Identify and engage stakeholders

The activities in this guideline may best be lead by agency and service strategic planners.

We recommend working with other key stakeholders including business representatives, customers, service partners and employees, to define a compelling vision that will inspire or motivate a desire for change within the organisation.

Understanding stakeholder expectations

It’s important to use several methods to confirm how stakeholders perceive the organisation. These should capture stakeholder knowledge and expectations about:

• whether current services are truly customer-centric
• what opportunities exist
• the expectations and desires of customers, staff and service partners
• if an organisation’s digital experiences can be articulated to meet or exceed those expectations.

Digital or ICT planning practitioners need to understand the relevance of digital or ICT technologies in transforming services to ensure they can contribute to the discussions at the visioning workshops

To develop a strategy that is co-designed and co-created, practitioners should be willing to:

• provide contextual awareness
• become more experimental and listen to different points of view
• be willing to interpret situations in innovative ways
• freely offer newfound insight and experience.

Engaging stakeholders in the visioning process

Buy-in is achieved when new ideas and new ways of doing things are co-created and designed with others to create stronger innovative or novel ideas. We recommend selecting techniques that place people at the centre of the change and help stakeholders understand both the current state and target provision of services from different perspectives (e.g., customers, employees and service partners).

All the methods described in this guideline help to facilitate the art of the storytelling and put customers and other stakeholders at the centre of the story rather than focusing on digital capability or technology.

It’s helpful to represent opportunities or convey complex situations, problems or solutions pictorially and engage stakeholders to work in groups, using methods that include drawing or graphics. These techniques often work best when everyone gets the opportunity to draw to convey their ideas. Encourage participants not to worry about their drawing skill, but rather focus on being open and creative.

Last updated:

7 December 2022