Much has been written about the challenges faced by organisations trying to keep up with changes in their stakeholder base.
Frequent re-structures, revised strategies and new contact points all combine to make life difficult and weakens all-important relationships.
When too many changes occur at the same time, it is possible to feel quite isolated from stakeholder sentiments and the depressing thought that much relationship-building effort may have to be written off and might even need to start again.
But what if the instability is not out there, but right inside your own organisation?
It’s a situation that’s very real in parts of the NHS right now. The Government is in the process of winding down the vast NHS England structure ready for its abolition, and the 43 Integrated Service Boards (ISBs) are facing a 50% headcount reduction in their management overhead.
They are not alone, for there is real concern about the ‘productivity’ of the public sector as numbers have risen rapidly since the COVID period. Organisational upheavals can be expected anywhere at any time.
Leaving aside whether or not these are sensible changes, the implications for stakeholder management are worth exploring.
It is sometimes necessary to be reminded that the ‘relationship’ is between organisations and not between individuals. The wise and experienced will, of course, nod sagely but remind everyone that, despite technology, it is the human contact that makes relationships work well. They point out that the most vital ingredient is trust, and that is not a disembowelled function of machines, no matter how clever, but the product of personal contact, credibility and commitment.
But these days, it’s more complicated. Our emails can be read by many people in our stakeholders’ organisation. And vice-versa. We visit each other’s websites and can comment publicly on their initiatives. When we approve, no doubt we ‘like’ what we read. Such transactional interactions may suffice to maintain some sort of contact between people or organisations that vaguely know each other but it’s a weak foundation upon which to build an insight-sharing relationship.
Whatever the true status of the relationship, re-organisations are destabilising.
When well planned and executed, there is a chance of explaining the rationale, introducing your stakeholders to the right ‘relationship owner’, and maybe signposting them towards relevant contact points on other matters.
But what if you don’t quite know how the new structure might work – or who will do what? What do you say? It’s not particularly acceptable to confess to your stakeholders that you haven’t the faintest idea.
One maintains a professional dignity even when we see so many pieces of the jigsaw thrust into the air, and no one quite knows where they fall. You will know it makes your organisation look bad. Not the image of competence and professionalism you’ve cultivated for years!
The only way to retrieve the situation is to escalate to the Senior Managers of your organisation. Let them explain the new arrangements and let them calibrate the uncertainty caused when your key stakeholders worry about the relationship.
In my experience, it is those key stakeholders that will command the attention of your top brass. That’s because they and their interests will be prejudiced by a disruption to your normal relations.
In any event, if chaos and uncertainty contaminate your organisation, it’s bad news all around, and there are not many solutions. Most just sit it out, wait for the chaos to subside and assume that, sooner or later, someone will pick up the reins, take stock and start over again. You can be confident that unless your organisation’s remit has been radically altered, you will always have stakeholders.
Your management of them may be in abeyance, but they are still there. And some of what they do and what they say may affect you.
It may not often sound like it, but the smartest managers have realised that an organisation’s stakeholder base, and its understanding of that stakeholder base, is one of its most valuable assets.
Liquidators helping to wind up failed businesses know this very well, and often it is part of what is called ‘goodwill’. For business turnaround experts, one of the ‘tools of the trade’ is to find and secure the ‘stakeholder database’, whatever it may be called, and then find someone who understands what the system holds – it may hold the key to any successful recovery of the business.
In the meantime, what is the best advice?
Few people plan for organisational restructuring, but the truth is that telltale signs sometimes appear well in advance.
Smart managers think ahead, and when important or fragile relationships can be affected, some precautionary steps can be taken. Maybe it is taking snapshots of individual relationship-status data at particular points, and ensuring a contingency briefing document exists; if you were re-assigned to another role, something that would assist handover to a successor-in-post.
A similar aggregate review of stakeholder relationships for the most senior management could be prepared and set aside for use only if necessary. In other words, prepare to preserve the structure of stakeholder management so that someone can inherit it and make it work.
The phrase ‘pitch-rolling’ has become familiar as code for setting stakeholder expectations, especially for bad news.
There are things one might not broadcast widely but can be safely shared with trusted colleagues – and (even) stakeholders. The unofficial understanding is probably that, in the event of important changes occurring in that stakeholder’s own organisation, the favour would be reciprocated.
There are degrees of subtlety with which such information can be exchanged, and there are sometimes, what’s known as ‘deniable messages.’ The truth is that the better prepared your stakeholders, the fewer the problems that arise if your own structures face a period of turbulence.
In using advanced systems such as Tractivity, stakeholder managers already have to decide whether they are running it as a tool for themselves and maybe a small team, or whether it’s being seen as a corporate asset, an important knowledge base.
These decisions will influence the granularity of data you will retain on your relationships and the transactions within them. To whom do you always send your annual report and the ‘report to stakeholders’? Who is just on the Departmental head’s Christmas card list, and who is on the Chief Executive’s annual dinner top table?
If the system may acquire new users, new custodians, or even mothballed while new arrangements sort themselves out, it’s important to secure and make available a set of key data - especially for worst-case crisis management.
In short, protect the structure, protect the people and protect the data.
It looks as if the NHS (as in other aspects) will make haste slowly; the unravelling of NHS England is expected to be over a two-year period. It also has a reasonably good record of effective handovers.
Other organisations may experience upheavals over a much more rapid timescale and move from order into chaos brutally quickly.
This is therefore often the time for outstanding Managers to demonstrate leadership and creativity. In the famous words of Rudyard Kipling:
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you….
… your career and reputation as a resilient Stakeholder Management Executive are assured.
Written by Rhion Jones
Rhion Jones was the Founder Director of the Consultation Institute and is an acknowledged authority on all aspects of public and stakeholder engagement and consultation. He advises Tractivity and will be contributing expert analysis and commentaries on current issues.
Rhion now publishes thought leadership articles regularly as the Consultation Guru.