This story supports the old adage of no good deed goes unpunished. Most of the people that we work with, particularly those working in the public sector, are believers in the greater good – they do things for the right, ethical reasons. But more and more we find smart ...
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Way, waaay back in the olden days (like almost 20 years ago) when you wanted to communicate with somebody, you could actually pick up a phone, call them, and they, in turn … would actually answer it, and talk to you. No – really! But, that ship has sailed, and ...
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Because it isn’t a business, it serves a different purpose and the goals just aren’t the same. Government can learn a lot from good companies and C-suite managers, but government isn’t a capitalistic enterprise and it shouldn’t be. Sometimes corporate arrogance oversteps wisdom when executives make the jump to the ...
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A course that I teach at Indiana University is, in part, taught online. Most of it is face to face but student demand, time constraints, and the times require some of it to be virtual, which is pretty incongruous when the subject matter is, essentially, interpersonal communication – don’t get ...
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We talk about (re)building trust in government a lot in this newsletter and it will be interesting to watch the long-term reputation ramifications of the partial government shutdown – still underway, as of this writing. Public trust in government continues to erode and increasingly permeates down into state and local ...
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We in the public involvement biz like to pat ourselves on the back about what a good job we do, but it’s healthy to take an objectively critical step back and look at the broader state of the field, and the state of the field described in the following article ...
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If you answered ‘an old white guy’ you win … congratulations! The following data shows that the preponderance of public participants tend to be white, older, male and there to protect their status quo. Big surprise? Probably not. Is that most effective and useful? Probably not. Determining who really ...
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Power and control usually manifest as arrogance and that makes people angry. We use different terms and euphemisms – reducing public anger and outrage, calming the waters, lowering the temperature, building trust – for the same basic goal: getting people to the point of having a reasonable dialogue or debate or interaction ...
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Your mission and the work that you do is complex and full of detail. It may not be that complex to you because you’re the expert, but for most of us it’s a struggle to figure out. If you expect people to trust you, they need to understand you and ...
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The author of this piece notes that it’s odd talking about this subject in this day and age but if we have any hope of fixing public conversations, it’s a skill set that needs to be relearned....
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