Читать книгу Digital Government Excellence - Siim Sikkut - Страница 60

I think I went into the job thinking I knew how to manage stakeholders. Boy, was I wrong! The stakeholders I knew about were not a problem because I am very direct, and I want honest feedback back. This way we can have a conversation.

The stakeholders I did not know about are used to engaging with government through lobby arms and through letters to the minister or the prime minister. That is how the government had conditioned the dialogue in the past. So, when I came in saying that “I want to talk to you on LinkedIn, if you have got a problem with what we are doing”—not everybody was comfortable with that. A lot of people would still take the old traditional route and send letters to ministers, and that was where the disconnect happened.

For me it meant that I had to go to brief higher-ups instead of just doing the thing and putting it in front of people for codeveloping. If you end up writing briefing notes more than doing anything else, the project starts to slow down in this briefing nightmare.

I went in thinking I was a digital lead and everybody in my world knows and does things digitally. Well, it turned out even technology companies did not really do digital. It required that Scott (the minister) and I talk all the time, for example, to manage the outside relations. It required a lot of conversations outside the formal governance arrangements we had anyway, like the weekly department board or spending request meetings. It required also to build trust with other ministers and deputy ministers in the system.