Any work that you’re doing with the public has to start with defining the problem or challenge that you’re trying to solve. This means that there needs to be a common, agreed upon understanding and belief among everyone that a problem exists in the first place, and exactly what that ...
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Research and empirical evidence suggests that just about everyone agrees that the way we do campaigns and elections in most democracies could do with a serious rethink and overhaul. The trouble is that there’s no real consensus on what and how things should be improved. Some of the best public ...
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As a confessed news junkie, I have learned to moderate my habit out of the need to maintain some level of sanity. I have friends who might challenge the sanity part, but they’re the ones who drink cheap beer. I digress. It’s easy to get sucked into the vortex of ...
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People tend to run from conflict like they’re fleeing the scene of a double homicide. Truth is that most negotiations feel like a conflict to people so we tend to avoid learning much about it. But negotiation just doesn’t have to be as contentious as we think it is. ...
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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 ...
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Have too many of us lost the ability to think critically? Maybe. One of the toughest challenges that we face is finding and agreeing on common, evidence-based facts. We’ll never agree on the truth until we can do that. Public engagement requires a collective, common understanding of information – thus ...
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Civil, open minded conversations feel like relics of days gone by. People are welded to positions, opinions and beliefs in ways that are more steadfast and strident than in the past. The work that we all do is typically about pushing beyond just those hard and fast postures to explore ...
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A sincere, well stated apology is the most important thing to deliver when you’re dealing with someone who has, or feels like they have been wronged or mistreated. If you’re dealing with someone or some group that has a real grievance, it’s the only way that you’re going ...
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Nobody changes the minds of others; people change their own minds. Nobody talks you into anything – you decide. Consensus and compromise are how big things actually get done and that comes about when people are able to collaborate and change their minds to some degree. This requires people with ...
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The most effective public involvement being done these days seems to be in communities where public services are already closer to the people using them. Urban planners are significant users of public engagement and many of them have asked us for some examples that are a little out of the ...
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