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 think I’ve been surveyed beyond exhaustion for quite some time now. Every major and minor encounter results in a text or email asking for my feedback (to serve me better), and unless I’m either joyfully giddy or mad enough to sue, I tend to ignore it. Don’t ...
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You talk too much. We all do. Culture has evolved and social media has given everyone a handheld megaphone. Fleeting thoughts take on an importance that must be immediately shared with the rest of humanity.
As a result, everyone’s talking and few people are hearing much of what they’re saying. ...
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Urban cores are changing. When people started evacuating offices in favor of working in the hinterlands and exurbs, downtowns changed overnight. Although employers are trying to entice some people back into offices, nobody believes that urban cores will ever be quite what they were pre-pandemic. But what these buildings, spaces ...
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Involving the public is a lot of trouble, but often not nearly as much trouble as not involving them. The way this particular issue was handled might have been a simple oversight; it might just have been an overzealous administrator just trying to get the job done. But the perception ...
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Cookies have sometimes been the bane of my professional life. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan of warm, chewy, nutty, chocolate chip, oatmeal cookies, and I love almost all Christmas cookies. There are emergency Girl Scout Thin Mint sleeves and Tagalongs in my freezer, and I sometimes have ...
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The most useful tool to ever come out of the International Association for Public Participation (IAP2) was actually “gifted” to the organization, and us, by the three people who created it. Two of our longtime friends and colleagues, Dr. Marty Rozelle and Lewis Michaelson, and TPC partner, Doug Sarno – ...
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PublicInput is a software company that recently released the results of their survey on current trends in public involvement. Keep in mind that this is from a for-profit business, but you might find some of the reported trends interesting, particularly numbers four and five....
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My political science professor said on our first day in her class that politics is simply an alternative to violence. That stuck with me for decades and came roaring back to mind one January 6th. Nearly four years later, America has voted against politics. In a more recent ...
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Nobody put it more eloquently than Sly and the Family Stone: people are different. (Feel free to substitute your own adjectives; just try to keep it clean.) We communicate in different styles and when we’re agitated, concerned, scared or pissed off, people can adopt refreshingly new styles which might ...
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Neither I nor my partners have ever claimed to be mediators in a formal and legal sense, although we do routinely facilitate multi-party mediation for projects. We teach and coach this work as well as doing it, so professional development is always at the top of mind for us, and ...
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