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. It’s becoming clear that hybrid… read more →
For more than three decades, we’ve talked about how critical trust and credibility is, especially in the public sector. And for more than three decades, that conversation has often been met with a lot of yawning and disinterest. Public sector manager/clients figured it wasn’t as if their school board or planning department might go out… read more →
Facing, understanding and owning up to failures and deficiencies in public involvement is required if we’re ever going to make things better. PRing drive-by engagement or just sprinkling a little fake public participation fairy dust on questionable projects that benefit powerful people and roll over the powerless isn’t moral or sustainable. As your public participation… read more →
I’m starting to think that much of what we need to know about resolving conflict with people we could have learned from our kids if we’d paid closer attention. Kids rarely take no for an answer. The usual kid response to being told no is most often, ‘‘why?!’’ That usually leads to a longer explanation… read more →
Giving somebody the business is a term from the old Leave it to Beaver TV series. (Wally Cleaver) “Boy, Beaver, wait’ll the guys find out you were hanging around with a girl. They’ll really give you the business.” Arguing just for the sake of arguing and giving people a hard time is a sport for a… read more →
Albert Einstein said, “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.” Actually, he wrote more than that, but this simpler version makes the point. It’s tough for people who know lots about something not to get lost in the minutia and nuance of what they know. But it’s not in your… read more →
We know that for years, trust in big institutions has been eroding with big government being the least trusted of those institutions. We’ve also seen that government closest to the people has been traditionally more trusted than the federal government. Close means the people who put out fires, fix potholes and pick up garbage weekly… read more →
Infrastructure in the U.S. is crumbling and needs help badly and soon. We – citizens, taxpayers and voters – need to agree to and be part of the solution to make this happen. But states spent nearly three times as much to build a mile of highway in the ‘80s as they did in the… read more →
Most public presentations delivered by professionals working in the public sector tend to sound and look more like the presentations they might deliver to their peers at professional conferences. Those data driven oratories and PowerPoint extravaganzas are swell for impressing colleagues and generating juicy happy hour discussions later at the bar. But that approach fails… read more →
Our Strategies for Dealing with Opposition and Outrage in Public Participation (we really need to shorten that name) class describes the indicators that cause people to become angry and fearful. Knowing the causes lets you deal with the effects. It also explains the behaviors that people who work with the public successfully use to make… read more →