10 Engaging Stakeholders

When you involve stakeholders in your strategic planning process, you are more likely to:

1. Increase stakeholders’ awareness of and commitment to the strategic plan
2. Increase the chances that stakeholders will support your efforts and advocate for your work
3. Increase the chances that the strategic plan will be successful
4. Increase the credibility of the plan

Stakeholders can make many important contributions to the evaluation process, including:

1. Providing a reality check on the appropriateness and feasibility of your plan
2. Offering insight on the populations that may affect program implementation or evaluation
3. Reviewing and commenting on the plan itself
4. Helping to disseminate and report the strategic plan and its related initiatives
5. Providing ongoing feedback and recommendations for improving your plan or activities

You can start by developing a stakeholder engagement framework and understanding their roles, concerns and questions

• Implementers: involved in the day-to-day operations of the plan/activity to be evaluated
• Decision makers: have authority to make changes to the plan/activity to be evaluated
• Participants: served by the program/activity
• Partners: invested/interested in the program/activity

There is a delicate balance to achieve between incorporating their perspective without compromising the extent to which the library can actually implement that feedback. Some things to consider as you determine how stakeholders should be involved in your strategic planning process:

1. Maintain open, honest, and regular communication with the stakeholders by keeping them up to date on issues pertaining to the planning process and relevant considerations
2. Identify stakeholder expectations from the beginning and take them into account when planning and implementing your process
3. Let them know how their feedback will be incorporated into your strategic plan (this may vary depending on their role)
4. How many of each type of stakeholder will need to be involved?
5. Follow through on what you agree; avoid making promises you cannot keep
6. Participation
   1. How available are they to participate in the process? Identify stakeholders’ barriers to participation, and when possible, address them
   2. Plan before meeting or requesting stakeholder assistance so that everyone’s time can be spent wisely
   3. Request volunteers for specific sub-tasks, if needed

The National Library of New Zealand provides a good overview list of ways to engage with stakeholders:

1. Partnership: MOU, project management, meetings
2. Collaboration: Focus groups, facilitated consensus building, forums for deliberation and decision making, workshops
3. Knowledge sharing and information: Social media, website, outreach campaigns, written materials, tours
4. Feedback: User engagement methods (participatory design, ethnographic methods, user experience)
5. Advice: Formal advisory boards or groups, panels of experts, consulting models