On www.StakeholderDialogues.net we regularly feature success stories of initiatives and projects that have applied a dialogic stakeholder approach. The last story to be featured this year is the story of how community based natural resource management was turned into a succes in Namibia.
After the apartheid in Namibia the black population in Namibia was left with no chance of owning land titles or wildlife. As a result there was no incentive for them to care for the land they lived on – as a consequence over the years wildlife and natural resources soon decreased. To tackle this problem a new conservancy policy was introduced in 1996. Under the policy communities can register for the land they live on to be declared a conservancy – the communities in return have to look after the wildlife and are entitled to benefit from the utilization of wildlife.
A couple of weeks ago I interviewed Karine Nuulimba of the Integrated Rural Development and Nature Conservation (IRDNC) an organization that, together with the WWF, played a major role in initiating this change process in Namibia. The interview with Karine was very inspiring – she passionately shared her insights with me on the success factors of the people-centered community-based natural resource management – an approach that is rooted in the fruitful collaboration between local communities, government bodies and NGOs.
In Stakeholder engagement processes collective intelligence and the ability of a group of people to generate ideas together is crucial. Last week we held our training course „Working with Stakeholder Dialogues“ here in Potsdam. The participants brought with them really exciting project cases, so me and my co-facilitator decided to introduce to them a little tool that would leverage their potential for generating wild ideas and positive dynamics in their change processes – the “Yes, and…” exercise.
Inform the group that they get to spend 500.000 € and can go on a holiday trip. The only condition is that everyone that contributes an idea on how to spend the money has to start his or her sentence with the words “Yes, and…”. Weiterlesen →
Recently I introduced you to the Dialogic Change Model that the Collective Leadership Institute developed to help you facilitate a process design that is owned by all stakeholders. Today I want to dive deeper into the first phase.
Phase 1 is essentially about creating the resonance for the envisioned change and exploring the Stakeholder Dialogue’s context, taking other existing initiatives and the people involved into account. Talking to selected but relevant stakeholders and opinion-leaders informally in this phase can help to understand the prospects and potential obstacles for dialogue and change. Weiterlesen →
Getting in touch with your stakeholders, finding out what moves them, where their interests lie, is a prerequisite for a meaningful dialogue. This is why we interview the alumni of our educational programs regularly. Like this we find out in which ways we have to develop our methodology further and ultimately how to shape the future of the Collective Leadership Institute to stay in touch with what our stakeholders need. This interview my colleague Katharina held with Mouna Lyoubi from Morocco – and left the room inspired…
Mouna, you are working on a very interesting project – tell me more about it.
The project is called “Cooperation between Cities and Municipalities” (CoMun). It is a regional project with presence in Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria. It started in 2008 in Morocco and in Tunisia after the Arab Spring, but not yet in Algeria. I am a local Junior Advisor in Morocco. We had a contest of projects coming from 16 cities and we selected 7 projects from 7 different cities. The cities proposed projects on energy efficiency, waste management, transport and rehabilitation of ancient medinas. The projects were provided with technical support and in 2012 we implemented networks between the cities. These networks create bridges for cooperation between the Moroccan, Algerian and Tunisian cities and the countries themselves. Weiterlesen →
Since the onset of the financial crisis in 2007, especially African infrastructure development is facing a major challenge in attracting private sector and foreign direct investment. Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) hold great potential for sustainable development that can be leveraged further by applying a stakeholder engagement focus.
The Southern African Development Community (SADC) has acknowledged this and contracted the Collective Leadership Institute with our expertise in stakeholder engagement to support the Public Private Dialogue Forum that takes place this week in Johannesburg. Until my colleagues are back to report new insights and experiences made in Johannesburg, here are some tips on improving PPPs efficiency through applying a Stakeholder Dialogue approach.
How to make Stakeholder Engagement in PPPs work:
Create resonance and mobilise positive feedback for investing into a PPP project development among crucial public and private sector players Weiterlesen →
Today I am very happy to announce a partnership with Future 500 – a non-profit organization that envisions a world that realizes sustainable economic growth by addressing social and environmental externalities with market-based solutions. Future 500 unites the corporate and NGO sector to break through gridlock, encourage thoughtful solutions, and achieve broad systemic change.
There are lots of interesting collaborations planned for the future – in the meantime I am delighted to feature an article on engaging with activists which Future 500 recently shared on their blog:
From toxics to human rights, advocates are increasingly focusing on consumer facing brands to drive change on environmental and social issues. Corporate campaigns have been going strong for decades, but with the rise of social media, higher demand for supply chain transparency and increasingly savvy coordination between activist networks, companies are scrambling to address stakeholder concerns before they bubble into conflict. Weiterlesen →
This saying by a circle of African wise women captures an important lesson in Stakeholder Dialogues: engagement requires a team of committed people.
In order to bring a project forward, it is important to have a group of people that are dedicated to the change envisaged and to implementing the intended change jointly. At the CLI we call this a Container – and as methodology it is the core of our work. Many stakeholder involvement processes fail or have little impact because there is no solid Container of people who feel collectively responsible for fostering and holding the process from beginning to end.
You probably know those typical meeting situations: People arrive one by one, some don´t take their eyes of their laptops to write last-minute mails and at some point the meeting is opened and starts by jumping right to the first agenda point.
At the CLI we try and do it differently. Meetings – no matter how small – start with a check-in and end with a check-out. We are not big fans of airports, but we like to think of our meetings as little journeys. And to leave our “mental luggage” outside for the while. The check-in is a great tool to frame your meetings in a different atmosphere, get people into a conversation and focus on the topics to be discussed. Weiterlesen →
Let´s start our learning journey with looking back at the birth of the Dialogic Change Model – the model that lies at the core of our approach to Stakeholder Dialogues. Are you familiar with it yet?
While supporting the 4C project, a cross-sector partnership between coffee traders, producer organizations and international civil society organizations our founder Petra Künkel learned a lot about what factors make a cooperation project successful and how important the quality of dialogue is. Over the years she collected her experiences and developed a model that balances the ancient human knowledge of dialogue and collective intelligence with result-oriented process design and communication architecture. This is how the Dialogic Change Model was born. The model introduces four phases that help you facilitate a process design that is owned by all stakeholders:
Why a blog on Stakeholder Dialogue? The challenges of sustainability have reached the entire globalized world. They are far too complex to be solved by the corporate community, the public sector or civil society acting alone. Collaboration is key – we can only co-create a more sustainable way of life by working collectively towards common goals.
