■ Stakeholder analysis
Experimenting with stakeholder analysis
The current state is one where:
Staff working in the CDAS team have no understanding of clients with mental health problems and do not know how to support them. As a result they have negative attitudes towards them and frustrate both themselves and their clients
Thus the stakeholder analysis serves to identify which people and agencies are likely to support or impede the movement from the current state to the new one.
You might like to look again at the description of the stakeholder analysis on pages 59-62 and conduct one from Nina’s perspective in the empty tables that follow.
Table 2.5: Identifying whose support is needed Experimenting with stakeholder analysis
■ Stakeholder analysis
Stakeholders Must actively champion
Must acquiesce
Have little influence
Table 2.6: Readiness of stakeholders
Table 2.7: Capability of stakeholders Experimenting with stakeholder analysis
■ Stakeholder analysis
Stakeholders Are ready to champion
Are adamantly opposed
Going along with the majority
Stakeholders Have the skills and arguments to be able to champion
Are not yet in a position to champion
We have reasoned as follows.
Table 2.8: Identifying whose support is needed
Illustrations and analysis
■ Stakeholder analysis
HIDE SHOW
Stakeholders
Ed
Chris
Suzi
Must actively champion
Ed is so disorganised that the team do not rate him highly so he is not influential within the team. However, he has links with very many other people and organisations and must be able to persuade them to play their part.
Chris is a major opinion former with the team, so his active support for the change will help Nina significantly
Suzi has a remit which means she can open doors for Nina and especially encourage joint working with the mental health teams
Must acquiesce Have little influence
Table 2.8: continued
As we see in Case 1 (pages 59-62), in any team there are likely to be people who will never be enthusiastic about the changes being proposed, and Nina will find it useful to identify the levels of enrolment, commitment or compliance she can realistically expect different team members to adopt.
■ Stakeholder analysis
Stakeholders
Paul
CDAS team members, including Dave
Mental health team members
Service users and families/carers
Must actively champion
There are bound to some team members in each of the columns
Ditto
Must acquiesce
Paul must not oppose the change, and must be able to describe the benefits of the change to his organisation when asked, but is too busy and not sufficiently close to the CDAS to have a major influence on the outcome
Over the next few weeks and months Nina will need to find out who is in which
Ditto
Have little influence
She may find it helpful to think in terms of commitment, enrolment and compliance (see pages 59-62)
Ditto
Feel they have little voice at present
Table 2.9: Readiness of stakeholders HIDE SHOW
Stakeholders
Ed
Chris
Suzi
Paul
Are ready to champion
Are adamantly opposed
Suzi is antagonistic to the CDAS team because of their isolationist tendencies.
However, she is in favour of the model Nina is proposing.
She will need
persuading that CDAS can deliver but could then be evangelical about it.
Paul has a problem (meeting the NTA targets) and thinks he has solved it by paying for an extra pair of hands. If Nina moves into a training and consultancy role he fears she will be less useful.
Going along with the majority
Ed has not really thought this through and is being driven by the wishes of those around him
Chris has not been exposed in depth to the idea of working in the way Nina wants to see
■ Stakeholder analysis
Table 2.9: continued
Stakeholders
CDAS team members, including Dave
Mental health team members
Service users and families/carers
Are ready to champion
Are adamantly opposed
Team members feel overloaded, undervalued, and resentful. They do not want to think about doing things differently, they want Nina to come in and take some of their problem clients away from them.
Going along with the majority
Mental health team members have clients with substance misuse problems and know they do not handle them effectively. They can see the benefits of working with CDAS but do not want to increase their own workload to do so.
They haven’t thought about it enough to actively support or oppose.
Not included or consulted at present in decisions
■ Stakeholder analysis
Table 2.10: Capability of stakeholders
Have the skills to be able to champion
Chris is well liked by the team and has the skills to enthuse them.
However, he is not yet convinced of the benefits of Nina’s suggestions.
Suzi has the skills to sell this idea to the Board and to other relevant parties, but is not yet convinced CDAS will be able to deliver
Do not have the skills to champion
Ed will need persuasive arguments to use with Paul and with Suzi.
Currently he has not thought about their perspectives nor paid enough attention to the issue to have formed a view. Nina will need to help him understand Suzi and Paul’s concerns and objectives and give him the arguments he can use with them.
Nina will need to show him how her suggestions will benefit team members as well as their clients
Nina will need to assess for herself CDAS capability (because she herself doesn’t want to work with a team that can’t deliver) and help Ed and Chris to reassure Suzi
Paul needs to be convinced that the new arrangements will help him meet NTA targets
Team members need to be convinced that there is a problem with their current approach to dual diagnosis clients, and have confidence that the changes will make life easier/better for them as well as for their clients. It must not lead to more onerous bureaucratic arrangements.
Table 2.10: continued
Nina now knows who she needs to target, and what she needs to achieve with each of them. In order to persuade these stakeholders Nina will need to pick up clues about the kind of things that motivate them, so she can use arguments that appeal to them, just as Ashok needed to in Case 1. Like him, she will also benefit from noticing the behaviours they adopt themselves, and adjusting hers to complement theirs, so that they find it easier to hear what she has to say because they are not unwittingly antagonised by the way she speaks or the attitudes she displays.
Let’s now see what happened to Nina sixth months later.
■ Stakeholder analysis
Stakeholders
Mental health team members
Service users and families/
carers
Have the skills to be able to champion
Do not have the skills to champion
Mental health teams are not convinced CDAS are interested in their clients or concerns. They will need to be convinced that liaison will yield benefits and not just a lot of meetings.
Might be empowered with Nina’s arrival to have more of a say in how services are run for their benefit