Many organisations engage politically, through Parliament, with MPs or in decision-making processes. Many though are less effective in this engagement than others. Here are five ways you can ensure that you are politically effective.
- Draw expertise and insight from across disciplines. Instead of being the preserve of specific internal departments, effective political engagement needs ideas and insight to be drawn from across organisations. So the external communications department may have the ultimate responsibility for delivery but a good public affairs campaign will need internal communications, external communications, regulatory, legal and other types of advice and potentially delivery as well. Of course, it will be up to the leadership team to decide and balance potentially conflicting viewpoints but a siloed approach will ultimately fail.
- Are you talking to the right people? Getting to the audience right is one thing but getting the right messages to them is another. What is often lost in organisations, especially where silos exist, is any sense of collective corporate memory. It is always useful to know which audiences have been engaged previously and what the status of those relationships are. Organisations often lack any way of compiling and maintaining such information. The relationships may not always be good and a little pre-warning is always useful in such scenarios. The need to log this type of feedback is the responsibility of all those undertaking contact, even at the most senior level of organisations.When talking to stakeholders, one of the simplest and most effective questions can be ‘is there anyone else I should talk to about this?’ Rather than being seen as a sign of weakness, it is a sign of strength, confidence and a willingness to engage.
- Are you engaging the audiences in the right way? The messages to be delivered will depend on the issue and critically the solution being proposed. But it then becomes about the channels to employ for communication as well. These could be online, through the traditional media, social media but also letter writing / emails, all can be effective. But you only select the right channel if you know who you are trying to engage with.
- Feedback and delivery. Organisations need to be prepared to use feedback, whether it be positive or negative, for the benefit of their political engagement strategies. Critically these may need to change on the basis of the feedback. Scenario planning is always useful at the outset but these should also be updated as feedback is received. It should not be a case of ‘just’ sticking to the original plan or ‘just’ making a change but also revisiting the scenarios on the basis of the new information received. All these scenarios should not be afraid to utilise information from the past should it exist (see point two). Political disruption can often be overstated in these scenarios as well and that can lead to mistakes being made. However, in advance of the forthcoming EU referendum such disruption looks more likely.Fundamentally, good scenario planning draws on the suggestions in point one. Planning is at its best when it draws on different views and expertise.
- Decide on what success looks like. The actual measurements chosen can vary depending on the nature on the engagement. What is really important is that everyone internally signs up to the aims, outcomes and measurements of success for the engagement. It should not be a case after the event of internal audiences claiming that the work was ineffective or did not achieve what they needed. Again, thinking about point one can help prevent this from happening.
So with these points in mind, you can ensure political effectiveness for you and your organisation.