Nothing happens in the work that you do with the public without being able to communicate well with people. Communication – the exchange of information. One big challenge that we frequently face is how difficult it is for some clients to realize what effective communication requires. I can’t count the ...
read more →
Participatory budgeting may be one of the most obvious and straightforward ways of engaging the public in the affairs of government. It provides people with the opportunity of making very specific decisions about how their collective public money, or at least meaningful portions of it, will be spent. The origins ...
read more →
As a transplanted westerner for 40 odd years, I’ve come to love the skies, the vistas and the stubborn individualism that runs deep in the culture of so many of the wide open places west of the Mississippi. That stubbornness sometimes goes a little overboard like it did with the ...
read more →
As we are in that season of joy, here’s another neuroscientific look at the importance and components of trust and the benefits of having it. As you’ve often found in this newsletter, this particular piece is written from the perspective of trust from employees in businesses, but it’s pretty ...
read more →
Two of the hardest things to deal with in public engagement are emotional, angry people and apathetic people. There’s no shortage of angry people who believe that they’re being mistreated or hurt by companies, government, or “the system” – the reactions of those people are on full display, they make ...
read more →
Great answers to tough questions are kind of a holy grail for the public work that you do. The subjects that you deal with are almost always complex, hard to explain and often the details are pretty boring. The questions that you get from people are rarely easy to answer ...
read more →
Most of us would agree that Santa Claus is a pretty righteous dude. He’s not only in touch with himself, Mrs. Claus and the reindeer, he’s got a general handle on the emotional needs of every child on Earth. He never takes a Christmas Eve off or just phones it ...
read more →
A few weeks ago, I did a customized online training session for a group of more than 30 environmental engineers who wanted help better understanding the angry public they were dealing with on one of their cleanup projects, and what to do about it. Now, the guy who set this ...
read more →
Information is the bedrock of engagement, so where, how and why people acquire information and news is enormously important to the work that we do. Half of the adults in the U.S. get at least some of their news from social media, which should scare the pants off of all ...
read more →
From the Words Matter desk comes this strong suggestion to eliminate three specific words from your verbal and written vocabulary. Words matter. A lot. That towering elocutionator and forty-fourth U.S. Vice President Dan Quayle made that point so clearly when he said, “One word sums up probably the responsibility of ...
read more →
