10.5 Planning Stakeholder Engagement
Key Takeaways
- Smythe's commitment escalator describes the journey stakeholders experience and how the change effort can adapt communications accordingly
- Know-feel-do sets outcomes for engagement: what the stakeholder should know, feel and do
- A stakeholder engagement strategy covers how stakeholders will be identified, analysed, recorded and reviewed, and how effectiveness will be measured
- For each stakeholder it records interest, power or influence, potential impact, potential resistance, desired outcomes, engagement approach and the roles involved
- Confidentiality of stakeholder communication information is not part of a stakeholder engagement strategy
Having identified and analysed stakeholders, the change manager plans how to engage them. CM3 covers three elements: the commitment escalator, know-feel-do, and the stakeholder engagement strategy.
Smythe's commitment escalator
Smythe suggests a journey that stakeholders experience during change and how the change effort can respond and adapt communications accordingly. The model is often called the commitment escalator, and it describes a progression from initial unawareness through to active commitment and advocacy.
The central idea is that stakeholders move up in steps, and you cannot skip steps. Someone who is unaware of a change cannot be asked to advocate for it; someone who understands it but does not yet accept it will not act on it. Communications must therefore be pitched at where a stakeholder currently is, not where you would like them to be.
This is the same logic as ADKAR's sequence, the change curve's stages and Kelman's levels of adoption — and the practical error is identical in all four. Asking a stakeholder to do something several steps above their current position produces no movement, because the request does not connect to anything they currently hold.
It also explains the guidance in the hearts and minds material: leaders in their enthusiasm often try to sell the ideas of change too soon, causing even more resistance and anxiety. Selling to someone who is still absorbing the announcement is escalator-skipping.
Know, feel, do
A simple structure for thinking about outcomes for stakeholder engagement:
| Element | The question |
|---|---|
| Know | What do you want the stakeholder to know or think about the change? |
| Feel | What do you want the stakeholder to feel about the change? |
| Do | What do you want the stakeholder to do? |
Know-feel-do is deceptively powerful because it forces engagement planning to start with the outcome rather than the activity. Most communication plans begin with what will be sent; know-feel-do begins with what should be true afterwards, and the activity follows from that.
The feel element is the one most often omitted, and its omission is why so much change communication is factually complete and emotionally inert. It is also the element that determines whether the do actually happens — a stakeholder who knows what is required and feels resentful about it will comply at best.
A worked example for a plant manager asked to introduce new safety reporting:
- Know — the specific regulatory driver, what changes for his shift leads, when, and where support comes from
- Feel — that the burden on his team has been understood and reduced where possible, and that he is trusted to implement it his way
- Do — brief his shift leads personally, and feed back the first month's practical problems to the change team
The stakeholder engagement strategy
CM3 sets out the typical contents in two parts.
How stakeholder engagement will be carried out
- How stakeholders will be identified and segmented
- How analysis of stakeholders' influence and interest in change will be done
- How stakeholder analysis information will be recorded and reviewed
- How the effectiveness of stakeholder engagement activities will be measured
Stakeholder analysis and engagement strategies
A list of stakeholders or stakeholder groups identified and, for each of these:
- Their level of interest, and level of power / influence
- The potential impact of change on them
- Potential level of resistance
- Desired outcomes resulting from stakeholder engagement
- High-level approach for engaging with this stakeholder or stakeholder group
- Roles involved in engaging with stakeholders
Two items deserve attention. Potential level of resistance is recorded separately from power and interest, which is what fixes the limitation of the two-dimensional map — attitude is captured explicitly rather than inferred. And roles involved in engaging with stakeholders records who does the engaging, which matters because of the Hiatt and Creasey finding that different messages are credible from different sources.
What is not in it
The exam tests this directly: how information used to communicate with stakeholders will be kept confidential is not part of a stakeholder engagement strategy. Confidentiality and data handling are governed elsewhere. The engagement strategy is about how engagement will be identified, analysed, recorded, reviewed, measured and delivered.
Measuring engagement effectiveness
Including how the effectiveness of stakeholder engagement activities will be measured in the strategy is easy to write and hard to do, but it is what prevents engagement becoming an activity count. "We held twelve workshops" is not effectiveness; a shift in the know, feel and do outcomes is. This links forward to change analytics, where assessing the effectiveness of communications and engagement is explicitly part of a change analytics strategy.
A reviewer checks a draft stakeholder engagement strategy against CM3. Which of its sections does NOT belong in that document?
What three outcomes does the know-feel-do structure set for stakeholder engagement?
Which item does a stakeholder engagement strategy record for each stakeholder or group, in addition to their level of interest and power or influence?