Stakeholder Soufflé2009-04-23

 Stakeholder soufflé is the term I give to public and private development projects that didn’t rise because they had the wrong ingredients: an artificial community engagement strategy that emphasized “interested parties” while giving the short shrift to the rest of the public.

By its nature, identifying stakeholders is exclusionary: participation is only a beginning; it’s a sounding board; a single concentric circle of many.

More problematic is that stakeholder groups aren’t built to last--often rife with inherent conflicts that range from petty jealousies, narrow ideological points of view and interest group turf protection, all of which can lead to a misalignment with the general public.

This Achilles Heel has been magnified in the age of Google, when everyone has easy access to the same information and anyone with an email list serve or Twitter account can throw a monkey wrench into the gears. Engaging in an early and honest dialogue with a broader cross section of the community has become the only way to make a ribbon cutting a reality.

Congratulations to Oregon’s Wave Energy Trust who are benefiting the nascent industry by putting the practice to use: first, by pursuing a smart stakeholder strategy by inviting local impacted fishermen to weigh in on siting energy buoys in the ocean in the presence of the FERC (who has permitting jurisdiction); second, by humbly and publicly approaching the local communities for input before formal proposals have been submitted.

This two-pronged strategy is essential because while a community titan can pen an op-ed supporting you in the local newspaper, politicians tasked with permitting will take notice (and often take cover) when project opponents outnumber supporters at a community meeting by 50-1.

So how to give the soufflé the time and space to rise?

• Invite a harsher review in the kitchen with both stakeholders and the public before the dish is served. Sure, some criticism is self-serving, but ignoring legitimate criticism at the outset gives opponents the cudgel to create a critical mass.
  

• Address problems openly because papering over problems in the public process ultimately undermines community good will.
  

• Continue to invite people to join the dialogue, whether through email list serves, Twitter, blog comments, websites, voice mail messages or community meetings. This isn’t a one-time proposition; it’s a long-term strategy for success because information can no longer be “managed” to keep opponents at bay.
  

• While an open dialogue is good, an endless dialogue is bad. In building community support for a project, inertia (more than project opponents) is the enemy--structure meetings with outcomes in mind.
  

• Manage the conflict by building your alliances because ultimately you won’t be able to please everyone all the time. You are more likely to keep your supporters standing with you even if the project isn’t perfect (and none are) if you’ve invested them in the outcome.