Public and community engagement, involvement and participation is what we are doing as consultants. It is also what we help others do most effectively. We work with teams, companies and agencies on reaching consensus through public participation and collaboration. We usually find ourselves bridging divides by creating spaces where people are willing to participate to build solutions. Community engagement builds consensus. And below you have some of the best of the news and tips that we have found about how to engage communities. Or what happens when you do not. The latest news handpicked by our public sector consultants, all wrapped up with a sometimes snarky – yet always informed – perspective. Enjoy!
I’m sure that my first grade teacher, Sister Mary Mercy, wouldn’t happy if she caught me saying this but let’s face it, some people are just jerks. Look, I’m a committed believer and practitioner of respecting people’s opinions and treating others with civility, regardless ...
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Public participation, when done effectively and authentically, actively engages people in the conversation or issue that you’re trying to resolve. The Core Values established by the International Association for Public Participation (IAP2) does a good job of defining what that really means and differentiates public involvement from traditional public relations. ...
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Most conversations about controversial issues are waged as if whoever gets the most words in is declared the winner. And, really, how many conversations aren’t controversial these days. This story resonates because it supports a lot of things that we’ve said in past newsletters. Check it out. Read More …...
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Over the years, I’ve responded to lots of requests for a facilitator with very specific expertise in some kind of technical field or another, like transportation, public lands, public health, education, mining, environmental contamination or whatever the topic might be. Clients are most comfortable feeling that you know what they ...
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To many people, government is this big, scary, secret and intimidating institution run by a bunch of robotic bureaucrats. There are consequences for that perception – that government has allowed to fester – and we see those ramifications playing out now before our very eyes. Fixing the disconnect between the ...
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If you’ve worked in public engagement for a while, you should seriously consider the process of becoming an International Association for Public Participation (IAP2) Certified Public Participation Practitioner (CP3) or even a Master Certified Public Participation Practitioner (MCP3). My partner, Doug Sarno, and I were two of the first ...
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With all due respect to my civil engineering pals, I’m not sure that I could have thought of a subject less sexy and interesting than storm water management, and then I ran across the story below. Okay, maybe sexy is pushing it, but if you’re looking for public involvement success ...
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If you’ve not yet read this, I’d encourage you to do so. Matt Leighninger and Quixada Moore-Vissing summed up the current state of affairs nicely in this paper from Public Agenda. As they said, “When citizens do not feel their voices matter, particularly when they have made the effort to ...
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One of the best and most useful skills to develop in public engagement, facilitation, and conflict management is the ability to ask dialed in, compelling, clear, to-the-point, interesting questions. Great questions result in great answers, and questions that sound more like some kind of ham-fisted, bureaucratic interrogation usually get lousy ...
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In the work that we do and in the classes that we teach, we increasingly run across people just starting out in this biz. Newer facilitators tend to be nervous about the idea of dealing with volatile situations and people with strong feelings on competing sides of issues. They’re usually ...
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