Feedback works!

One of the initiatives that I'm proud and privileged to be involved with is the Sciencewise Expert Resource Centre.  There's a team of Dialogue and Engagement Specialists (DESs), and we provide mentoring and advice to government and semi-government bodies which are engaging the public in discussions and deliberations on science-related topics. Sciencewise has asked its DESs for insights - key things we've learnt from experience.  This is mine.

Essentially the message is this - when you've engaged people and asked for their views, you need to let them know how your decisions and plans have changed as a result.  Or, if you haven't changed aspects that they wanted you to, let them know why not.

This is simple and perhaps obvious, but frighteningly often isn't done well at all.  Read the insight to see what happens when it is done.

Dinosaur DAD and Enlightened EDD - alternative approaches to involving people

I spend quite a lot of my time working with clients to engage stakeholders around topics related to sustainable development. This might be working with coastal communities to figure out how to respond to rising sea levels.  It might be chewing over new approaches to public transport.  Or it could be examining how the market for supplying domestic energy can be adjusted to reward companies for selling less energy or lower carbon energy.

I also run a lot of training courses for people who want to learn more about stakeholder engagement and to develop their facilitation skills.

DAD / EDD is one of the most useful models I know for helping learners and clients understand the difference between traditional communications - Decide, Announce, Defend (Abandon) - and an approach which engages stakeholders: Engage, Deliberate, Decide.

This article I wrote for the environmentalist, published in February 2009,  explains a bit more.

Plenty more fish in the sea?

Why should environmentalists (in all our various guises) get into stakeholder engagement? Sometimes the problems are just too complex to be solved by one party acting alone.

If you can bring people together in an atmosphere of dialogue (a 'conversation with a center, not sides' as William Isaacs calls it), then the chances of finding that sweet spot where everyone's interests coincide is so much higher.

Now this is a bit like an optical illusion even in principle - the concept slips in and out of focus.  It's even harder in practice.  There are, though, some institutions and processes that get close, and have resulted in some interesting collaborative work.

Take, for example, the Marine Stewardship Council.  It's built on the idea that lots of different people have an interest in the sustainability of fish stocks, even if those interests are driven by different motivations.  It's an example of sustainable development happening because of people working together.

There's more about this in my article for the environmentalist, here (pdf).