We often set up dialogue processes as two sides talking to each other: on one side the company, and on the other side civil society, government,talking at or past each other. However, my recent experience of sitting down with union leaders, leaders of union confederations, and company executives reminds me that effective stakeholder engagement resembles a web rather than a two-sided dialogue. With a web model in mind, success comes to mean something beyond just hearing each other.

Spider webs are constructed by intersecting strands, which cross at many points, including the central ‘hub’. In a spider’s web, the concentric circles are filled in with elastic threads that give the it the ability to bounce back from upsets rather than break. Stakeholder dialogue is needed when relationships are broken by mistrust, misunderstanding, or other kinds of distance. The elastic nature of a web approach is more resilient than a two-way dialogue—it can survive a few bumps.

The conversations I shared with union leaders, company managers, and others indicated that the existing information flows did not provide the workers and their union leaders a view of the bigger picture of the business, in particular the strain of the global financial crisis and the reasons for changing product specifications to respond to the changing markets. At the same time, managers and their bosses back at headquarters were unable to grasp the delicate and complex local picture, which includes layers of very local politics and pressures on the workers. While all parties appear genuinely eager for change, a two-way transactional dialogue between workers and management could not create a shared vision for what that change might look like, much less foster it’s manifestation.

The web approach, which I’ve adapted from the work of Jean Paul Lederach on peace building, suggests that just like in a spider’s web, there are multiple processes at different levels and social spaces at the same time. It takes into consideration the nature of change sought—in this case improved productivity derived from improved labor relations—and charts how multiple sets of interdependent processes link people to move the whole system towards change. With this frame, the key question is: who has to be connected to whom to create the change?

By asking and attempting to answer this question, we are building a slow process to recreate the connections between workers, union leaders, managers, executives, and a host of others. We’re looking for areas of intersection that create strength in the web and ensure flexibility is built into the spaces between people, their roles, and expectations. It will take time, but I am confident the benefits will be measurable and non-quantitative, mundane and spectacular.

Stay tuned: Data points for the “ROI of Building Webs” in about six months.