If we try to design our IT strategy and our stakeholders aren’t engaged then our design will be flawed.

If we try to activate our IT strategy and our stakeholders haven’t been engaged in its design then the strategy will fail.

If we try to activate our IT strategy and our stakeholders are not engaged with its activation then the strategy will fail.

Engagement doesn’t just happen, we need to design it into our IT strategy development process, we need to identify and plan for the moments that we will drive engagement.

Planning

3 useful questions to ask ourselves when planning an engagement moment are:

1. What feelings do you want to inspire?

2. What is the purpose of this moment, how will this moment help design/execute the strategy?

3. What is in it for the stakeholders, what will get out of it?

In order to accurately answer those questions we need to understand our stakeholder audience

Audience

There are Two key overarching questions that we need to answer:

1. Who is our audience?

   1. Where are they from?

   2. What is their level of understanding?

   3. What baggage or prejudices might they bring to the moment?

2. What are their needs?

   1. What are their problems?

   2. What do they think they want?

   3. What challenges might they come with?

What do you need from them?

To ensure we design the right engagement moments we also need to consider what we need. There are Two key questions:

1. What are we asking of the stakeholders?

   1. Are we clear how much effort we require from them?

   2. Are we clear how much time we require from them?

2. What do we want the stakeholders to take away from the moment?

   1. If they only remember one thing, what is the one thing?

   2. How do we want stakeholders to think/speak/act after the moment?

What have you found works well and not so well, when generating engagement with IT strategy stakeholders? please let me know in the comments