter using Prezi.

Analysing stakeholders and accounting for their different preferences is at the heart of effective communications. Because they like different things we need to use a range of channels to get the message across. Because they have different levels of understanding and different levels of interest we need to tailor messages to get them to land properly. We need to ask them what they heard, what they understood, what they took from our comms so we can keep it going and do it better.

And hardening my nose for a minute, we also know that some stakeholders are more important than others (which is why we do all that analysis, mapping and engagement plan stuff). Would you use social media to hit your most important stakeholders? Maybe not. I have to admit, though, that I have used PowerPoint for this (*ducks, awaits onslaught*).