How can you create a stakeholder engagement scorecard that is reliable and actionable?

For larger, more complex, cross-functional programs, it is critical to define, and communicate the specific tasks, deliverables, and milestones to all team members and stakeholders. Buy-in to these metrics is important to ensure everyone is following the same plan. A stakeholder dashboard listing these deliverables, metrics and due dates is a very helpful way to keep the whole team aligned with the progress of the program. Red, yellow, and green status indicators can also help identify early issues and allow quick resolution to avoid delays.

Creating a stakeholder engagement scorecard begins with clear objectives aligned with program goals. In a healthcare project, a SMART objective might be to enhance patient satisfaction by 15% within six months. This aligns with the program's aim to improve healthcare quality. The scorecard, informed by these objectives, would measure specific indicators like patient feedback scores and response time. Ensuring objectives are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound guides the scorecard's effectiveness, allowing for precise measurement and strategic alignment with program outcomes.

The key benefit of stakeholder engagement scorecard is that it helps project managers and teams to manage and communicate with stakeholders in the most effective way, enabling them to concentrate resources where maximum benefit will be derived and informing communications planning for the project. Stakeholder Engagement Scorecard should be created after analysis and put stakeholders in "High Power High Interest", "High Power Low Interest", "Low Power High Interest" and "Low Power and Low Interest" Bucket. After putting stakeholders under this bucket, project manager should come-up with strategy on communication, consulting, meeting, building confidence for each bucket of stakeholders.

One thing I've found helpful while defining objectives is to use the OKR (Objectives and Key Results) method where you: set clear, measurable objectives (O) and tracking milestones through key results (KR). This method helps breakdown the stakeholder Objectives into more actionable list that can be measurable for both stakeholders and team. This OKR method of defining stakeholder objectives help promote transparency and accountability, ensuring the objectives are met efficiently. In my experience, we also regularly revisit and adjust OKRs based on stakeholder feedback for dynamic alignment.

When working large program management initiatives connecting stakeholder objectives to specific projects is critical. In addition, the team leads and project leads must have understanding and buy-in to the objectives but at a granular level relatable to their segments and span of control. This “line of sight” connection across the key personnel of the program and their scopes is vital to tracking and managing progress and ultimately hitting the objectives. It also can help bubble issues to the surface across the spans of control more efficiently.

Identifying stakeholders is crucial in creating a stakeholder engagement scorecard as it: 1. Defines who is directly/indirectly impacted by the project, enabling creation of tailored engagement strategies. 2. Helps recognize their influence, interest, and expectations, guiding how to prioritize and address them. 3. Allows understanding of each stakeholder's concerns, objections or suggestions that could affect the project's outcome. 4. Uncovers potential risks and opportunities associated with each stakeholder that can be used to mitigate challenges or leverage benefits. ?? Ultimately, this improves communication, builds stronger relationships and ensures smoother project execution.

The best stakeholders are those with “skin in the game” and are willing to really engage. A passive stakeholder on the program is excess baggage, and many times is seeking political gain or visibility connections only. OK, you may have to lug one or two of these along for the ride, but years of experience has leathered me into knowing you must have strong knowledgeable stakeholders if you want to really “manage” the program effectively. Lastly, make sure these holders truly “own” the key scope elements (on both a business and technical basis).

In my work, we often find it helpful to identify the stakeholder groups upfront. We may have a broad concept that we have a need for engagement, but the why and the what are often driven by who the stakeholder groups are. While our intention is to be open to all input from all stakeholder groups, we also realize a need to pay particular attention to the experienced perspectives between the various groups that inform our work.

A useful tool to identify and characterize stakeholders is stakeholder mapping or stakeholder analysis. It help with identification of stakeholder objectives and level of engagement. It also helps laying out formal and informal connections and influencing opportunities.

- Scorecards can get too busy, so don’t clutter them with too many KPI’s or segments to track. - Focus on the meaningful indicators. Go with no more than four quadrants, include a box at the bottom for key issues, current hot spots, etc. - Financials should not be the first visual on the card unless it is a massively costly program. - The top quadrant should be the key CSF of the program. - Is it the effort (projects) - getting it “done”, is it the uptake (end-state usage and buy-in), or maybe a culture/process change in the lines of business.

One fundamental aspect of scorecards is to evaluate whether they are a useful tool to help facilitating decision making. Scorecards need to be a means to an end, and sometimes they become the goal itself.

Implementation and review of stakeholder engagement scorecards requires: 1. Communication: Share the scorecard with relevant teams and stakeholders to promote transparency and alignment. 2. Usage: Use scorecards regularly in project reviews to assess stakeholder satisfaction, engagement level and feedback. 3. Involvement: Engage stakeholders in the review process to encourage involvement and promote the scorecard’s efficacy. 4. Adjustment: If scorecard indicators suggest low engagement or dissatisfaction, adjust your strategies as needed. 5. Periodic Review: Regularly review and update your scorecard to ensure alignment with project shifts and evolving stakeholder needs.

Important to recognize that the Heisenberg's Uncertainty principle comes into play, i.e. the act of measurement disturbs/alters the measurement. Metrics should be carefully selected to ensure they are driving behaviors as intended. Simply adding metrics may end up negatively disturbing good behaviors, or producing unusable garbage data.

Continuous improvement is necessary to continuously fine tune scorecards. Timing of changes and improvements need to be carefully evaluated, as too much change makes impossible to build historical trends and therefore measure improvement.

To summarize my answers, these are the steps to create stakeholder engagement scorecard: 1. Identification: Identify all potential stakeholders influenced by or influencing the project. 2. Prioritization: Classify stakeholders based on their interest and power - high-interest & power stakeholders require more communication and management. 3. Understanding: Determine stakeholders' needs, expectations and behavior to design effective engagement strategies. 4. Tracking: Classify and measure engagement levels using key metrics such as frequency of communication or satisfaction levels. 5. Action: Use this data to improve engagement, address stakeholders’ concerns and facilitate informed decision-making.

Draft, draft and rework ( in pencil of course)because the stakeholder engagement scorecard is ever changing and never is written in pen! Here are my work processes for creating the EVER EVOLVING stakeholder engagement scorecard. 1. Define the Purpose. 2. Identify Key Stakeholders both internal and external. 3. Determine Engagement Metrics. 4. Establish Measurement Criteria. 5. Develop Data-Driven Collection Methods. 6. Set Targets and Benchmarks. 7. Design the Scorecard (in pencil of course). 8. Regularly Monitor and Update. 9. Analyze and Interpret Results. 10. Take Action.