As I’m writing this, I’m watching a television report that Russian state media is labelling video and firsthand reports of civilian slaughter and atrocities in Ukraine as “fake news.” It’s a term that’s gotten a ton of traction since the election of the previous guy here in the U.S., but ...
read more →
One of the great public trust paradoxes is the idea that people who don’t trust you won’t engage with you very constructively, but people who engage with you constructively tend to trust you. So public participation – co-production – is both the challenge and the solution to collaboration....
read more →
I recently started working with a municipality confronting the growing homeowner opposition to multifamily housing adjacent to or within established neighborhoods. I’m sure you know that home prices and rents are going through the roof (pun intended) – as is demand, especially for multifamily and more affordable housing. Cities, builders, ...
read more →
Change is the key. You can make a reasonable argument that the angry public, fractured state of our union, broken politics, and the present culture war being waged in the U.S. are all simply the result of changes that people were/are unwilling to accept. We need to understand change – ...
read more →
I have to admit I’m getting just a little emotional writing this because finally … after all these years … I get to marry two of the more important and instrumental things from my professional and personal lives. Better meetings, meet better beer. Beer, I’d like you to meet meetings. ...
read more →
The truth is that life constantly changes. Almost all public participation issues and conflict are the result of change; mostly about the changes that you need to initiate and people supposedly need to accept. It’s equally true that we all tend to hate change, especially when someone else or some ...
read more →
For just a brief moment, you might have thought that this “brief” headline was referring to underwear – if that got your attention, mission accomplished. This is actually not about underwear, but it is about the importance of being brief. In this age of hyper communication with everyone vying ...
read more →
We’ve talked in the past about the importance and differences between sympathy and empathy, particularly when dealing with emotional, resistant, or angry people. There’s a third component that plays into dealing with these tough situations and as public policy proponents and facilitators, we need to be emotionally intelligent enough ...
read more →
The latest results from the ongoing Edelman Trust Barometer, as usual, don’t bode well for people’s perception of government. There were hopeful signs a couple of years back that people were starting to feel a little less cynical about government in general, but the pandemic seems to have taken ...
read more →
In last month’s newsletter, we mentioned that flaws – mistakes – are forgivable, but bad intentions are not. People who work in and with the public sector are usually motivated by the best of intentions; it’s usually why they choose to get into this line of work in the first ...
read more →
