One of the outrage factors that we talk about in our two-day course deals with issues and events that people find most memorable. And the things that we find most memorable tend to be the more negative and emotionally sticky events of our lives....
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You’re reading this after the midterm elections and, thankfully, after the conclusion of this year’s onslaught of particularly ugly political ads. A lot of those ads claim that their opponents are liars. So, somebody’s obviously not telling the truth. The problem is that we’re (all of us are) terrible at ...
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In the craft of successfully engaging people in solving problem or resolving issues, asking for help from those people helps you considerably. Doing this is hard on the egos of CEOs and managers in public service, but it’s great for your projects. Just ask them....
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A constantly changing normal is the new normal. When you think about it, you realize that time changes all of us and makes the previously odd or out of place common and more acceptable. Consider fashion, music, or attitudes about right, wrong, fairness or honesty. Change happens, ...
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| Public involvement is a practice that’s pretty simple in concept and complex in successful execution – after all, we’re dealing with people. So, when I ran across the following that does a nice job of explaining it, I had to pass it on to you. |
The two biggest public challenges that clients and students tell us they face is that (1) they don’t know how to get people involved, except for (2) the ones that do, come to meetings and hearings mad. They’re right, and here’s the empirical evidence....
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This isn’t about changing engineers (that’s just creepy), it’s about helping technically oriented people understand how and why people resist change. Most of the work that you do ultimately leads to some kind of change that people are required to accept in their lives, and believe it or not, there’s ...
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There’s no way around it, people don’t trust most authorities or organizations with power over their lives. Public trust in institutions has been consistently deteriorating for decades but seemed to fall over the cliff after the more recent U.S. economic crash. Here’s the cold truth....
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