Leveraging influencers: The Importance of Stakeholder Lists in Engagement
I am passionate about Community Engagement, but sometimes it’s a real tough gig.
Choosing carefully the projects I work in, I have been privileged to work for some great game changers over the years such as the National Broadband Network and Level Crossings Removal Authority. Nothing more profoundly satisfying and uplifting than seeing a project come to fruition and making a difference to hundreds or thousands of people, that helps build or improve economic, social and human capital in the world around them.
Major nation building projects cannot meet big wish lists, and they are not perfect, but they can deliver much needed infrastructure or essential services that makes a difference in the long run for the good of all. It is our job as community engagement professionals to keep focusing on this and get the necessary project buy-in.
It is also vital that while you develop your community engagement plan, you map out successfully the ‘influencers’ in your targeted population that are directly or indirectly impacted by the project. If you are working on tight time-frames, then developing a list is even more critical. This list helps you understand the types of individuals, advocates, shareholders, naysayers, residents, groups, clubs, not-for-profits, government, schools, businesses, traders, people from executive to grassroots levels from all walks of life, that could have either have a positive or negative impact at any stage of your project life-cycle.
Malcom Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, proves how powerful individuals can be, or what he terms as ‘normal people’, who are are not just ‘marketing tools’ that can cascade information, they are ‘social relationship assets’. These people have credibility within your target audience and can have a ‘wildfire’ domino effect over many others. He says ‘Ideas and products and messages and behaviours spread just like viruses do’. Learning to harness and leverage the top 10-20 influencers on your stakeholder list, means you can cascade to a few who may have the ability to spread your message to dozens more, or 100s or maybe 1,000s of other people.
What to consider in a stakeholder list:
· Get in early: researching and pre-planning is best done early to avoid or minimise grief later. Know the lay of the land you are working in and what drives the people in it will help you with your strategy and engagement methods.
· Leverage your project team and all ‘internal’ influencers in your organisation: Gain their insights as this will give you a good head start. Be proactive, help them understand working with a community early protects the reputation of the project. In addition, discuss parameters such as who can talk to who, to avoid duplication or confusion.
· Leverage your local government (council) representative: they are also important in helping you map out the critical people who have the right connections and knowledge of your specific community. Sometimes these representatives where many hats and can come from any division: they can be the local librarians, community or open spaces coordinators, communications or stakeholder advisors, engineers or planners, Directors, the Mayor or even the CEO.
‘If you are working on tight time-frames, then developing an effective list
is even more critical’.
· Stakeholder list should be organic: keep adding names to this list throughout your project life-cycle. Theme your stakeholders into levels of influence (low, medium, high). You need to consider: Who can help you inform many? Who can incite others to action now or in the future? What is their project position? Do they have competing agendas, that’s in conflict with your project? Remember, stakeholder project positions can change over time. If you have people movement within your organisation, then you to need ensure staff maintain stakeholder lists and keep it as a working document that can easily be found and utilised.
So now you have identified who they are:
- Get to know your key influencers: have 1:1 coffee or telephone meets will help you get vital learnings about your community and learn what drives them. Where possible, attend, observe or leverage from their existing group or club meetings, festivals, cultural or membership events they work, service or lead in and truly listen. Understand what their likes and dislikes are about the project as this can also help frame your key messages. They can be a volunteer from the local RSL or Sports Club or Meals on Wheels, a passionate student, professional, local business/trader or resident.
- Be contactable: by giving your direct business landline and/or email address to ‘key’ influencers, they are most likely to come to you first with questions, or request information on behalf of others they represent, instead of going to other authorities who may not necessarily provide the correct facts about your project.
- Leverage and equip your key influencers: You don’t need to communicate to every single channel in your community. Equip your ‘influencers or connectors’ with key messages, links and resources – they are your best allies in cascading project information in their ‘local’ language, and can help provide recommendations or assistance with issues management and help flag potential risks.
· Keep it simple – communications such as fact sheets should only complement your campaign - use plain English with images or videos wherever possible. Too much technical information, can overwhelm especially culturally and linguistically challenged, seniors and special needs groups*. Don’t assume everyone uses social media and is literate, so consider small group face to face activities or briefs, story boards, translators or work with your community leaders to help you ‘speak’ the right language to get your message across.
· Believe in what you are doing - being passionate about the project can be infectious and speaking with conviction will eventually help persuade even the most challenging of stakeholders over time.
By developing a strong stakeholder list and engaging with key influencers early and effectively, you will be able to move mountains in community engagement.
Community engagement can sometimes be a tough gig, but by far the most rewarding job when you know that what you do is for the good of all.
Mary is passionate about building true resilience in communities and in building meaningful communications that not only make messages stick but incites a call to action that helps foster sustainable living practices in communities and business.
*special needs groups - the individual requirements of a person with a disadvantaged background or a mental, emotional, or physical disability or a high risk of developing one.
