LocationsStrategic Dialogues for Action: Four Lessons from Convening for FfD4
March 10, 2026
How UNDP’s Global Policy Centre for Governance (GPCG) designed and facilitated a knowledge track to help FfD4 stakeholders navigate complex, politically sensitive issues—and what we learned about running strategic dialogues that actually move the needle.
This note offers four lessons on how to create effective multi-stakeholder strategic dialogues that we have gathered during UNDP’s Finance, Integrity and Governance (FIG) Initiative. We hope it will be helpful for policymakers, facilitators, and others grappling with how to convene effective dialogues on complex and sensitive policy issues. Our experiences over the past two years remind us that the way we frame, structure, and host conversations matters—it directly impacts how they achieve desired outcomes.
Strategic dialogues
The strategic dialogues that UNDP’s Global Policy Centre for Governance (GCPC) organises are structured multistakeholder conversations designed to unlock progress on complex, politically sensitive policy problems. They prioritise trust, curiosity, and collective sensemaking over formal statements and rehearsed positions.
The GPCG convenes strategic dialogues because global governance challenges are increasingly interconnected and polarised. Bridging technical and political worlds is essential, as effective solutions require not only substantive expertise but also an understanding of real-world political dynamics. Yet, political processes such as multilateral negotiations often lack the time and safe spaces needed to explore difficult issues or surface new perspectives.
The context: Financing for Development (FfD4)
The Financing for Development (FfD) agenda is the UN-led process to advance reforms in global economic governance and shape the policy and fiscal space needed to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. The 4th International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD4) took place in the summer 2025.
In the 18 months leading up to FfD4, GPCG ran the FIG Initiative as a knowledge track to the formal intergovernmental negotiations. Its objective was to offer FfD4 stakeholders a safe space to address complex and sensitive issues around financial integrity and governance. We convened three two-day, in-person policy symposia and five one-hour virtual exchanges, bringing together diplomats, line ministry officials, technical experts, academics, civil society, philanthropic foundations, professional associations, international organisations, and international financial institutions from all regions.
“Meaningful dialogues reach beyond exchanging views—it’s about trust, creativity, connecting, and collective purpose” – FIG organising team.
Four lessons
1: Start by building trust and connection
Establishing a safe space and building trust should be the first step. The goal is not for participants to agree, but for them to feel confident and free enough to explore, disagree, and learn together. When trust is lacking among stakeholders, it is helpful to:
- Establish ground rules that foster openness. FIG encouraged stakeholders to follow "house rules" such as "we listen to find commonality and greater understanding" and "we seek to connect – not convince". The dialogues also followed the Chatham House rule ("what is said can be used but not attributed"). All this helped create a safe space for frank collective inquiry.
- Encourage people to engage as individuals rather than organizations. We only used names and not organizational affiliations on participants’ nametags. We also encouraged people to ‘take off’ their organizational hats and avoid formal speeches, allowing them to speak more freely and think creatively, rather than repeating corporate talking points.
- Use the venue's physical layout to convey the nature of the dialogue. Our very first FIG dialogue started with an on-stage panel (which senior diplomats were most comfortable with) and then transitioned to fishbowl conversations or group table talks. This sequencing helped to phase in a sense of informality and comfort in sharing views openly and connecting as equals. This carried through into subsequent dialogues. Maintaining a core group of repeat participants helped to foster and institutionalize a culture across events that emphasized openness, curiosity, and trust. New participants at subsequent dialogues quickly adapted to this collaborative style.
- Leverage diversity to create mutual learning opportunities. Diplomats participating in the dialogues were able to deepen their thematic knowledge through interactions with technical experts, while the latter gained insight into the political dimensions of FfD4 negotiations and found ways of contributing to these. Gender and geographical diversity also fuelled dynamic and nuanced debates.
“The transition from formal to informal worked well, [ensuring a] safe and constructive space” – Representative from an international financial institution, 1st FIG dialogue.
2: Design for creativity, not consensus
When addressing contentious issues, familiar formats produce familiar outcomes. Our goal was to spark fresh thinking and surface actionable insights, not to force agreement. To achieve this, during the FIG dialogues, we:
- Reframed conversations using structured sensemaking tools, such as the Three Horizons (stating a preferred future, examining what's "stuck" now, and then planning the transition); the Fruits & Nuts Matrix (identifying and prioritising actions); and UNDP's insight mappers (capturing ideas on canvases to visualise logic and progression). Pairing scenario prompts with visual canvases helped to stimulate a new lens and a common understanding of the issues.
- Used mixed formats to match energy and purpose. This included plenaries (for a shared framing), breakout groups (for deep dives and relationship-building), expert inputs (for knowledge), policymaker reflections (for political calculus), and unconventional formats such as walk-and-talks (for bluesky thinking).
- Avoid groupthink. We used assigned seating to balance gender, regions, and actors (government, civil society, academia, etc.) at each table. While useful, invitees switched tables later. We also invited first respondents to react spontaneously and constructive disruptors to raise critical questions and fresh ideas.
- Created serendipity through unstructured time slots (intended for corridor conversations), coffee breaks, joint dinners, co-located accommodation, as well as walk-and-talks and time on a shuttle bus. During these moments, participants often met new people and engaged in interactive exchanges.
“The enablers [breakout] session was very informative, I learned something new, it was very welcomed” – Country diplomat (Ambassador), 1st FIG dialogue.
3: Adapt to the needs of discussions
When it comes to the design and formats of dialogues and conferences, we often default to conventional panel discussions, PowerPoints, and rehearsed talking points. While useful under certain circumstances, their effectiveness depends on the context. Meeting the needs of participants and discussions requires flexibility.
- Regular check-ins with stakeholders helped FIG adapt to the needs and topics as the FfD4 negotiations progressed. Early FIG dialogues used more knowledge-building formats such as panels and plenaries with expert inputs and semi‑structured interventions—reflecting stakeholders’ initial need to understand emerging issues like the impacts of new technologies and AI. As FfD4 negotiations later shifted to pending contentious topics, FIG moved to more informal, unstructured, and smaller breakout discussions to help stakeholders identify potential “landing zones”.
- Match formats to the maturity of topics. A format's usefulness depends on the maturity of the policy issue. While knowledge-building panels and plenaries were valuable for emerging issues early in the negotiation process, they were less needed as space shrank to discuss policy positions and substance for well-established topics.
4: Use the physical surrounding intentionally
Places shape both mindset and interaction – especially when negotiations elsewhere are multi-day, intense, or windowless, as was the case with the formal FfD4 negotiations at UN Headquarters in New York City. We sought to offer the FIG dialogues as a very different space for more informal, (co-)creative, and exploratory conversations. It was helpful:
- Choose venues in open natural surroundings to foster perspective taking, and openness to new ideas and formats like walk-and-talks, while reducing distractions. Some FIG dialogues took place on a hilltop overlooking Oslo (Norway) and in upstate New York (USA) – encouraging co-located accommodation and, therefore, post-agenda exchanges and relationship building.
- Be mindful of trade-offs. First, visa barriers for Norway and the USA required FIG organisers' support to protect inclusion and diversity. Second, since invitees’ schedules limited travel to greener districts during a peak period, we held one FIG dialogue near UN headquarters, boosting key attendance but reducing informal exchanges as invitees balanced office visits and events.
“The event was insightful, purposeful, and intellectually refreshing” – Participant from an industry professional body, 2nd FIG dialogue.
In a nutshell
Trust, creativity, adaptability, and nature are part of our approach to the challenge of designing and facilitating effective dialogues, particularly when dealing with politically sensitive topics, high stakes, distrust, competing interests, diverse worldviews, and complexity. While sometimes uncomfortable, such dialogues can be extremely effective in moving a conversation forward and ensuring that critical issues aren’t overlooked. When designed with purpose, strategic dialogues can help people develop new relationships, expand their comfort zones, build new knowledge, and rethink problems and solutions.
Through trust, creativity, adaptability, and nature, strategic dialogues can shape desired outcomes. In our case, FIG participants reported finally connecting with key stakeholders they had not been able to engage. Additionally, stakeholders conveyed that FIG enabled intergovernmental consensus on a new, previously sensitive provision on the topic of professional service providers in the FfD4 global agreement.
While some of the insights discussed above may seem simple or like common sense, they were not always easy to implement. We recognize that the resulting lessons do not provide a comprehensive formula. Still, we hope they are helpful to others seeking to create the conditions for more meaningful and effective conversations about significant issues that matter.
