Stakeholdering

Domus emergen: the march of the fifty storey towers continues skyward 

Last week I alluded to a post from April 2016, where I mocked an unnamed Assistant Deputy Minister for using the word "stakeholder" as a verb.  You know... "we stakeholdered last month and are planning to do more stakeholdering next month ...."

Lazy, ugly jargon like this drives me crazy. 

The unidentified ADM in that post was from the Ministry of Energy, where I now work and where I fight a daily rearguard action against my staff's use of this irritating term in briefing materials.

This past week, I also finally met some energy sector stakeholders for a real live conversation about a proposed regulatory initiative.

None of my team or I knew these guys, but none of us expected anything different from the usual order of mumbled introductions, feigned interest in one another's opinions and friendly competition for air time. The meeting was really just to get the conversation going. My team and I expected to take whatever we got and use it for a more brass tacks discussion next week.

Just to get everything on the table early, after we all introduced ourselves, my team described what we thought was an agreed parameter for the program.

The stakeholders disagreed. Quite a lot. And got real heated about it.

One of them demanded that the meeting end. 

I've had stakeholders wig out on me before. The normal fix is to reassure them that no decisions have been made and that we have these conversations to shine light on areas of disagreement. 

I said it would be very helpful if we did not end the meeting and rather continue the discussion so they could help us understand their expectations which we were suddenly very curious to know.

As two of the folks at the table began to tell us their thoughts, another one - the one who wanted to end the meeting - was texting furiously on his phone.

We all saw this, and one of my team sent me a message saying he thought the stakeholder was texting our Minister's office.

A few minutes later, my boss was at the door of the meeting room, pretending that she needed all of her staff for a higher priority matter. She was very sorry but we would have to reschedule.

Disgusted, mortified, angry, I shut my computer and led my team out of the room. 

The stakeholder had not, as it turns out, sent a text to the Minister's office. 

He sent a text to the Premier's office.

The Premier's Office then contacted my Minister's office, who then contacted my Deputy Minister's office, who then reached out to my boss, who sped from her desk, climbed a flight of stairs, found us and ended the meeting.

This took five or six minutes, tops.

Just so you know that the bureaucracy can move fast when it needs to. 

And now I know why "stakeholdering" is such an ugly word at the Ministry of Energy.

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen