Originally published 20 December 2005. This article is retained from the tCI archive. Law, policy or practice may have changed since publication.
The first, and most important principle of The Consultation Charter is Integrity. It states that a consultation should be transparently honest, and that no-one will waste your time asking your views if their mind is already made up.
This is why it is so important for organisations to be crystal clear about the scope of their consultations. In effect there is a need to state “These are the matters upon which you can influence us; but on these aspects, the decision has already been taken….”
So far; so good. Nothing could be clearer!
However, in practice, there are significant challenges. For example, there is a difference between decisions you have consciously taken as a consultor organisation, and those over which you have limited or no control, and for which you have no responsibility - and with which, on occasions, you may profoundly disagree. In the first case, you can state clearly why you took the decision in question and then focus the debate on those aspects where you are open to persuasion. But, in the second case, you can expect complaints that the consultation is a sham and that the consultor is doing someone else’s dirty work.
The truth is that stakeholders will not respond to a consultation simply by accepting the terms of reference given to them. To engage successfully with them, a consultation must satisfy stakeholder’s own contextual sanity-check. This goes something like this:- “Is this consultation asking the right questions, so that if I spend my time responding, there is a chance of achieving something positive?”
The biggest difficulty is that bureaucrats often face legalistic, procedural or organisational/territorial carve-ups that preclude them scoping a consultation as widely as consultees might like. “That’s not for us; that’s for another department!”
But in these days of proclaimed - if not always, delivered, joined-up Government, stakeholders will simply say:- “If you haven’t got discretion on this point, tough! You should have it - and that’s why we’re going to tell you what we think about it anyway…”
By then, of course, the stakeholder is angry, maybe frustrated and probably unimpressed with your consultation!
Scoping a consultation is difficult. Joined-up thinking helps!
Trigger points
- Do your consultation documents explain clearly enough what decisions have already been taken?
- Do you show precisely where you are open to influence?
- The perceived discretion issue is discussed in depth in the Institute’s new course, Consultation - Before & After; so consider attending?
This is the 38th Tuesday Topic; a full list of subjects covered is available for Institute members and is a valuable resource covering so many aspects of consultation and engagement