“I’m not opposed to (FILL IN THE BLANK) – just don’t put it here!” Boy, if I had a dollar for every time I hear that said at a public meeting, I could hire Stephen King to write this newsletter. NIMBYism (Not In My Back Yard) has been around as ...
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Direct democracy or citizen lawmaking might be the clearest example of true, authentic public participation that we can think of. Yet citizens taking direct control of their own governance through ballot initiatives are under wholesale attack. Constituents demonstrating power in politics simply doesn’t sit well with a significant number of ...
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Conversations are interesting social constructions – a give and take and turn-taking encounter. But it’s particularly interesting to dig deeper into who’s giving, who’s taking, how they start, how they continue and how they end....
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A real success story. It sometimes feels like these examples are few and far between, but when we bother to look, we find good people doing good work in some of the most historically challenging situations. Let’s let this serve as inspiration for the rest of us. ...
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A lot of our clients are introverted. Funny, but we tend to be professionally extroverted introverts ourselves. Most introverted people are really uncomfortable making small talk. But small talk builds connections that lead to conversations which lead to discussions that can solve problems. This will help.
We talked about the power of asking great questions in a past newsletter and got a lot of feedback from you. I happened to run across the following that, although it speaks to workplace situations, is certainly applicable to asking really useful questions that we can use in stakeholder assessment ...
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We’ve always said there are no magic answers for broken relationships, but there are a few things that are pretty close to magic. When a wrong needs to be righted, the only possible solution is a well-crafted, utterly sincere and skillfully delivered acknowledgement and apology....
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For at least three decades now, we’ve known that when it comes to public confidence and trust, big government has mostly been out to lunch, and the most recent data confirms that it’s not getting any better. There are no magic cures, but again, there are indeed proven ways of ...
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Dale Carnegie, the incredibly influential How to Win Friends & Influence People book guy said, “When dealing with people, let us remember we are not dealing with creatures of logic. We are dealing with creatures of emotion, creatures bustling with prejudices and motivated by pride and vanity.” He said this ...
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At the risk of sounding like a broken record (“A broken what!?” the young person asked.), this business of working with the public is tough and getting tougher. As public meetings get uglier, officials are starting to realize that the solution doesn’t lie in reducing citizen comments from three minutes ...
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