This Tuesday, during our first workshop, We Are Open showed us a way to categorise our stakeholders on a map to determine our interaction with them throughout the development process.
Our first exercise was to map our stakeholders in a version of the Boston Matrix.
This is a tool that helps to map relationships into four quadrants.
We did the exercise as a snapshot of where we are now.
Quadrant 1: High interest and low involvement
This group covers colleagues, senior management and the board. We need to provide them with information that satisfies their interest but doesn’t overwhelm them with the detail.
Quadrant 2: High interest and high involvement
This is the critical relationship we need to manage over the coming months. At the top right, most interested and most involved is the team - in our case 25% of the staff, 4 people are actively working to embed this work into the organisation from the get-go. Also in this group are our network of 10 peer organisations, people who work with us to create content, our consultation group and the managers of the programme.
Quadrant 3: Low interest and low involvement
This is the group we need to monitor. It includes the people visiting our website. It includes potential funders and the wider arts sector. These groups don’t yet know the great stuff we are working on. We are monitoring this group and we will decide at some point when we need to share more information.
Quadrant 4: Low interest and high involvement
This group includes the funder of the programme. We have classed them as low interest because their interest is in the compliance and the capturing of the learning. We need to work hard to keep them informed.
This helps us to work on our communications and project plans. Critical to all of this is the need to manage expectations. We are building a strong momentum behind a project - but the outcome of this stage of funding is a further refinement of our plan. How do we manage communications and keep the momentum going and yet know that funders might not pick up this project because their priorities have moved on from empowering community voices? This is a constant dilemma in open working, especially in communities that have a history of being overlooked. We are in constant danger of being seen as another agency who talks the talk - but doesn’t deliver. It is a privilege to have a community to provide their time and ideas in a project development process. Nothing is guaranteed. But nothing for the community is not a good outcome and makes the next consultation that much harder.
See below our personal Stakeholder Map:
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