Board and Stakeholder Engagement - Strategic Focus

The Client

An industry association representing businesses located throughout Queensland.

The Brief

The Chief Executive engaged us to work with him to design and facilitate a process for the Board which would engage key stakeholders in a refresh of the association's strategic plan. 

The engagement involved two parts.  First. designing and facilitating a large scale workshop with stakeholders and second, designing and facilitating a combined Board and management workshop to provide review, guidance and inputs to enable the management team to update the strategic plan.

Our Response

We met with the Chief Executive and management team to understand key concerns and opportunities from their perspective and how the planning process would support them in their outcomes and key issues.  A major focus was to engage a wide range of stakeholders as well as the Board in the planning to promote greater ownership and support for the strategic direction and priorities arising.

We designed and facilitated a workshop for some 60 participants who were the associations stakeholders invited from across Queensland.  The outcome was to capture stakeholder input on how they saw the key challenges facing the industry and to explore strategic choices and issues that the association could devote their resources to in support of the industry.  The outcome was a collaborative discussion which provided management and the Board with input on stakeholder priorities, issues and perspectives.

We then designed and facilitated a Board workshop which enabled the Board and management to jointly revisit the strategy, direction, vision and values taking into account the various views that had been provided.

The Results

We worked with the Chief Executive to ensure the both stakeholder and Board/management workshops produced the focused outcomes required to assist the management team to update the strategy and review priorities. 

We received very positive feedback that the workshops had engaged people, been inclusive and produced valuable input that was able to be taken forward.  Our work supported the Board in ensuring quality consultation with stakeholders was undertaken professionally and independently.  Having an external facilitator for the Board workshop enabled management and the Board to work jointly with all contributing to the refresh of the strategy.