Your organisation’s capacity to enact or influence preferred futures may be limited by collective assumptions underpinning relationships with key stakeholders. By surfacing such assumptions, it is possible to transform these from “big ideas” that hold the organisation, to “big ideas” that the organisation holds, strengthening relationships with stakeholders while simultaneously unlocking a critical constraint on organisational learning. A stakeholder consultation process, designed and implemented appropriately, can support such a shift.
The key to such work lies in sensitive, genuinely open and appropriately discrete inquiry with stakeholders, coupled with critical reflection on the findings amongst the organisation’s members. A third party intermediary is sometimes desirable in providing the bridge between inquiry and reflection.
I have significant experience providing such bridges, based on semi-structured interviews with stakeholder representatives and a reporting approach that seeks to both challenge and support critical reflection on findings. The nature of this work is highly context-sensitive and so I provide only the most general introduction here. Please contact me to learn more about stakeholder consultation services. References can be arranged on request.
A public domain example of this type of work is available here.