The Indigenous Business Engagement Journey

Thanks to Indigenous Procurement Policies (IPP) around Australia, supplier diversity is becoming more and more topical for Australian businesses – but for a business new to this journey, the first question is often “where do we start?”

For an organisation looking to initiate discussions around a Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP) or starting an Indigenous Business Engagement journey, the first key steps are in bringing key senior leaders together for a strategic facilitation with an external facilitator.
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The following advice from Kristal Kinsela's book Supplier Diversity How contains some key steps to help generate ideas that will lead to a business case for creating a RAP and/or getting started with Indigenous Business engagement.
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​If you would like to know more call IPS on (08) 9721 7057 to talk to one of our consultants.

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Strategic Facilitation Session

A strategic facilitation session with an external facilitator is a key process to help gain alignment on the why: Why are we doing this? It will assist in getting buy in, including create champions; draw out information; and set a direction  The key to the facilitation session will be inviting the right stakeholders to participate.

​My recommendation is that this session is held with senior leaders, executives and/or your board. Senior leadership support and an executive sponsor are critical.
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Preparation will be key. Prepare a discussion paper that is based on your response to the baseline self-assessment questions as a pre-reading to set the scene for the discussion, with some guiding questions to consider.

​These questions might include:

• What is our why? Define purpose and intent
• What Indigenous engagement are we involved in currently?
• What progress have we made to date?
• What future opportunities could we consider?
• What would we need to do to get there?

​Defining your why is critical - to gain buy in, you’ve got to hit the hearts and minds of those with influence. Undertake a mapping process on a whiteboard. It could look something like the diagram on the right. Capture all the data and use the facilitator to help you distill it and translate the agreements reached. This will form part of your business case.

A strategic facilitation session will help to capture key data