DECISIVE ACTION TRAINING ENVIRONMENT AND THE HYBRID THREAT OF THE TRANS-NATIONAL CRIMINAL SYNDICATE

https://cove.army.gov.au/article/decisive-action-training-environment-and-the-hybrid-threat-the-trans-national-criminal

This case highlights the complexity of a specific scenario.

Stakeholders1

Individuals or groups who have interest or some other aspect of rights or ownership in the project, and can contribute to, or be impacted by, the outcomes of the project.

Stakeholder Landscape2

The context, environment, situation and characteristics in which the stakeholders or stakeholder groups operate.

Influence3

The change in a person’s attitudes, behaviours or beliefs due to external pressure or forces either real or perceived.

Power4

Informal: The ability to get things done!

This may happen using the resources at hand and at times against resistance and the will of others.

Formal: The level of impact within a situation or organisation and ability to direct actions and outcomes. Power comes from multiple factors that can overlap: awareness of information networks within a context, the ability to control and direct information, as well as the impact of informal and formal structural positions.

Legitimacy5

The perception or assumption that a stakeholder’s actions are desirable, proper or appropriate within the given context.

Urgency6

The degree to which delay is unacceptable to the stakeholder, and the importance of the claim or the relationship to the stakeholder.

Interest7

A focus on a concept, activity or situation that may become a focal concentration of attention. Interest groups are that are comprised of groups of individuals or organisations that share and magnify the focal concept.

Why do organisation put so much effort into their stakeholder relations and traditional stakeholder management? Make your way through the list of definitions above and consider why stakeholder understanding is so crucial to you, your teams and the Army generally.

Here are some questions that those who are directly responsible for stakeholder understanding and engagement ask.

Questions8

Which key stakeholders have power and influence? Why?

Why does this stakeholder group affect our organisation on behalf of whom?

What are the desires of key individuals in the stakeholder group?

How does this stakeholder group affect our organisation?

How powerful is this stakeholder group?  What gives them this power?

What factors might affect that power in the future?

Overall, the direct stakeholder team needs to decide why the answers are important and what it is that the organisation intends to do as a result of knowing the answer to these questions.

Clearly the answers to these questions also impact you and you have a part to play, however indirect that may be.

You might be wondering the stakeholder landscape is so important to you and the art of good thinking.

Despite your sound reasoning, your logic, your ability to set up conditions where you can have the maximum impact, you need to know who are you setting out to influence [the stakeholder/s], what they are thinking, your level and their level of power, the level of urgency for you and for the stakeholder, the legitimacy of all involved, the perceived urgency and the lever of interest of the parties in the overall stakeholder landscape.

Next section

In the previous lesson you explored a case study set around a complex landscape with a varied and entangled set of stakeholders. You also learned the language of stakeholder engagement. The importance of three-dimensional thinking was a key point. Most of all was the reminder that people are the centre of any stakeholder landscape in which you and others find themselves.

Activity

In this activity we ask you to describe a past situation or an upcoming one where you dealt with or will deal with stakeholders in a specific context for a specific reason and outcome.

We ask you to name the stakeholder groups and also write a short description of the group.

We give you a set of ways that you can classify the stakeholder groups based on several variables. We ask you to then work out some ways that you can put into action the outcomes of your analyses and link that with what it is that you want to achieve.

Action 1

The first thing to do is to write a paragraph about the situation and context you want to examine. Be clear about the people and groups involved, the location, your role, your teams role if that is relevant, the reason for the engagement, and specific points of interest that will highlight why this is important to you.

Action 2

Using Table 1 complete the self-audit based on the situation and context. When you have finished be sure to reread your answers. What do you notice by looking at all your responses? Is there a pattern? Make some comparisons. For example, how does your description of your influence fit with your sense of urgency for the project.

Now write a short statement in the table that sums up your overall sense of your role and stake in the project.

Action 3

Think of the overall stakeholder landscape for this situation and context. Identify the stakeholder groups that you think have a significant direct or indirect impact on the project at hand. Complete Table 2. List the Stakeholder group names and write a short description of the group including why the group might be interested in the project.

By now you should already have interesting insights to the situation.

The next action involves using a ranking model to identify overall the level of importance each stakeholder group may have in the project.

Action 4

Using Table 3 apply the scoring model of 1 to 10, with 1 : Low, and 10 : High, score each Stakeholder group on the attributes in the list, from 1 to 10.

You will notice that you are also scoring yourself, or your team or group in this action.

When you have scored each group calculate the total for each group.

You now have some form of ranking of overall level of importance the Stakeholder group has towards the project.

This is a simple ranking approach. The process has some face validity but should not be considered as input to any form of statistical model. The scoring is designed as a way to assist you with your categorisation of and discernment with the stakeholder landscape.

Action 5

Now that you have some reasonable form of insights into the groups, you can start putting the groups into the various categorisation models.

The first of these is the Power and Interest matrix.10 use this one.

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