3 tips to avoid the danger of participation
Do you as a leader go through great lengths to involve your employees in important decisions and projects? Have you ever felt like you did all you could to involve them and that what you got in return were complaints and general frustration? Maybe you even have concluded that participation is just not worth it. In this blog I want to show that simply hearing stakeholders in some cases is not enough. In these cases, going beyond participation, towards co-creation is the better option.
Recently, I was visiting a public institution. In the last couple of years, it had gone through some massive changes. They had done a lot of work to improve service towards their clients, redefining people’s task descriptions and working hours, as the opening hours of the offices changed to suit clients better. There also was a merger with another public institution in the area. To make all the changes possible, management had gone to great lengths to make sure all the stakeholders were involved: employees, clients, management, policy makers and such:
They organized workshops in which they had employees reflect on how they could contribute to the institution’s vision for the future.
They had organized focus groups with clients to understand their needs.
They had organized round table sessions with employees.
They had done role plays in which employees were asked to put themselves in the shoes of the clients and so on.
After having collected all the material from the various sessions, management built a plan and presented this to the employees.
The content of the plan provoked a wave of discontentment. The unions initialized a strike. Trust amongst governance and employees was severely damaged, as was the trust amongst the members of the management team.
This really is a tremendous shame. The intentions of management were so good. The Leadership really wanted to involve everybody and as a result they ended up feeling misunderstood and isolated. How could this happen?
In my opinion, this case is an example were participation was not taken far enough.
Management was the only stakeholder that held information about all the stakeholders viewpoints and they saw it as their responsibility to lay a puzzle that would suit everyone. As a result they ended up disappointing some of the stakeholders, in this case the employees, who felt that they were asked to show a great deal of flexibility without seeing what was in it for them. I think a true co-creative approach would have made a world of difference.
These are my arguments to say that participation (= merely hearing the different stakeholders) has its limits:
1 By hearing the stakeholders separately, management allowed them to remain in their own perspective. As the members of one stakeholder group discuss amongst each other, expectations are raised that all of their aspirations will be met.
2 Another effect of keeping the stakeholders separate is that they don’t understand each other’s perspective and limits and are thus not able to understand the reasons for some of management’s decisions.
3 The stakeholders were not involved in laying the puzzle. Management saw this as their responsibility and not the responsibility of the entire system as a whole.
Here are some tips to approach change from a true co-creative perspective.
1 Don’t hear different stakeholders separately. Create the possibility for them to explore each other’s perspectives so they understand each other’s limits through dialogue.
2 Ask the stakeholders to build a common solution together, so that everyone understands that the solution they come up with is the best possible one considering all stakeholders’ needs and limits.
3 As a leader you have to set the boundaries, without giving all the answers. Stand back a little and stay open for new ideas. At the same time, make your perspective heard, same as the other perspectives.
Participation is good, co-creation is better!
If you want to learn more on cocreation, you can order the book Co-creation … 13
Mythes debunked (Lannoo, 2015), available in English and Dutch.
Contact me Lesley.vanleke@Vanlekedvies.be or call me on 0478 51 96 66.
