Dictionary definitions of conflict vary with the dictionary, some including references to war to others that reference the more mundane incompatibility. Conflict resolution and dispute resolution are often used interchangeably, but disputes are more typically defined as something a little less serious than conflicts, or at least something that’s more short term and more easily… read more →
It was that first night, after a few hundred public meeting attendees started hollering at me about the things they were scared of or mad about, that I became very seriously interested in risk communication. I was barely aware of the term prior to then and only a select few academics were researching, writing about,… read more →
The thesis of this article is that the best, most effective crisis management team is You. And your neighbors and your community. Us. The Tribe. About a year ago, I read Sebastian Junger’s wonderful book, Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. What an evocative concept … tribe. A… read more →
America seems to love polls, and the media loves to feed us poll results on a daily basis, but what do they really mean? And what is their true usefulness? If we take a poll on a specific question with a few hundred people out of a population of 300 million, we are often told… read more →
At the risk of revealing a dirty little blogging secret, the phrase I’ve used as the title of this article has been included in our guiding list of ‘key words’ for quite some time. So, I know there’s at least one of you out there who thinks this is an interesting topic. And I’ve passed… read more →
Citizens Advisory Boards are convened by government agencies to seek advice over time. Members are typically selected from diverse perspectives. As a cross-section of the broader community, they commit to spending time together to develop agreement on the advice they will provide to the sponsoring agency they serve. Documenting the Citizens Advisory Board’s advice is… read more →
We have all been there. Our clients want the latest and greatest online participation tools—not to enhance their programs, but to replace the need to actually get out and meet with stakeholders. The risks with online public engagement are great. Online tools are obviously great at many things: reaching a lot of people, allowing for… read more →
The world has changed. Maybe you like it better now; maybe you don’t. In either case, most people are feeling a bit out of sorts as we observe how things have changed and consider how to recalibrate to interface with the new reality. Of course, it’s not just about how changes occur in the political… read more →
Back in one of my previous lives (working for a Fortune 50 company), most of my job was managing a variety of the inadvertent kinds of problems that negatively affected the business, or the variety of other issues brought on by dumb manager decisions and things that people in the company had done or failed… read more →
Whether you are engaging in basic public communications or crisis management activities, simple facilitation or consensus building on a complex topic, there is one skill that we all need at all times: The ability to listen. If you have watched any of the recent town hall meetings on TV, you will see just how important… read more →