Key Success Factors

Running a successful Stakeholder Dialogue requires paying special attention to the quality of the dialogue process itself. This means looking carefully at how formal and informal relationships develop between stakeholders and creating structures to help cultivate these relationships in a way that promotes dialogue. It is important to integrate a culture of continuous learning into any dialogue process from the very start. The key to learning is structured and continuous reflection on state of a dialogue.

A truely collaborative mind-set does not involve managing people so much as the relationships among people [...]. Getting into a truly collaborative mind-set means getting beyond empowerment [...] and into commitment.¹

Although external factors such as political instability or economic crises cannot be directly influenced by the initiators of a Stakeholder Dialogue, there is a set of key factors that can be influenced to a certain degree. These factors – in combination – can determine the quality of a Stakeholder Dialogue and equally contribute to its success. Paying particular attention to these factors can help maintain a positive dynamic, keep stakeholders involved and achieve tangible outcomes.

The key factors for successful Stakeholder Dialogues are based on the experience of a wide range of practitioners and are summarized in the diagram below. Click on a success factor to go directly to the detail view of that success factor.

Key success factor 1: Leadership and high-level sponsorship
Key success factor 2: Cohesion and relationship-management
Key success factor 3: Goal and process clarity
Key success factor 4: Knowledge and competence
Key success factor 5: Credibility
Key success factor 6: Inclusivity
Key success factor 7: Ownership
Key success factor 8: Delivery and outcome-orientation

₁ Gosling, J. and Mintzberg, H. (2003), The Five Minds of a Manager, Harvard Business Review, 81(11), p. 54-63

Do you want to keep track of the quality of your dialogue process? Then use our tool Success Factors to check if your Stakeholder Dialogue is leading towards the expected outcome.

For the German national platform "Platform 2030 Partnerships" (you can find a short summary in our case study ) we offered a webinar about success factors for multi-stakeholder partnerships.