Yep – that’s right.
According to boing boing, four films on Youtube have been watched by 1 in 9 Croatians and an argument over who put them up has plunged their government into crisis.
Author: Nick Booth
How to lobby – 10 tips from our new podcast on the Grassroots Channel
Active citizens do it all the time, but what does it take to lobby effectively? This programme hears from two people about their experience of lobbying politicians and councillors. David Babbs works for Friends of the Earth and belongs to their group in Hackney. Georgie Bigg lobbys as part of the Campaign for the Protection of Rural England – expecially in their efforts to resist the expansion of Bristol Airport.
Please scroll down to listen first. Here is a list of their most important tips in the order they emerged in the conversation:
1 Understand who has what power. Lobby the people who can make a difference and aks them to do things they have the power to do.
2 Find out what people think. The first step of lobbying is to ask those in power what their position is. They may already agree with you.
3 Work out what’s in it for them. What incentive might they have to help you? Do they have a personal passion which may be relevant?
4 People in power don’t always appreciate where public opinion is. If you believe the public is forging ahead of those in power tell them so, and most importantly prove it, perhaps with a petition?
5 Know what you want to achieve. This should probably be number one on the list. Be clear about what change you want to see before you meet someone. Stay focussed on that in the meeting.
6 Facts are critical. They persuade. Politicians are usually generalists so provide them with the information and ammunition to be experts in your subject. If you win their support show them how to act – give them the tools to be on your side and make your case.
7 Link the lobbying to a wider public campaign.
8 Don’t get angry – use the right tone of voice.
9 Try and get any commitments make in public – either in the press, at a public meeting, perhaps in parliament or on the minutes of a council meeting.
10 Be human – they are (I added that one – you may not agree!).
Lobbying and the blogosphere, some slightly random links:
Legitimate Lobbying, Bulletinthehead, Richard Edelman, PR Speak, Ray Collins (dead link), Digital Destiny (dead link), Paul Linford, PRWatch, David Maister (dead link).
Can you explain?
Moseleyblogger needs to understand what this list is about. My thoughts: some burk has accidentally printed out the tag cloud from the MI5 intranet and this is the list of greatest threats to B13. Someone should tell them that Rosencrantz and Gildenstern are dead.
Could you use an Institutional Hack?
“Institutional Hack” is a delicious, contradictory new phrase for me. Paul Miller (of the School of Everything and from time to the think tank Demos) used it earlier today in this post on his personal blog.
At first you might think an Institutional Hack is one of those cynical folk, the type who’s skill, energy and expertise is focussed on working the politics of their organisation principally for personal gain.Not so. Paul’s idea is the opposite.
His “institutional hack” is the the bold, adventurous action which can cut through the atrophied arteries of organisation. Paul uses it to praise a group of people who have invented just such a hack for the key issue of how government innovates.
The Open Innovation Exchange is a loose coalition of organsiations and individuals who got together to bid for a £1.2 million pound government contract. Their innovation has been to eschew conventional commercial wisdom and collaborate online and in public to write their bid. (Just think about that for a moment!)
Yes that’s right, their competitiors could watch what they were doing. Their competitiors could take their best ideas and use them themselves.
The genius of the approach is that everyone and anyone is welcome to contribute, in this case drawing ideas and input from hundreds of minds, a refreshing and energising alternative to the more normal bid written behind closed doors. It all happens in the open, so credit is clear and credit is shared, hopefully generating a virtuos cycle of generosity with knowledge and ideas. If they win the collaboration goes many steps further. The bid says that one of the first things they’ll do is talk to their competitiors.
I’ve written about this elsewhere, exploring whether this is a New Model or New Madness (the link also takes you to a short audio interview with one of the team).
But here I simply want to come back to Paul Miller’s notion and ask you how could your aims benefit from the spirit of the “institutional hack”?
This was first posted here. Thanks for the reference.
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