Roger Hidalgo, Chief Discovery Officer, ChangeLab

Within our projects and initiatives that we develop, we are constantly interacting with many stakeholders. This task is not really easy because there are various motivators and interests that are not always aligned with our purpose. And that's where we begin to take a broad view of how we face a collaborative effort for stakeholder engagement.

Create alignment first

With innovation, we learned not just to have one idea that we will implement. The same thing happens when we work with stakeholders. We cannot have only one perspective or opinion; we must be able to identify multiple perspectives and interests. At ChangeLab, we apply a model we call the "triangle of interests".

Basically, we analyze each of the angles of a triangle, and we see how these are really very tense or are articulated to work as a whole.

• One point is the main interest of the client or the financier. Whoever is paying for this, who is investing in this? Their interest is relevant in order to be managed and must be taken into account.

• Another point, equally important, is that of who is benefiting from the project. Without their perspective and without their interests, we are not truly doing anything on the project.

• And finally, and very importantly, the third perspective of our collaborators/employees, an insider's look. It is not only the perspective of the project manager, but of everyone involved in the team.

These three points of view are our initial perspective to gather information.

Anticipate needs and reactions

The second point for us is to be prepared, and this means being able to identify needs and interests that may compromise the issue in question. Here, you can open up before a conversation about your fears, frustrations, motivations, and ideals that each of the interested parties has. Having this information allows us to ask ourselves questions. Why, given this information, could they say no, could they say yes, could they block us, we could move forward? This is getting ahead of ourselves.

After that, we recommend taking a break. Even though we have all the relevant information to be able to generate an interaction now. Taking breaks means being able to read each other, look at each other, breathe, and truly identify which path we are going to take and, above all, consider whether we are going to make significant sacrifices that we were previously committed to working on. 

Return to the shared mission

And finally, remember to return to the beginning of this shared mission. What brought us together from the beginning? What is that common purpose we are all sharing? Is there a common enemy? We are fighting against poverty, against hunger, against waste solids, against pollution. There is something that connects us anyway. To return to that is to return to the essence, to what is most important.

Key takeaways: 

• Analyze the points of interest and tension across the different stakeholders.

• Prepare for a range of reactions or resistance and anticipate where compromise might lie.

• Return to the shared mission to bring stakeholders back to what truly matters.