When you are making a commitment to collaborate with stakeholders to develop an important plan or strategy, I wonder if you are leaving someone behind? A couple of recent experiences have shed new light on this question for me.
Last week I was in Bangkok at the United Nations presenting at an international conference on the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and their implications for partnership and collaboration. It was a fascinating week and I came back even more convinced of the need to build our collective skills to work together if we are to meet these important goals by 2030.
Many participants were from the developing world and there was much sharing of their experiences of trying to engage vulnerable groups from across the region to ensure that ‘no one is left behind’ in the effort to meet the SDGs. The group was asking questions such as “how do we hear from young mothers in traditional patriarchal cultures?” “How do we provide a safe space to talk to refugees?”
It was a fascinating conversation that took me away from my day-to-day client base of bureaucracies and corporates. Yet the question resonated strongly with me in the context of organisations I work with. When they are collaborating to create a strategy or plan, I am seeing that it is quite common for them to leave an important group of stakeholders out in the cold. Who do you think it is?
I am working with a client in Queensland – a large utility. They have been striving to improve the way they collaborate with their stakeholders to develop key strategies, with the aim of creating something that people own and are committed to. After more than a year of great co-creation they arrived at a set of strategies for the long-term management of a shared resource. It was a great piece of work and a great collaboration with a wide range of stakeholders.
They have since handed the strategy to the delivery side of the business who build infrastructure and who will be responsible for delivering the plan over the next ten years. And this is where the trouble has started. Who do you think feels left behind and left out of the collaboration? That’s right, the delivery side of the business.
It is often at this point that the struggle begins. The strategy team – the ‘proud champions of change’ – feel compelled to convince the delivery team – the ‘vulnerable community’ – that this strategy is terrific, that the stakeholders who co-created it want to be a part of delivering it, and that the collaboration must continue. Of course, this attempt is often anything but collaborative and the resistance hardens. The whole collaborative strategy may even be at risk.
In my recent experience this tale is all too common. One side of the business gets enthused about and committed to a new way of working with partners and invests all their energy and focus in collaborating with ‘them out there’. Meanwhile, the people who actually have to deliver the end result are left behind,
So, if you are promising to collaborate with a group to develop strategy, how will you ensure you leave no one behind, including those delivery people on the other side of the building?