Most of what’s written and discussed about public participation these days emphasizes online engagement and that’s understandable. It’s still new enough, organizations are able to reach an exponentially larger audience, and users’ comfort level and convenience continues to grow. But the rules aren’t really any different than they’ve always been; ...
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Sitting around knitting toaster covers the other night, I was thinking about what Fiona Hill and Newsweek magazine both are calling America’s Cold Civil War. The overall lack of empathy on display is beyond anything we’ve seen. It’s more than apparent that those of us who see other people as ...
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We’ve said this before but it bears repeating: many of the pieces that we include in this newsletter are written from and for the perspective of profit making businesses. Companies usually need to worry about their credibility, profitability and competitive advantage. Government? Not so much. But given the continuing decline ...
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By most credible measurements, government continues its downward spiral as the least trusted of institutions by most people. But public servants might take heart in the fact that media (news) isn’t far behind in its loss of credibility. The partisan divide – meaning who on the political spectrum does or ...
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I know I talk too much. We all talk too much. We’re in a period of time where everybody has an electronic bullhorn in their hands all the time. Everybody’s talking and damn few people are actually listening. So, we talk about active listening here quite a bit; a necessary ...
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In the 1950s, thousands of people died annually and tens of thousands were paralyzed by polio. People celebrated and embraced the science that developed the vaccine that quickly eradicated that disease in the U.S. But COVID-19 has produced an entirely different public reaction and health policy experts are wrestling with ...
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The pushback usually heard about public participation tends to focus on how long it takes, and that criticism is often justified. Doing a lot of work under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) over the years, we’ve seen project studies migrate from months-long affairs to years-long marathons with budgets and ...
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The pushback usually heard about public participation tends to focus on how long it takes, and that criticism is often justified. Doing a lot of work under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) over the years, we’ve seen project studies migrate from months-long affairs to years-long marathons with budgets and ...
read more →
Relationships are the key to the work we do; it’s the not-so-secret sauce that makes engagement successful and leads to successful projects and lasting, smart outcomes. Relationships require connection and that connection is the responsibility of everyone involved in your project, including those who think they’re just there to make ...
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It’s funny because for a minute there the pandemic felt like it was waning and it was starting to look like we might be sliding back into being able to get together with people face to face, and meetings were getting back to the way they used to be. Wrong. ...
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