What are multi-stakeholder initiatives?
Multi-stakeholder initiatives are communities of interest that come together to deal with critical and complex issues jointly. An initiative develops successfully when the partners make an effort to understand each other’s ways of thinking and challenges, when differing strategies are brought into line and conflicts are addressed as partners. What it takes is a jointly carried responsibility for what the initiative sets out to handle and achieve.
The capabilities
Multi-stakeholder initiatives bundle know-how and implementation skills of different stakeholders on complex issues and problem definitions that cannot be answered by just one group of stakeholders alone.
The challenge – organising & managing
The answers to the following questions help you navigate the complexity of a multi-stakeholder initiative:
When does a multi-stakeholder collaboration make sense?
Which stakeholders are needed to secure the success of a cause?
How can they work with one another when none holds formal authority over the others?
How do we clarify the differing objectives and problem perceptions of those involved?
How do a strategy and an approach emerge that allow both – collaboration and individual benefit?
Our consulting services
We help you to understand multi-stakeholder initiatives as a continuous learning process and to establish collective leadership between the stakeholders involved. Our consulting is built around four essential steps for a successful multi-stakeholder initiative. For each of these areas, collaboration tools and methods are available and are chosen to fit the situation and the people involved.
4-step consulting process
We will assist you in identifying, addressing and integrating stakeholder partners, design problem scenarios, objectives and the emphasis placed on them.
We create a trust-based space for dialogue, so that participants can interact with each other openly and on the basis of jointly developed, shared rules and agreements. This encourages sharing different points of view, objectives and forming a mutual commitment. Resource availability and power differences are clarified and structures are planned for the implementation process. A first set of evaluation criteria and an exit strategy are brainstormed collectively and a process of adapted planning and formalising will be introduced.
To implement the activities, we will build a process management and monitoring system, which is implemented in a coordinated way and allows checks to be made – with room for flexible adaptation of policies and practices. We will focus on ensuring that communication and decision-making processes between the different partners remain transparent. We will also address social tensions due to conflicting interests and will help negotiate solutions, develop learning mechanisms for regular reflection and facilitate review meetings with relevant stakeholders.
Depending on the objective and purpose of the stakeholder initiative we will support you in establishing learning systems and management structures inside the institutions so that the process outcomes can continue successfully. We will ensure that we develop the cross-linking of stakeholder objectives and partner interests, when the project takes on a new dimension.
Examples of collaboration tools & methods
Collaboration space®
The collaboration space® provides a “container” that absorbs collaboration dynamics and connects collaboration partners with the collaboration task.
The CDI Model™ (Complexity Dynamics Intervention)
The tool captures the recurring, observable patterns of behaviour and interaction (dynamics) that predictably emerge from the strategic, organisational, technical and socio-cultural complexities of cross-organisational collaboration – along with the interventions for working on them.
Simulation “The collaboration project”
In this simulation, tailored to your situation, you experience how different cultures, perspectives, practices and conflicts affect decision-making processes in the collaboration between stakeholders – and how successful collaboration emerges through individual collaboration competencies and the collaborative steering of the multi-stakeholder initiative.