Every stakeholder you facilitate is unique. Each has a different combination of wants, needs, problems, and desires. Though in many ways, they’re the same. They share a bucket list of hopes and dreams, each with different priorities, depending on who you’re asking, but with plenty of overlap.
Here’s a list, the fundamental list, a shared lexicon we each choose from when sharing our hopes and fears.
- Achievement
- Appreciation
- Belonging
- Challenge
- Completion
- Continuity
- Control
- Collaboration
- Communication
- Contribution
- Engagement
- Feedback
- Gratitude
- Growth
- Health
- Ideation
- Interaction
- Opportunity
- Organisation
- Power
- Purpose
- Resonance
- Respect
- Safety
- Satisfaction
- Security
- Support
- Trust
You could perhaps consider a dozen more. But it’s unlikely you could identify another fifty. This core bucket list of hopes and dreams means that business analysts, like musicians, don’t need many notes to strike a chord.
And this is where we start: with curiosity. Curiosity about what the people we seek to serve, our stakeholders, want and need. Curiosity about what’s on their to-do list when they get to work, what they talk about around the water cooler, what wakes them up at 2 o’clock in the morning.
And then we’re curious about how our story and our promise can intersect with their wants and desires. When we facilitate someone, will we see what they see? Will they want what we think they need? Will they accompany us on the journey?
Don’t begin with your systems, your processes, your functions. Don’t begin with your one-size-fits-all template or distract them with your mission. Instead, begin with hopes and fears, with perspectives, and with the change your stakeholders seek to make.