Originally published 15 April 2008. This article is retained from the tCI archive. Law, policy or practice may have changed since publication.
In this Olympic year, it may be timely to reflect upon the styles adopted by some of the world’s athletes and other sportsmen. Some make a virtue of huffing, puffing and emerging battered from the fray. Others give interviews as if they had just crossed the street for a relaxing conversation. What distinguishes a Tiger Woods or a Roger Federer from the rest is how easy they can make it look. In athletics, anyone who saw the American 400m runner Michael Johnson glide effortlessly over the track could only marvel; in his early days, Cassius Clay would emerge from a fight looking as if no glove had been laid on him.
Without pressing the analogy too far, there is a case for organisations to question whether, on occasions, they aren’t making heavy weather of public and stakeholder consultations – and if the overall effect might not be better if they didn’t try too hard to impress. Look at us; look at us – we’re actually consulting you!!! is the unintended message that screams out of some of the PR that accompanies attempts to engage with the public. They might as well add some complementary sentiments such as Aren’t you lucky? or Now will you stop complaining that we ignore your views? Granted, it isn’t easy to get media messages right in this field. Underplay a public engagement exercise, and you may have no-one to engage with; overplay it and you risk arousing suspicions that the consultor is more interested in getting favourable publicity than in listening to its stakeholders. The other danger is setting artificially high expectations. Pitching the media message just right requires much skill; don’t delegate it to inexperienced staff or those unfamiliar with the nuances of consultation.
The trick is to convince the relevant audience that consultation isn’t something special – done as a one-off simply because there’s trouble around - but because it’s the organisation’s preferred way of doing business; it has a consultative culture, meaning that decisions are routinely taken with a conscious regard to the views of those who are affected. Where this is embedded, there are visible processes, such as decision papers being incomplete unless there is a formal input of such stakeholder views. Public bodies, answerable for their actions, and publishing Board minutes or their equivalents, are increasingly expected to show that this is how they work. When such bodies ask for the advice of their customers, their employees or other stakeholders, it should come as no surprise. There should be no scrambling around to find a database of those to consult; the information should already be available. Just press a button. There should be less need to enquire of them whether they’d prefer a mailout, a website or a focus group. They will know. And there will be fewer traumas over the best way to provide feedback. That will also be well rehearsed, and operate like a well-oiled machine.
Contrast this with the laborious efforts of some to tick every box in the consultation-following every nuance in the organiser’s handbook, and drawing attention to every step to make sure everyone notices. In an attempt to appear professional, what they do is highlight their lack of practice!
On occasions, this silo mentality leads to some departments parading their ignorance whilst colleagues in an adjacent unit already have all their ducks in a row.
Effortless consultation is not really without effort - any more than Tiger Woods’ golf is nothing without hours spent on the practice ground. The clever part is to understand what’s required and to prepare sufficiently and effectively. In the whole area of public engagement, too much has been done on the hoof, and we’re just at that point where the whole discipline is becoming professionalised - with standards, formal training, accreditation and all the rest of the paraphernalia.
Together they form the basics from which we can build a credible methodology that will reduce unnecessary effort and let resources focus on what’s really important – finding ways to listen better and act upon what we hear.
Trigger points
- Has your organisation adopted an effective consultation culture?
- Review the publicity surrounding your recent consultations. Have you struck the right balance?
- The Institute is discussing with the Involve organisation the development of a formal training course on Public Engagement & the Media and we are gauging the level of interest and the topics people might appreciate being included.
This is the 108th 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