Originally published 27 September 2006. This article is retained from the tCI archive. Law, policy or practice may have changed since publication.
Organising an effective consultation exercise can be a complex project management task. Pulling together the different work packages and ensuring that different disciplines work together to a common timetable or to common standards is challenging. No wonder that project management skills are among the most useful attributes for someone entrusted with consultation on any significant scale.
Experience shows the most vulnerable aspects of project planning are knowing what you’ve committed to - and being able to assess risk. The two obviously go together. If you’re uncertain as to the commitments you’ve made, then it’s clearly difficult to evaluate the risk. You can be the most brilliant individual at risk assessment - but much good will it do you unless you have a thorough understanding of what you’ve promised. That’s why leaders in the field of project management (look to oil companies rather than IT systems people!!) swear by the idea of having a Register of Commitments. It is a very simple idea - and means what it says - a list of the undertakings you’ve given. No doubt it can be embellished. It says who gave the commitment, to whom, and when. Is there a committed date? Are there any conditions? What are the dependencies? Are there associated commitments…? And so forth.
Now apply this to consultation. Picture the scene. A crowded public meeting is discussing something contentious; it could be the location of a new waste incinerator, or proposals to build houses on a popular, but disputed, green space. Someone asks a prescient question; maybe a request for important financial information. Your Chief Executive, being wise and experienced chooses not to guess. Instead he or she promises to write to the questioner: “And we’ll publish the answer on the web”.
Here is another familiar picture. A Government Minister addressing a not-too-friendly conference audience and needing to reassure delegates who are nervous about recent proposals. “Don’t worry” he says, “there will be full consultation on this before we go ahead”.
Two tiny examples, but there are literally hundreds of promises made to stakeholder groups and individuals every day. The trouble is that if you talk to consultees, you find that organisations’ credibility is often low - and the reason for this is that commitments, which they’ve accepted in good faith, appear not to have been delivered.
Arguably, at the end of every public meeting, or following any stakeholder one-to-one meeting, an exhibition stand, a streetcorner interview pitch or whatever dialogue method is used, there should be a compulsory process of going into an electronic Commitments Register to update the latest promise that’s been given, and to build the audit trail for communication with those with whom we consult. Even something as seemingly mundane as an undertaking to send Mrs Jones a copy of our proposals by post to arrive before next Friday when she visits her daughter …….. is an important commitment that should be kept.
Simple disciplines like this are all part of best practice in customer service or project management. But they also need to be incorporated into consultation and public participation processes as part of a drive to remove causes of mistrust and to build better relationships.
Trigger points
- Is there a Commitments Register or an equivalent process in your organisation? If not, how do you track performance against promises given?
- Do notes of meetings with stakeholders identify actions adequately?
- Take a hard look at public meetings, and the need to capture commitments given. Note that the Commitments Register is featured in Effective Public Meetings - the Institute’s Seminar/Workshop
This is the 69th 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