What's your secret to engaging stakeholders in your operational plan?

Engaging stakeholders in your operational plan is like inviting team members to join a cool adventure. You can talk to them about the plan, listen to their ideas, and ask what they think. It’s like having a team huddle to make sure everyone is excited and understands their role in the game. When everyone feels involved and valued, it’s easier to work together like a super squad, making the whole mission more successful!

Involve everyone, listen together, plan and change together. If everyone is on board, change is encouraged and driven with passion and opportunity.

Set a plan, work with team members, accept their identified strengths and apply them, work with experts you know and seek their supporters. Persistence. Every no brings you closer to the next yes. Must have self determination and drive. Dig in and keep going, even those days you don't really feel like it!

Most important is Communication. Keep stakeholders informed address their concerns and actively listen to their feedback. Foster collaboration and make them feel involved in the decision making process. Transparency is essential sharing both success and challenging.

When engaging with stakeholders, maintaining openness is crucial. Inform them about all possible alternatives, their advantages and disadvantages. If there are previous data analytics available, share the findings and propose a recommendation that could yield effective outcomes. Particularly in the digital realm, strive to avoid proposing solutions laden with complex technical terminology.

Engaging stakeholders requires an understanding of what is important to each stakeholder and providing them with the information they find relevant - be prepared to pivot accordingly as needs change. Additionally, you must stay current with the latest market trends - attend industry conferences, connect with industry leaders and peers, and share, share, share. Once you have a clear understanding of needs and have a pulse on the market trends, ensure that you are proactively setting routine meetings to provide insights, realign on objectives and mission, and provide the ideal guidance/solutions for each stakeholder. Be intentional, be proactive, be prepared.

It is imperative to establish trust early on, because once trust is lost it cannot be easily recovered. Managing mis/dis-trust in a forum of multi- stakeholders is one of the biggest challenges.

no propaganda. by carefully building relationships with union and staff leaders, let them lead to the conclusion that we all want; no one wants to be part of an average performing organization so we got them focused on "what would it take for us to go from ordinary to excellent." they had the answers. so we worked their insights into a business plan that they subscribed to and turned the organization around. there were casualties but the end result was an engaged and motivated staff that was attractive to potential other employees. Good To Great was one of our building blocks.

One thing I’ve found helpful is to celebrate small steps and advertise the advantage they have made possible. Also, explicitly point out feedback you’ve received and how and when it was addressed. Maybe it couldn’t all be implemented or included on the roadmap, but knowing there’s a process for reviewing and responding to concerns goes a long way to building trust and modeling success that others can grab onto.

Acknowledge, listen to understand the impact and recommendations, evaluate with clear decision criteria and values, and then refine, where effective and relevant. Be clear on goals and how decisions are made to align with those goals, including stakeholder roles and responsibiluties and who owns the decisions and is accountable for action.

Lets be clear. They are called Stakeholders because they have a "Stake" in the work. They are seeking benefits. The key is to understand if these benefits are financial, political, social, technical or personal. Once you understand this, communications, exposure, and alignment become clear. You can then develop the appropriate methods and plans for involvement.