strategic engagement Archives - Adapt Strategic Communications

September 27, 2016 . In Communications, Strategic Engagement . by Nicola Wright . 0 Comments

7 results of effective project engagement

Undertaking community engagement to support organisations and projects involves more than just a desire to connect and a few promotional efforts. Engaging effectively, in a manner which builds genuine connection and community capacity, requires organisational capability, knowledge and skill.

1. Project competence delivers…accountability

Usually when engaging you’re doing so on behalf of an organisation to fulfil its mission or to gain community support in achieving a purposeful project. Having a project of sufficient rigour from which to engage community support, means ensuring it has critical design elements which relate logically to each other – clear objectives connected by seamless and principled processes. Every project has a reason, so its important to clearly express the project’s intended impact so it can be understood by everyone and then accountably managed. Describe it in terms of its objectives, the inputs (resources), actions and outputs required to complete it. Explain it’s desired outcomes and assign indicators which will inform everyone of the project’s progress and impact. Justify your strategies. Ensure that the outputs and outcomes are measurable and your project resources – people, money and time – are sufficient to get the job done. And, importantly, clearly articulate all these elements in a cohesive and detailed plan.

2. Social capital delivers… action outcomes

Does your organisation have sufficient connection and positive relationship to reach into the community with whom you wish to engage ? Organisations who represent the community on a range of issues of shared interest, generally have extensive community networks, this social capital is their core asset. These connections and the quality of the relationships are social capital that can be drawn upon when their common interests are at risk.

Without this capability any organisation seeking to engage the community and respond to threats to shared interest, needs firstly to invest adequate time and resources in establishing those connections and building understanding and trust with it’s constituents. Relationship, understanding and motivation pre-empt any collaborative community action. Engagement that has impact requires that people can be meaningfully organised and their energies mobilised towards real world action around shared concerns.

3. Stakeholder knowledge delivers…impact

Do you know who it is in the community with whom you want to engage and why ? What roles do they play in the ecology of your sector and your organisation ? Community isn’t a ‘mass’ public to which you send information, it’s a complex social system. The way people organise within it can either help or hinder an organisation’s progress or project’s success. A stakeholder analysis is undertaken in consideration of your corporate plan or project purpose. It delivers an accurate understanding of how individuals, organisations, agencies and other groups can be engaged to assist with your corporate mission or project’s purpose.

4. Research delivers… strategic value

Many tools exist for assisting with stakeholder analysis – some useful, some at best are for guessing. . Effective stakeholder analysis isn’t based on supposition – filling in the fields of a matrix or table. Even using a simple tool like a CLIP descriptor of power, interest and legitimacy needs to be based on real information -it’s about reducing risk. It requires genuine social research – at least informal and at best primary and undertaken on behalf of the organisation in consideration of it’s mission or the project’s purpose.

With a sound stakeholder analysis, you can then develop strategies for engagement based on what you genuinely understand about how stakeholders can and will work with you. Engagement approaches based on this knowledge help you to get to your destination,’ where you want to land’. Social research information determines ‘the right engagement tools to do the job’ and the allocation of sufficient time and resources to undertake that engagement within terms of mutual benefit. Without this core ingredient of successful engagement, efforts will be ad hoc – hit or miss… Unless there is money to waste and time to kill, don’t even bother undertaking community engagement without it.

5. Relationship delivers…collaborative power

Community and stakeholder perceptions are the critical social elements of your project’s plan. How is the engaging organisation perceived by its constituents ? What is it’s reputational status with the community? Is there conflict of interest or agenda between project partners, stakeholders or participants? Is the project based on a stable organisational commitment to fulfilling it’s stated obligations ? Can it respond flexibly to any changes in environmental conditions which impact its ability to progress ? Knowing the answers to these questions will contribute vital social information to the project’s risk analysis –a project’s social elements are critical to it’s viability and successful community engagement.

6. Capability delivers …mutual benefit

Engaging with the community involves more than having a chat.
Engaging participatively and claiming representation of interests requires that an organisation or project fosters the productive, trusting relationships borne of operating within the engagement principles of inclusion, equity, transparency and openness. The challenge for all organisations and projects is to build a team of engagement practitioners who can work with the community using understanding of and skill in engagement and facilitation.

7. ‘Terms of engagement’ delivers … trust

Furthermore, an organisation undertaking community engagement must be clear as to what it is promising as an outcome in reciprocal, mutual benefit of the engagement process. It’s making a promise to people. This may include information, influence in decision-making or involvement in action to affect those decisions. Ultimately the engagement seeks to build ownership of a proposed strategic direction, a decision, policy or course of action. If you don’t seek to deliver this level of promise from engagement, then be clear in your ‘terms of engagement’ at the outset.

Consultation, as an example of a type of community engagement, actively seeks people’s views and input into policy, plans and decisions, but ultimately decisions are made by the organisation for whom the consultation was undertaken. The promise : ‘those engaged will be informed, listened to and their concerns acknowledged…feedback on how their engagement influenced the decision will be provided to them’.

Consultation ‘must haves’…

Clear purpose –what is being sought ,what is and isn’t negotiable.
Clear understanding –who is being consulted and how they can be reached to get a response.
Time for transparent engagement and response.
No double-handling, views are sought once with any group.
Transparent feedback to those consulted.
Demonstrable contribution of the views of those engaged in the decision-making.
Clear and transparent presentation of all information throughout the process.
Adequate allocation of resources to ensure these requirements are fulfilled.

Adapt Strategic Communications – engagement planning and facilitation : www.adaptstrategic.com.au

September 19, 2016 . In Strategic Engagement . by Nicola Wright . 0 Comments

Engaging to listen… purposeful, positioning and principled !

iStock_000086092671_Large

Consultation enables an organisation to take a health check of its relationships -it’s status and reputation with its constituency. This involves some risk if the result is negative. No organisation seeks to publicly promote that it lacks legitimacy with its current practise, services or programs.

Listening requires ego strength …

Being genuinely transparent and open requires some degree of corporate ego strength – especially when engagement is undertaken over controversial and complex issues. Organisations faced with potential risk in terms of public outrage, dissent or controversy, choose to contract the role out to a third party. Independent intermediaries have much to gain from such a role. They are called upon to both check and assist in restoring the organisations reputation and legitimacy through recommendation to whatever policy, plan or services may be a desirable fix.

Listening behind closed doors …

Unless independent, an intermediary consultant’s survival could very much depend on the organisations status and reputation. When organisations engage independent consultancies to ride the corporate-public boundary they can make use of ‘in-house’, consultation processes. In this context, consultants can observe the interactions with informants from behind 2-way screens, making their own notes and observations upon which to make reputation enhancing recommendations to their client. It’s safe and private- commercial-in-confidence. The
independent boundary rider, has no responsibility to respond to the issues, its own reputation in this is not at stake.

Listening in public…

Public consultation processes undertaken on behalf of governments are answerable to those with whom they consult- the constituents who voted them in to power – they have obligations of transparency and accountability. Intermediaries operating in this space have the same obligations to adhere to best practise public participation. Best practise enables publicly-sourced solutions, outcomes of mutual benefit and lowers the social risk of not meeting these obligations. To do so effectively requires organisational capabilities of skilled and principled consultation practise, and the resources to effect broad-scale public reach and feedback.

Listening connects organisations to change mechanisms…

Participative, community engagement is a communications practise which fosters resilient relationships.
When organisations, government and individuals work together using principled engagement practises they build the capabilities of structural and social change. Connections are made, relationships enhanced, partnerships built, structures modified and available resources shared. Effective, principled community engagement when undertaken by and on behalf of organisations who value community, can collect useful information from constituents. Information which helps to build practical and relevant policy, ensures that services are effectively delivered and identifies the best ways all people can collaborate to achieve change outcomes.

Listening means accountability to act …

When organisations have good community information, they can proactively manage the issues and the outrage that would otherwise arise without such understanding. Notably, possessing this information places the organisation or government in a position of accountability to act in response to what it heard through community engagement.
Those who don’t feel obliged to act probably won’t be listening either.

Listening requires principled interaction…

Community members need to express the things which matter to them in such spaces, the voices to be demonstrably included and ‘heard’. Inclusivity, transparency, and trust are key principles which are non-negotiables in these interactions. Skilful facilitation and accountable recording is required. That means engaging with those who are impacted to the greatest extent that resources allow, whilst demonstrating, through process and follow-up communication, that their views have been heard and responded to. Whoever operates in this role publicly, derives the community trust and reputation borne of adhering to these principles -even when acting as an intermediary.

Listening as a positioning strategy…

Partnering effectively with government means demonstrating in public forums, principled consultation practice on it’s behalf and in the interests of the public policy which enables it’s legitimacy. Sound project design, strategy which links the original consultation objectives and process to policy recommendations and a delivery framework in the public domain- all act to ensure their role is critical to the efficacy of the outcome. Principled and transparent consultation practise together with adequate publicity simultaneously positions an intermediary prominently with both the community and government. Reputation gains are positive with both.

Listening with purpose and responsiveness…

Meaningful, principled, and strategically-planned public engagement enables a diversity of community voices to express those things which are important to them. They get to establish their priorities for change.

‘Engaging to listen’ means that the partnerships, policy, programs and services developed in response will be practical and relevant – delivering the best outcomes to a community who shares in the planning and decision -making. Ultimately, ‘hearing community voice’ is a means to achieve corporate position and gain reputation – but only when conducted according to best practise principles of public participation and followed by strategically-informed action which responds demonstrably to the community it engaged.

Nicola Wright is a communications professional who works with projects, programs, and organisations who deliver social and environmental value. ADAPT Strategic Communications custom-builds and facilitates engagement strategies. Find her on www.adaptstrategic.com.au

March 22, 2016 . In Strategic Engagement . by Nicola Wright . 0 Comments

Cuddly appeal to complex ideas…

There’s great value in metaphors, analogy and symbolism.

As a corporate communicator, trainer and educator I’ve used them to bridge between what’s known and what isn’t, allowing people to associate a new idea with something they already understand. This is particularly useful when explaining scientific ideas or complexity. The more analogues you have to draw on, the more likely you’ll find an idea which links to existing understandings amongst people with diverse worldviews. Metaphors and symbols provide identifiable, unifying understandings amongst communities of diverse people.

They have particular value in biodiversity conservation efforts.

Because metaphors create coherent associations between ideas, they structure peoples understanding of the world helping them to learn. Metaphors and the symbols they carry can build crucial links between scientiﬁc knowledge, its complex ideas and the publics’ engagement in conservation action.

Biodiversity and ecosystems are complex ideas– relationships between key ideas, issues and impacts can be hard to conceptualize.Human impacts are influencing the rate of animal and plant extinctions to 10,000 times faster than would be expected naturally- it’s critical that people understand how to act to reduce this now. Habitat loss is probably the greatest threat to this loss of biodiversity. The Word Wildlife Fund states that it is identified as a main threat to 85% of all species described in the IUCN’s Red List (those species officially classified as “Threatened” and “Endangered”).

‘Flagship species’ are animals and plants important to our planet’s health and human survival, critical in the food chain, essential for habitat stabilization or regeneration, and key to overall ecosystem sustainability. In relation to human survival, ‘flagships’ may be the basis of a community’s health or livelihood, providing commercial or cultural value.

Science communicators use charismatic ‘flagship species’ to focus the efforts of awareness and fundraising activities for conservation work. They become symbolic metaphors -representing the rest of the ecosystem and signalling the need to conserve that species’ habitat and that of other species within it. People interpret ‘flagship species’ as being endowed with the values of maintaining ecosystem stability and balance, and by extension their extinction is seen as a signal of broader ecological collapse. Their appeal motivates interest and their threatened existence acts as a rallying call for protective action. The conservation effort undertaken on behalf of the ambassador beneﬁts others in the ecosystem.

Mammal-centric appeals …

The World Wildlife Fund for Nature’s Panda bear is an immediately recognisable corporate brand and symbolic of a global conservation ethos. The Koala bear’s current struggle for survival is directly attributable to habitat loss and the socio-political forces driving that loss. It’s a flagship species at the forefront of campaigns undertaken by the Wilderness Society and the Foundation for National Parks and Wildlife.

Some think that using large furry mammals to promote interest through emotional appeal could ultimately devalue less charismatic species not chosen to represent nature biodiversity in broad based campaigns. That mammal-centric, ‘cute and /or cuddly’ reductionist tactics simplify the message in exchange for broader emotional appeal and reach – inadequately reflecting the fact that the broader biodiversity is at risk. Environmental understanding and action would be constrained as would be the potential to build collective stewardship to influence broader species survival and habitat protection.

Engaging entry point’s for protective action…

Strategically-planned engagement campaigns consider the translation of conservation ideas from scientific to non-science contexts and public media, building understandings of the relationships between species, the impacts of habitat loss and overall ecosystem health. Effective campaigns don’t preference the survival of flagships over their ultimate goal of promoting broad scale ecosystem or biodiversity conservation through protective legislation, policy, and community action. Instead, the flagship species provide an appealing ‘entry point’ for people’s broader engagement and involvement in campaigns which shape their attitudes, understandings and behaviours in ways which can lead to protective action on key aspects of biodiversity protection. The true value of the flagship species doesn’t end with a donation, but invites people’s broader engagement in delivering effective conservation policy, legislation and action.

Nicola Wright is a communications professional who works with projects, programs, and organisations who deliver social and environmental value. ADAPT Strategic Communications custom-builds strategies to sustain your stakeholder engagement and achieve key performance objectives. Find her on www.adaptstrategic.com.au

March 11, 2016 . In Strategic Engagement . by Nicola Wright . 0 Comments

Audience fragmentation – a matter of perspective.

Getting effective message reach in the transition to Web 3.0 is a communication challenge of the developed world as both audiences and messages are fragmented across multiple channels, platforms and digital devices and traditional media selections.

In pre-web days of few broadcast channels, assumptions were that everyone went to work after reading the national or local daily, returning at night to watch the 6 o’clock TV news. Audience reach was broad and assured- either the newspaper, radio or TV would deliver your intact message with maximum reach and message penetration.

The Web 1.0 mindset assumed ‘information-seekers’ would catch up online with whatever was missed on TV or in the papers. Add Web 2.0 social media platforms as primary news sources, the fact of ambient news and mobile access and the once broad-cast, cohesive, targeted and scheduled has become narrowcast, re-mixed, noisy and ‘ambient’.

A few months ago, as this struggle continued in the developing world, I worked on an engagement project in the Pacific Islands- gaining a fresh perspective on the nature of fragmentation.

The Solomon Islands is closer to Brisbane than Perth or Darwin and yet, like many decentralized, remote communities, it faces ongoing communications challenges. Over its hundreds of islands spanning tens of thousands of kilometres, people tackle failures of basic infrastructure – transport, water, sewage and electricity -every day. The deficit in access to and reach of basic traditional communications infrastructure – including internet and digital is just one more layer of disadvantage in a globalised world. A disadvantage shared with 54% of earth’s 7.4 Billion population, who don’t use the internet.

‘Sharing culture’ and ‘social media’, old context, new meaning …

The Solomon Islands daily newspaper’s limited 5,000-copy print run maximises audience reach using people power. Each copy is recycled by initial purchasers –‘shared’ and reread by many as it re-distributes to outer islands. Across 350 islands more than 5,000 villages speak in over 80 languages- language diversity and low levels of literacy further challenges efforts of reach and inclusion. Phone access is about 95% in Honiara, but outer islanders rely on communal access or phone ‘sharing’. Barriers to television ownership include the lack of reception, power supply and its cost. Radio is too expensive for most and half of the people in the capital have computer access –a rarity in the provinces.

Australia’s greatest divide is digital – between remote, rural communities and key urban, policy-making centres. The Northern Territory has the country’s lowest personal device ownership compared with the ACT- the highest. According to the Sensis Social Media Report 2015, Australians on average, own three internet-enabled devices. Laptops and smartphones are most popular. Tablets and desktops are common, internet enabled TVs or an iPod touch less so. By age, smartphones are common in the under 50s, desktops popular with the over 30s -particularly men, and the over 65’s strongly prefer desktops to all devices. Over 40s are as comfortable with print media as with digital, the over 55s still watch TV and the over 65’s love newspapers.

Internet – stratified access, visibility and participation across social scales.

Even collectively, social media doesn’t offer us an inclusive public sphere amongst the digitally connected. Numerous isolated ‘issue’ groups fragment the possibilities of collective, participative deliberation bringing new perspective to the continued value of national broadcast media and participative engagement practices.

Strategic engagement planning seeks to understand stakeholder preferences for engagement across interpersonal, traditional and digital media – mindful of the scales and fault lines of fragmentation existing due to unequal access and channel choice within our own communities, across the nation and globally.

Social media takes on its original meaning in disadvantaged communities.

Effective strategic communication exploits all available opportunities for engagement, considering fully social, economic and cultural contexts. Strategic engagement planning considers audiences attitudes, understandings and the most effective channels, message emphasis, and intensity to use with them. Where digital media can’t deliver community engagement, channels may be interpersonal – relying on people as intermediaries to reach specific groups and participatory processes. Traditional media and digital can only be used according to local resources and access.

But, as in the developed world, this requires understandings of societal norms, customs and behaviours and access to key influencers, gatekeepers and message mediators within those cultures. Getting this right involves research, consultation and planning using engagement savvy – the social more critical than technology in building co-operative relationships.

Age, literacy, disability, location or disadvantage can all affect access to communications which connects people to information, support and economic potential. In Island Nations as in Australia, you can’t ensure you get the right message to the right people at the right time, when access to basic communication infrastructure and channels is lacking. Inclusive strategic engagement planning makes no assumptions about equality of access and message reach, its research identifies those with whom you need to communicate and how to reach them.

Nicola Wright is a communications professional who works with projects, programs, and organisations who deliver social and environmental value. ADAPT Strategic Communications custom-builds strategies to sustain your stakeholder engagement and achieve key performance objectives. Find her on www.adaptstrategic.com.au

February 26, 2016 . In Strategic Engagement . by Nicola Wright . 0 Comments

Engaging inclusively or creating outsiders?

In this first blog I’ll disclose some things about me within some thoughts about communications and hopefully do it in a way that informs, provokes and holds your interest.

You could assume all sorts of things about me based on my demographic profile alone…
X Generation, middle class, private school educated , female and the third child in a conservative family. But if I told you that I’m left-wing, an environmentalist who participates in climate rallies, parachutes from planes and swims with turtles, you’ll make a whole other set of assumptions about my life.

But would you know how to engage with me and get my support with an idea or project you want to get underway? Will I support or reject the recreational tourism project up the road, will I protest against the toxic waste dump 50 km away? You really won’t know until you actively engage with me.

The point is this … by effectively engaging with people on their terms, listening to and assessing their opinions and understandings in relation to your mission, project or idea, you get strategically useful information.

Engagement accesses information relevant to your mission.

As a communicator I explore people’s motivations, their opinions, understandings or disposition to ‘things’ – a cause, issue, organisation, or project. By building relationships and influence, the outcomes reliant on people’s opinions, understandings and behaviour can be enhanced or adapted in ways that generate mutual benefit and progress an organisational, program or project mission.

We all feel more in control and less anxious when we believe we can predict other people’s behaviour and know where we stand with them.Effective stakeholder consultation and engagement enables mutual information exchange which informs the communications strategies we develop – why we use the tactics we do, when we do, and with whom. It reduces the risk of embarking on a mission which relies on building positive relationships and working effectively with people to get their involvement and support for its ambitions. We better understand where we stand with them.

Does age really impact strategy?

Generational theorists argue that shared life experiences generate shared assumptions, attitudes, and beliefs, and even cohesive ‘group identity’. Such theories assert that values and behaviours forged in youth endure as generational traits and even work patterns.

Ascribing identities to whole generations certainly reduces the complexity of real life human diversity by creating discrete and more predictable marketing targets so that information, ideas and ‘stuff’ can be packaged, sold and consumed accordingly. However, ‘ageism’ is a system of stereotypes, policies, norms, and behaviours that discriminate against, restrict, and dehumanize people because of the assumptions we make about them based on their age which blind us to real variation in individual existence and need.

The reality is that engagement preferences, information –seeking behaviour, internet literacy and access and social media activity differ markedly across generations. Social media communities are good places to engage with stakeholder information, but as small government and many businesses confine their previously printed or phone communicated information to websites (with huge cost savings compared to having person-to-person engagement), the reach and efficacy of online communication and engagement is being questioned.

By adopting ‘one size fits all’ approaches to engagement which don’t account for variation in access, need and preference, we indirectly discriminate against those who obtain information differently or are ‘hard to reach’.
They’re excluded and their voices unheard.

Age, income, internet access, literacy and user preference are factors which exclude many people from engaging online. Older people told Council On The Ageing (COTA Magazine, Feb–March 2016) they preferred face-to-face communication as it enabled meaning-making exchange, explanations and professional-level advice.

Authentic and inclusive engagement creates genuinely shared understandings between you and your stakeholders.

Engage with diversity … people of all generations may influence your mission.

By practicing communications in different communities and cultures I’ve learned to work with diversity – including diversity in the availability and access to traditional and online communications media.Effective engagement gathers relevant, strategically-useful information through inclusive processes. This means considering your stakeholder’s communication preferences and access to media when establishing the terms of engagement. Amongst other factors, stakeholder age can determine the mix of human to human, traditional and digital communications media engagement tactics you need to deploy to ensure those impacted by your mission are included.

Customized, stakeholder-focused approaches to engagement link your organisation, program or project and its stakeholders through genuine relationships and understanding as determined by your unique mission and strategic plan or project objectives. A strategic engagement plan creates purposeful interaction with all those who enable it to reach strategic goals – it’s not a ‘one size fits all’ template, nor does it use one dominant medium to reach all stakeholders.

Don’t assume but do consider…

When seeking engagement with the people who could help or hinder your progress, making assumptions and using ‘one size fits most’ engagement approaches is risky. Effective, authentic engagement uses wholly-inclusive tactics to reach the diversity of those people impacted by your mission.

…engage with age.

ADAPT Strategic Communications builds strategies’ to sustain stakeholder engagement and achieve measurable objectives using effective, ongoing, open and authentic communication tactics and collaboration processes.
Nicola Wright is a communications professional who works with projects, programs, and organisations committed to creating social and environmental value.

Find her on www.adaptstrategic.com.au

strategic engagement

7 results of effective project engagement

Engaging to listen… purposeful, positioning and principled !

Cuddly appeal to complex ideas…

Audience fragmentation – a matter of perspective.

Engaging inclusively or creating outsiders?

Formulae for a social media addict’s reign…

Emergent sense when engaging in complex systems

Are we there yet ?… signposts to effective engagement

Get the ‘thumbs up’ from stakeholder engagement…

7 results of effective project engagement