Ten years on … - The Consultation Institute has much to do in the next ten years – but the agenda is changing!

When the Institute began in 2003, there was quite a lot of public and stakeholder consultation. Some of it was excellent; rather too much of it was classic tick-in-box and the occasional exercise hit the headlines, usually for the wrong reasons. The Government was prone to grand consultative gestures and spent freely on some major listening projects, but the link between public responses and policy-making was usually obscure.

Ten years later, our public services are leaner and meaner, but facing massive change and the pressures to consult and involve people effectively have never been greater. No longer is it a question of whether to consult – today it is “How can we consult cost-effectively?”

Before one can address that question, it is necessary to be totally clear as to what one is trying to accomplish. This is where the Institute came in, for the biggest challenge always was to clarify the concept and persuade everyone in the process that there was a point to all this consultative activity. Looking back, we believe we fulfilled three key roles. In short, we defined best practice; we articulated it and we disseminated it.

• Defining best practice was a question of researching what successful consultor organisations already did. It meant capturing the results of different approaches and understanding what worked and what didn’t. And we had to seek consensus among leading practitioners.
• It is more difficult sometimes to articulate best practice. Many of our 30+ Briefing Papers, almost 250 Tuesday Topics and countless audioboos, videos and Roundtables were attempts to explain the latest thinking and promote discussion and debate as we strive to make sense of that best practice. Ultimately, we produced The Consultation Charter with its long-standing seven Principles – it has already outlived four Government attempts.
• The dissemination process has been a huge endeavour. Over ten years, the Institute has delivered well over 1,000 one-day courses, 60% of them public learning, and the rest as in-house training. We have organised over 250 Seminars, Workshops, Roundtables, Briefings and Special Interest Group meetings featuring well over 1,000 separate presentations; over 14,000 person-days of learning all together.

We hope we have brought clarity to an activity where the terminology of involvement caused confusion; we hope we have given encouragement to engagement staff who often felt unappreciated, or who felt that decision-makers were slow to give consultation output the weight it deserved. But above all, we helped hundreds of individuals and organisations demonstrate their commitment by developing their knowledge and insight. Congratulations to the 820+ people who obtained our Certificate of Professional Development

Learning about consultation best practice is one thing; putting it into effect is quite another. So the Institute’s role over the next ten years sees a switch in emphasis.

It recognises that there is now an impressive cadre of trained professionals who know what should be done. However, they face a variety of challenges persuading top Managers and decision-makers in their organisations to implement best practice in the way they engage with stakeholders and the public. To this end, we have to focus on the challenges of implementation, assessment and above-all culture-change.

• We have already made great progress developing tools to help with implementation. We have over 20 experienced Associates and they are all working with organisations right now, ensuring that best practice principles are woven into detailed plans for consultation and engagement. We identify top consultancies or technology providers under our Partner Programme, so that organisations have confidence in the services they provide.
• Assessment The trouble with consultation is that people often confuse the process of dialogue and decision with the merits of specific proposals. So it is difficult always to be sure that our processes meet required standards of best practice, and there has been a need for years for an independent body to provide quality assurance for contentious consultations. Since its launch in 2012, the Institute has worked on almost 30 ‘compliance assessments’ providing external validation for what organisations have done.

But the real goal of the Institute must be to help create and nurture a culture of listening and consultation within organisations. Many claim already to be in this mould, but few live up to their promises. And this is hardly surprising, for recent developments make the job harder. Social media in particular is a classic ‘disruptive technology’ radically undermining previous certainties, and having unpredictable effects on public policy-making, planning decisions or administrative practice.

Compared with ten years ago, there are probably ten times more voices wanting to be heard. They are not expressed in traditional ways, but use a multitude of communications channels, taking advantage of new tools, technologies and networks. The sheer of volume of opinions makes it harder to hear clearly as the cacophony mounts around us. Add to this the 21st century scandals of MPs expenses, excessive Press intrusion and bureaucratic bungling, and the consequent erosion of trust in democratic institutions. The result is that developing a truly consultative culture is hard.

Precisely ten years ago this week, Topic No 2 was entitled “Has your organisation a consultation culture?” and provided five key questions by way of a self-assessment. Those questions are still 100% relevant, but in the years that have passed, we have all realised that true culture change can only come from the top. Much as we may succeed in skilling-up engagement specialists and other professionals, change needs the hearts and minds of Board members, Councillors, Senior Managers and many others. Convincing them is the next big challenge…

TRIGGER POINTS

• Are you making best use of the Consultation Institute? Do you listen to videos …or Audioboos? Do you circulate Topic papers or Briefings? Do you attend Special Interest Groups?
• Members are offered a complementary hour of consultancy at the Institute’s Centre of Excellence; book your slot through Jan on 01767 318350

This is the 247th 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