Multi-Stakeholder Partnership Guide and Tools
The Multi-Stakeholder Partnership (MSP) guide and tools support stakeholders in designing and facilitating effective multi-stakeholder partnerships. Looking at the global challenges of secure, healthy and sustainable agri-food systems, we link cutting edge processes of innovation and learning with WUR’s world-leading scientific and technical expertise. We work with farmers and NGOs, businesses and entrepreneurs, and governments and international organisations in many different countries to support processes of innovation and change.
Why MSPs?
In a polarized world, collaboration is more necessary than ever. Our existing ways of making decisions, along with our mechanisms of governance are failing to cope with today’s challenges. This has lead actors to recognize that they are unable to achieve their own objectives and ambitions without working with others. MSPs serve five key purposes:
- Consultation
- Learning and idea generation
- Joint problem solving and decision making
- Overcoming conflicts
- Collective action
Complex Adaptive Systems
Ecosystems, societies, and economies are dynamic systems where small changes can have large impacts. The dynamic nature of systems, with multiple interactions and interconnections going on at the same time, make it hard to fully manage. Systems are unpredictable and full of surprise. One way to get a better grasp on this complexity is by collective sense-making with different stakeholders. This enables stakeholders to enhance shared understanding, build better relationships, and agree on necessary actions that can shift systems on a more sustainable and equitable course. In an increasingly complex world, multi-stakeholder partnerships are often used as a mechanism of governance. They complement the more formal workings of national governments and international relations.
Tools & Methods
MSPs require diverse methodologies to ensure inclusivity and engagement, draw out people’s creativity and critical thinking skills, and work through conflict in an effective manner. This maximises the opportunities for MSPs to help stakeholders find collaborative solutions.
A key part of success is that facilitators able to choose the right set of tools and methodologies at the right moment, taking into account the situation and the stage in the process. We have curated a set of 60 resources, tools and methods specifically aimed at helping you to design and facilitate effective multi-stakeholder engagement. Our own repertoire draws heavily on our participatory development experience, but is also inspired by others sources such as scientific research, creative artistic expression, and conflict transformation.
There are no hard and fast rules for how to design an MSP. But most well-designed MSP processes follow more or less six stages. Any MSP begins with establishing connection; creating a shared language; and allowing a divergent set of viewpoints to emerge. Usually that divergence will be followed by the co-creation of new ideas and options. The stakeholder then need to converge these ideas towards a set of answers, and establish commitment to take actions agreed upon. We have therefore grouped our resources by these six phases. Find them below.
For a complete overview of the tools and methods used and recommended by Wageningen Social & Economic Research, download the full MSP Tool Guide.
1. Connection
- Human Spectogram
- Rich Picture
- Semi-structured interviews
- Stakeholder identification
- Appreciative Story Telling
- Questionnaires and Surveys
- Problem Definition Worksheet
- Ground Rules
2. Issue Exploration & Shared Language
- Stakeholder Characteristics and Roles Matrix
- NetMapping
- Stakeholder analysis: Importance/Influence Matrix
- World Café
- Problem Tree
- Timeline
- Force Field Analysis
- Context Immersions
- SWOT Analysis
- Delphi
- Visual Reminders
- Cynefin Framework
- Friends & Strangers
- Trendline
- Four Quadrants of Change Framework
3: Divergence
- Adjust Group Size: Buzz and Break-outs
- Role Plays
- Forms of Power
- Six Thinking Hats
- The Wheel of Multiple Perspectives – Power Ranking
- Guided Fantasy
- Five Colours of Change
- Combining ideas that might work together
4: Co-creation
- Tuckman
- Belbin Team Roles
- Scenario Planning
- Conflict Styles
- Partnership agreement
- Open Space
- Document & Summarize
- Visioning
- Circle of Coherence
5: Convergence
- Prototyping
- Prioritizing & Ranking
- Comparing Proposals
- Citizen jury
- Ritual Dissent
- A Change of Scene
- Silence
6: Commitment
- Set Decision Rules
- Make a Visual Theory of Change
- Polls
- Fish Bowl
- Reflection
- Synthesis
- Option One-and-a-Half
- Closing Circle
- Evaluation
How to design and facilitate an MSP?
In general, the practice of designing an MSP has three key elements:
- A process model that outlines the main phases of a MSP and the key process considerations for effective stakeholder collaboration;
- A set of facilitation skills required by those designing, managing, leading or facilitating MSPs, and;
- A set of participatory methodologies and tools that can be used help create interactive learning processes which manifest the principles and qualities of effective multi-stakeholder engagement.
At the core of working with MSPs is the recognition that the involved stakeholders themselves are actors in the design and creation of the MSP. This leads to MSPs that incorporate not only the needs of these stakeholders, but also stakeholders’ capacities to contribute to and sustain the process.