Converting hostile stakeholders into champions

The Digital, Data and Technology (DDaT) Capability Framework was practically unusable. All of the research showed that the information was hard to navigate, hard to find and provided a sub-optimal user experience.

 

Our colleagues in other government departments - the primary user group for this content - routinely criticised this digital resource. This meant that other members of my team, at the sharp end of these criticisms, were dispirited and demoralised, while desperate for improvements to be made.

 

Each of them had their own idea of how to fix this content - with the most common suggestion being that of moving the content off GOV.UK entirely.

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As someone who has worked with tricky stakeholders for the whole of my career, I could see that my first challenge was ensuring the buy-in and support of my team members.

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What I did

I needed to move us from opinions to evidence-based decision making.

• I undertook some stakeholder mapping to better understand the relationships and decision-making roles of the team. I learned that some of the loudest voices were coming from people who had no actual power in relation to this content.

• I summarised all of the evidence that had been collected by user researchers on the team and identified a series of problem statements, negotiating with the key product managers to sign off on the most important.

• I regularly liaised with members of the wider team about the project and to get their suggestions.

• I set up a Google Data Studio dashboard to understand what was actually happening online.

 

On the basis of all of this, I developed a Github prototype, which the user research used to  test on typical users, and then iterated

• I presented the findings and proposal to the team and to other internal stakeholders, inviting their further input and suggestions.

• I then redeveloped the content.

 

The results

• The internal stakeholders didn't necessarily agree with the proposed approach. However, within one week of going live with the redeveloped content, I was able to demonstrate that the problem statements we had selected as our top priorities were no longer relevant, as we had fixed the problems.

• Our colleagues in other departments fed back on how much better they found their experience. Conversations about this content moved away from usability issues into the much more important areas of relevance and practicality.