“Conventional” working vs Stakeholder Dialogue

Where complexity exists in decision making, as driven by a diversity of public or stakeholder views a different approach to conventional decision- making can help.

The essential characteristic of conventional working is the preparation of a proposal by a few experts, usually professionals, who then ‘consult’ the stakeholders in an attempt to gain acceptance of that proposal through persuasive argument.  It is encapsulated in the phrase “decide-announce-defend”.

The essential characteristic of Stakeholder Dialogue is the way in which all the stakeholders – whose primary qualification is that it is their problem/s, they have a view on the future – work together to get the results that it would be impossible to achieve working separately.  It is encapsulated in the phrase “participate – agree – implement”.

Reactive and interactive working

Proponents of the conventional approach claim that when only a few people are involved in the formulation of a proposal, be it a plan, decision or policy, much of the difficulty of relating to others is eliminated. It is an efficient approach and progress can be relatively quick up to the point of production.

They also claim that proposals resulting from such an approach are of a high quality because those formulating them are the best people for the job – mostly experts.  The work can be carried out without any wasted effort, such as is caused by involving people whose contribution is rarely more than ill-informed opinion.

They admit that the process of getting people to agree to the proposal afterwards is difficult and time consuming, but that this is an unavoidable side effect of consultation.  Stakeholders’ immediate reactions are nearly always negative because proposals tend to be about change, and there is uncertainty about how that change will work out.  They believe that by better educating the stakeholders, and by developing new techniques of communication, it may become easier in the long term.

For the immediate future, two ways forward are usually considered.  Some think that putting more effort and resources into ‘selling’ the proposals – using better marketing and public relations techniques – may be the only way.  Others suggest that more time spent on preparing the proposals, and the arguments for them, will improve their quality to such a degree that they will be easier to ‘sell’.  Of course, this undermines the advantage of speedy production but in a democracy, there is no other way.

The Environment Council and other proponents of Stakeholder Dialogue claim that involving all stakeholders in an interactive way from the start makes for a different sort of result.  It may be that the proposals are not absolutely the best in some technical sense – although with adequate advice, they are likely to be quite good enough.  But, most importantly, the process also generates “invisible” results of relationships and trust for example.

The results of interactive working come to implementation sooner because the ‘selling’ of the outcome is virtually unnecessary.  Any opposition to the proposals will already have been worked though, and there will be a strong sense of ownership among the stakeholders.  Then the high level of commitment generated, and the pre-coordination which will have taken place during the process, brings faster and more efficient implementation.

Unforeseen circumstances that can cause severe setbacks during implementation are more easily managed, saving time and effort.  Calling on the mutual understanding and shared conceptual frameworks that are built-in resources for just such an event can enable this.

Positions, interests and needs

Conventional negotiation works perfectly well in some simple situations, but it has serious disadvantages when things get more complicated.  In such cases, consensus-building is required, which depends on being able to explore beyond the positions people adopt, into their interests and needs.

Conventional negotiation is a process of taking up a position and then, through offer and counter-offer, each party trying to reach as advantageous an agreement as possible.  This approach has its place but it can lead to bluff and counter-bluff, muscle-flexing, power struggles, playing to the gallery, and all the strutting and posturing we regularly see in disputes, for example, between employers and unions or within the European Community. It does not work well in complex, multi-party negotiations, which are typical of most environmental situations.

The P-I-N 'Iceberg' model

People traditionally try to negotiate solutions to conflicts by taking positions and then edging towards each other - successively taking and conceding new positions.  This is known as a positional or adversarial approach.

This can work well in simple situations but it encourages battles to 'win', complicated calculations about risk and probability, posturing and bluffing, and missed opportunities. All in all a generally negative approach to what is a common problem - the inability to agree.

Instead, the consensus-building approach likens negotiating positions to the tips of icebergs. Negotiating positions tell you much about people's public ambitions, and what they say tells you only what they want you to know. The problem is that these are not enough - you need to know what underlies their positions: what do they really want to achieve; what are they concerned about; what values are important to them?

So you need to look under the surface of the iceberg to see the interests and needs on which their positions rest. When one digs beneath the surface one discovers that there are always things common to both sides.

Public statements tend to be superficial, and we have to look below the surface to see what is really going on: what are the interests on which their positions are based and, below the interests, what are the needs that motivate them?  When you start delving deeper like this, you begin to discover not only their interests and needs but also, more to the point, that there are always some that are common to both parties.

These shared needs and interests are the foundations of the common ground on which problems will be solved and consensus will be built.  If you start from shared needs and interests, rather than incompatible positions, then you also set in motion a process that starts from the basis that there is already some measure of consensus.

Simply finding areas of common ground does not solve the problem - there is still a large area where there is no overlap.  The point is that starting from the common ground, and trying to build on it, is much easier than starting from conflicting positions and trying to bridge the gap.

Interests and needs

There are one or two more things to be said about this very simple concept.

First, you can usefully think of the difference between positions and their underlying needs and interests as the difference between a map and the territory it represents.  The positions are the useful signs and symbols on the map that give you an idea of where you are, but which are incomplete, two-dimensional representations of reality.  Just as walking fingers across a map will give you only a partial understanding of the countryside it depicts, so working from people's positions will give you only a partial understanding of what moves and motivates them.

Secondly, interests and needs are not the same. As a way of differentiating between them, it can be useful to think of interests as things that people move towards because they give them pleasure.  Needs, on the other hand, tend to be things, the absence of which people try to avoid because it causes pain. On the whole, interests lead while needs drive; interests are perceived, needs are felt.

Thirdly, there is another crucial difference between interests and needs. Interests are always potentially negotiable; needs are, by definition, not negotiable. But the means of satisfying them can be negotiated.  If something is negotiable, then it is not a need.

If this sounds too radical a difference, it is probably because in the modern world we habitually talk of interests as if they are needs, and because very often our real needs are either so easily met that we do not notice them until they are suddenly not met, or they are suppressed beneath the weight of interests.

Conflict tends to bring needs to the surface: people suddenly discover the need to 'stand on their rights' or 'be heard' or 'demand that the authorities pay attention'. Real needs often lie buried in the unconscious, abstract dimensions of life, unnoticed until challenged: then ignored at our peril.  Needs can be repressed or suppressed: but they never go away.

Finally, both needs and interests can be material or abstract. This is a particularly important point to remember when dealing with situations where differences in values come to the fore (such as in many environmental conflicts).

For example, until such issues became more widely understood from the 1960s onwards, a concern for the environment would probably have been described as an interest.  However, volunteers in organisations such as Greenpeace have now become prepared to risk their very lives for environmental protection (e.g. in defence of whales). It is probably true that, for them, environmental protection is felt to be an absolute need. Part of the gulf between business and environmentalists derives from the difference between environmentalism perceived as an interest to be negotiated with other interests, and environmentalism felt as an absolute and non-negotiable need.