Is Levelling Up On Slippery Ground?

Are levelling up and devolution real, or are they just warm words and window dressing? Governments of all persuasions have stressed for decades the need to rebalance the English economy, but what has been achieved?

The devolved administrations of Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales have all experienced significant and tangible changes over the past 25 years. In England, the debates around city regions, elected mayors, and local government reform have continued, but progress and achievement have been slow.

Today’s Budget Statement included announcements around the New Towns Fund and Free Ports. As with all announcements of this ilk, there are winners and losers, but the decision-making process remains the same. These decisions are and will be made in Whitehall and Westminster, they are not devolved at all.

Instead of devolving funds and decision-making to the regions, and those elected to serve the people and businesses who live and work there, Whitehall patronage is still the default setting. This has been the case under Labour, Coalition, and Conservative led governments, in one guise or another.

If devolution is to work, then city regions and local government need to be given more meaningful powers and resources to make it work, whichever governance model is chosen. At the same time, they also need to work together more effectively, old habits are proving hard to break.

Give regions the funds they need and let them decide how and where they are spent. And let’s finally end the national competitive bidding process that takes local knowledge, one of the key advantages of devolution, out of the equation. If levelling up is to work, governments have to learn to let go.

Your employees are people too, so relax

The new BBC director general Tim Davie is to crack down on staff social media posts in the name of impartiality. Maybe that’s fair, it’s the BBC, but what about other organisations? Is heavy handedness, or risk aversion depending upon your point of view, the path to follow?

With all social media accounts, excluding those in the name of a specific company or organisation, it’s the individual who sets up the account, and it’s the individual who should matter most.

Just because your name is sometimes (LinkedIn) followed by your job title and who you work for does not mean the views and information you post represent those of the organisation you work for, nor should it be assumed so. Most people seem to understand this. Nor does it mean that the information you share or link to represents your own opinion, you may just find it interesting.

So why do some organisations bring in draconian rules and policies about what you can and can’t do on your own time on your own social media accounts? Are they really saying you shouldn’t have an opinion on anything that might be perceived as damaging to their brand, however tenuous?

You would have to question why any organisation would think that way.

If posts contravene the law, for example any form of discrimination or behaviour that is a hate crime, then fair enough. But if they don’t, then why not just let it go. Politics, sport, music, and the state of the world in general were all conversation topics in pubs, restaurants, and coffee shops prior to the advent of social media; digital platforms have just provided a more public medium for viewpoints and debate.

Everyone seemingly has a view on the response to COVID-19, and almost everyone had a view on the pros, cons, whys, and wherefores of Brexit, which will no doubt resurface as Deal or No Deal reaches decision time.

A strong and confident organisation will not pay too much attention to what their employees post on non-work related issues in their own time, apart from the caveats listed above. And it really isn’t any of their business, and the good ones know that.

A very strong organisation will also accept constructive criticism on work-related issues from its own employees, usually on internal digital platforms, and will encourage genuine two way feedback.

A weak and insecure organisation may encourage two way dialogue, but then employ control freakery and retribution against individuals who speak out and don’t toe the party line.

How many of you have worked for organisations that have destroyed months and years of efforts to encourage staff engagement by demonstrating they didn’t really mean it by the actions they’ve taken against a whiff of dissent?

Ironically, those which act in the most macho and draconian ways internally often seem to be the most timid in what they say, or rather don’t, in the public domain. Social media has provided a platform for individuals and organisations to make their views known, and to encourage debate around key issues. So use it.

Instead of wasting time on social media policies which often use a sledgehammer to crack a nut, why not go with “Don’t be a prat”, and leave it at that. A code of conduct should already cover the more serious transgressions, there’s no need to add to it.

There are many things for organisations to worry about, their own employees having minds of their own isn’t one of them. Differing views should be seen as a positive, not a negative. It’s how progress is achieved.

COVID 19 – when communications and policy diverge

In a crisis, communications and policy are usually two sides of the same coin. In early April I wrote COVID 19 – when communications and policy collide which looked at what had and hadn’t worked from a communications point of view. Written not long after lockdown began, a lot has happened since, so where are we now?

Two major events have dominated communications and policy this month; the change in messaging emphasis as lockdown restrictions begin to be eased, and the furore surrounding the actions of the Prime Minister’s Chief Adviser, Dominic Cummings.  A number of communications issues have emerged.

Clarity, Consistency, and Completeness

If you are going to change the message, especially one which was worked effectively to date, the change needs to be clear, and complete wherever possible. Setting policies, and communicating these policies to a worried and sometimes confused public, is not always easy.

In moving from ‘Stay Home, Protect the NHS, Save Lives’ to ‘Stay Alert, Control The Virus, Save Lives’ in mid-May there was a gap of 1-2 days between the message from the Prime Minister on Sunday 11th May and a detailed explanation of what this actually meant.

It’s not only nature that abhors a vacuum The public did too, and people started to fill in the gaps themselves, with inevitably different results. If the guidelines had been available at the same time as the announcement then this confusion could have been avoided.

Unfortunately, this wasn’t the only communications issue relating to this announcement. Using tactics reminiscent of a political campaign, not the management of a global pandemic, relaxation of the restrictions was trailed, unnecessarily and without attribution, in advance of the Sunday announcement. The change in messaging seemed to take place without much or any discussion with devolved administrations, local government, or any other key agencies.

Following newspaper headlines on 8 May, local government director Peter Holt wrote in his excellent blog Proud of my Profession :

“I’m outraged that the Government through it’s advance briefing of papers on Wednesday for Thursday headlines, and the instruction before the three day weekend to remove the ‘stay at home’ messaging, is giving badly mixed messaging.

“These things matter. I think thousands possibly millions of Brits are going to start relaxing immediately, through the weekend, well ahead of whatever the PM actually says at 7pm on Sunday evening.”

The ongoing interpretations of ‘Stay Alert’ a less clear message than ‘Stay Home’, have diluted the impact of both communications and policies.

Credibility and Contrition

Whichever way you look at it, the events and messages surrounding Dominic Cummings have been extraordinary. Whatever your views on the rights and wrongs of his actions and explanation of them, in communications terms a number of things could have been done differently.

If you are going to explain yourself, go early when the story is in its infancy. Don’t dig in until the story has snowballed and you are ‘advised’ to explain yourself by your boss.

If you are explaining yourself as an individual employee, separate from Government policy, don’t hold a media conference in the Rose Garden at 10 Downing Street.

Make sure you give your side of the story early (DC has stated he should have said something earlier) and in its entirety.  If information comes out in stages it can generate suspicion. That isn’t necessarily fair, but it does happen.

Be very aware of the credibility of what you are saying, how it might be received, and how it will impact future public behaviour. In a media storm perception is just as important as reality. The Barnard Castle eye test jokes will do the rounds for some time to come.

Be contrite – saying sorry for your actions, and meaning it, however much you believed in them originally, can be enormously powerful, and will help many people move on. Humility and humanity go hand in hand. But just being sorry for the way others have perceived your actions is almost always counter productive.

None of this is easy, but for some reason avoidable cracks are starting to appear in the communications vital to managing a crisis effectively.

COVID 19 – when communications and policy collide

We’re living in extraordinary times. COVID 19 is still on the rise, intensive care beds are filling up, millions are working from home, a 24 hour news cycle needing to be fed, daily media briefings, and a deluge of information, much of it spurious, on digital and social media.

Add to this the armchair epidemiologists, conspiracy theorists, and a wide and worrying variation in the quality of world leaders, and we’re all left vulnerable to the risk of misinformation, or fake news as we’re now having to call it.

Governments across the world are having to take tough decisions, fed by researchers and clinicians who don’t always agree, and once these decisions have been taken they need to be communicated. Properly. It’s not just about communicating policy, communication is now an integral part of policy. The two have become entwined. It is vital that the public receive and understand clear and practical messages.

So how has it gone so far? Here in the UK we have a relatively new Government, albeit from a party who’ve been governing since 2010, and a Prime Minister whose ambitions with an 80 seat majority have, like his own personal health, been weakened. So how are they doing so far when it comes to policy and communications? None of this is easy, so how could things be improved? Here are ten comments and suggestions.

1. Wherever possible, be ahead of the game, don’t play catch up. Daily briefings should have started two weeks sooner than they did. It is better to communicate too often than too little.
2. Choose your best communicators. These will not necessarily be the ministers or experts most closely involved. The Chief Medical Officer, who is new to his role and media briefings, has performed well, as has the Chief Scientific Adviser. The Chancellor and Communities Secretary have been the pick of the Cabinet to date, the Prime Minister was still finding his feet before he contracted the virus.
3. If possible, limit the rota for who appears at media briefings to as few people as you can, people like familiar faces and styles. Too many people suggests a lack of co-ordination, even though there might be a good reason for it.
4. Lead from the front, but in the style that works best. The Prime Minister is better suited to individual scripted pieces to camera than he is to chairing and participating in media briefings, where he is at times prone to coming across as vague and confusing. That doesn’t mean he shouldn’t chair any media briefings, he has to, but play to his strengths and avoid the potential for confusion if possible.
5. Before going public with your messages, check your facts and test your messages with others. And once you’ve done this, check and test again, and then once more. The policy difficulties on testing and PPE have been exposed by the lack of clarity in the messaging, which has been inevitable given the problems that have been encountered.
6. If things aren’t going well in some areas, say so. Be honest, if the policy is changing, for good reason, say it is and why. The public will be more forgiving, at least for a while, if you tell them that some things are proving to be problematic. Bluster hasn’t, and won’t convince anyone, it will just irritate.
7. Avoid uncertainty and ambiguity in both the policy and the messaging. The Prime Minister’s answer around seeing his mother on Mother’s Day, the Chancellor’s initial announcement about support for the self employed, who and who isn’t a key worker, and whether or not construction work should still go ahead across the board – a lack of clarity initially led to widespread public confusion and annoyance which could have been avoided.
8. Be clear about who is doing what, and talk to them first? Are Councils co-ordinating the delivery of food to the vulnerable, and how much warning were they given before this was announced? Or are NHS volunteers doing this, and how will the two work together? Agreement on the logistical arrangements has to be in place before the announcement is made, the PR benefit shouldn’t outrank the practical.
9. Identify and repeatedly publicise a small and key number of reliable information sources eg GOV.UK  People want to be reassured. But then make sure nothing is posted there before it’s been checked repeatedly.
10. Be yourself – if you’re frustrated and annoyed about people breaking rules, say so, even encourage others to challenge their own family and friends. Don’t apologise for restrictions – be up front about doing the right thing. Did the libertarian beliefs of the Government delay the introduction of more restrictive social distancing measures? Now is not the time to be half-hearted.

Should I Stay Or Should I Go Now?

It’s nearly a couple of months into 2020. So how many communications professionals have followed through with your New Year’s resolution to leave your permanent role and move on to pastures new, and how many of you are still genuinely happy with your job?

If you’re still wondering whether to stick or twist, here’s some things to help make up your mind.

Should I stay?

A job’s worth doing when..

• communications is at the centre of your organisation, a key part of achieving your organisation’s objectives
• the agreed communications strategy is integral to work right across your organisation
• communications is valued as a discipline as highly as any other, and appreciated by colleagues
• you can see the impact of your work
• your organisation’s values are real and lived every day
• you like going to work
• the team you work in is motivated, clear about its role, and allowed to deliver
• the team you work in laughs – a lot.

Should I go?

It’s time to leave when..

• the communications strategy is no more than a document on your shared drive
• the product or organisation you’re trying to sell doesn’t match up to the messages you’re trying to communicate
• communications is seen as an add on, or a finishing house for other departments, rather than integral to achieving your organisation’s objectives
• a toxic environment is just seen as ‘the way things are done around here’
• you’ve stopped being offended by the bad behaviour of others, or calling it out – you may now be part of the problem
• the organisation’s values are just spouted, and not embedded or even real
• the views that hold sway in your organisation are of those whose personal ambitions far outweigh their individual or collective talents
• you feel you’d rather do something else now. Act, don’t fester – there are too many people saying “I’ll give it another year”.

There’s a big world out there, and a great organisation waiting for you. Don’t let it pass you by.

Where are all the communicators?

The world of communications and marketing is constantly changing, but are the communicators, marketeers and everyone else keeping up? How do we ensure that specialists walk the walk, and not just talk the talk, and how do we put plans in place so that the non-specialists ie the general workforce, learn to adapt?

Communications has moved on, from social media broadcasting to engagement, from print to video, from news release to news hub, from a sometimes semi-detached service to a fully integrated business function, from just gift wrapping a business’s work to actually contributing to it. But in reality, has it?

Those of us who lead and work in such teams, and those who work in organisations which claim to have an integrated function, should ask ourselves if we’ve truly modernised, from overall strategy right through to day-to-day activities? We’re probably all guilty of slipping back into old habits if we’re not careful and if we take our eye off the ball. I am at times guilty of this, how about you?

Does your social media activity engage with your customers and colleagues, actively living your brand, or are you just pushing out messages to tick a box and show your face? Are you engaging with the wider world on other organisations’ and individuals’ accounts, or are you just logging on to LinkedIn or Twitter for a minute or two every day and liking a few posts, including your boss’s? Most of us know what we should and shouldn’t be doing, and nobody likes a crawler.

Video content is taking over the internet, which is great news, but how much of your content is still print based and not digital? Are the leaders, movers, shakers, and everyone else in your organisation learning to love the camera, as they really should, or are they still typing a paragraph or two to avoid confronting their stage fright? And have your communications specialists been upskilled sufficiently behind the camera to help everybody be at their best in front of it?

The skills sets for communicators and marketeers have moved on, and yet recruitment practices for these specialists haven’t. Do we want formally qualified CIPR or CIM candidates, or people who have developed a wide set of skills, experiences, and successes through different means?

Personally speaking, I don’t care where they come from, as long as they are adaptable, skilled, willing to continually learn, sufficiently confident to take risks, shrewd enough to adopt an evidence based approach and, most importantly for me, have the right attitude to achieve success both for themselves and their organisation. A bad attitude, and an unwillingness to move with the times, are the kiss of death. This still leaves room for the innovators and the disrupters, providing they have the greater good in mind, but we should cast the net as wide as we can.

Equally, across organisations the non-specialists need to embrace the new world too. I was once told that communications was too important to leave just to the communications team, and this was sound advice. An organisation will fail to communicate and engage effectively if its general approach is stuck in the past, it’s incumbent upon every employee to embrace new techniques and challenges. Being scared can not be a legitimate excuse for inaction, and in reality everyone needs to become a specialist to some extent.

We all need to be conversationalists – not broadcasters, identifiable video stars – not anonymous producers of prose, flexible and adaptable – not rigid disciples of theory, and risk takers – not hiding behind traditional techniques.

If this is you, then the future is bright.

Does local government communications matter anymore?

Today’s autumn statement has shown once again that local government is barely a discussion topic nationally, let alone a priority.

As politics is increasingly dominated by Brexit, the economy, Trump, and the sacred cow that is the NHS, what is the role of local government and the communicators that work within it? Is the local council still as relevant to people’s lives as it once was?

This decade will see council budgets reduced by as much as 40 per cent, with only a ripple of public dissent. At the same time demand for services is increasing, and the mantra that councils and their services have no choice but to change is making little impact on the public’s consciousness.

So in this brave new world, where do communicators fit in? The digital revolution has meant that there are more options available to communicate and engage than ever before, but are these just shiny toys and no more?

As the proportion of councils’ spend on adult and other essential services continues to increase, alongside demand, can councils still justify keeping ‘nice to have’ communications teams?

Although these questions are part of the role of playing devil’s advocate, it has never been more important than now for communicators to market themselves, their colleagues, and to prove their worth.

In days gone by communications and marketing teams were associated mostly with reputation management and day-to-day media relations, with the wide range of other functions relegated to Cinderella status. Thankfully, things have moved on, although sadly the elected member and senior officer obsession with media still remains.

Also, communications and marketing were often seen as ‘add-ons’, more often than not brought in to key projects at the last minute or not at all.  Again, thankfully things have moved on, with communications becoming more integrated in most local authorities.

So, in spite of all these advances, how can communications teams justify their existence?  The answer should be simple, by always being relevant and only working on things that help to make residents lives both easier and better. By doing this you will help to ensure that local government, and yourselves, do matter.

If your work doesn’t fit these criteria, then you’re probably wasting your own time and tax payers’ money. As communications teams continue to shrink it is vital that irrelevant activities and vanity projects are shed along the way. Easier said than done when big egos are involved, but not impossible.

And if you are successful in making your teams wholly relevant, and ensuring that your work is meaningful, useful, and helpful, then you need to make sure the right people know about it.

You need to run a meticulously planned and highly effective internal campaign for elected members, senior officers, and budget planners to spell out in clear and simple terms just what it is that you and your colleagues bring to your council and the area and people you serve.

If you do these things then the future for communications teams should be both bright and secure. If you don’t, then you’ll only have yourselves to blame.

 

Give Us Something To Vote For

With just under seven weeks until polling day, councils are cranking up their campaigns to make sure people are eligible to vote on 7th May.

And, quite rightly, they will also be encouraging people to use their vote. But what are the choices available, if indeed there are any choices at all?

How the world communicates and engages has changed beyond recognition in recent years. The online world has seen conversation replace rhetoric, something the world of party politics seems to have missed.

This week’s Budget is a classic example. The exchanges in the House of Commons were both predictable and pitiful, and the follow up was just as bad. 

Media interviews had already been choreographed to tribal steps, with all sides predicting apocalyptic consequences if their opponents ever got the chance to govern.

And the traditional media were no better either. They too are part of the dinosaurs enclosure inside the Westminster bubble.

And if you really wanted to get depressed, all you had to do was follow a Twitter feed as one politician after another used their online loud hailers to proclaim that their side held a monopoly on wisdom. And that their opponents were the devil incarnate.

But guess what? We don’t believe you. We have minds of our own. We don’t need politicians to tell us what we think, we’ll make that judgement ourselves. So here’s three simple tips for anyone wanting a vote in May:

1 Communicate clearly what we will be voting for if we choose you. How will you improve our lives, what positive difference will you make? Just rubbishing your opponents isn’t good enough.

2 Use online media and other channels to converse and engage, not to broadcast. Ask us what we think in addition to giving us your views, that’s how conversation works.

3 Spin is dead. It wasn’t that great when it was popular, now it’s just embarrassing. And it doesn’t work. So stop it.

This election, more than any previously, gives politicians the chance to converse and engage in a more personal way than ever before. 

And yet the knee jerk reaction of shout first and maybe listen later is still prevailing. 

You have seven weeks to outline what positive choices I and others have, and to find out if that’s what I want. All you have to do is listen.

When Less Is More

‘Conversation’ is the current buzzword for engagement and communication. This applies to everyone we converse with, internally and externally. But what does it actually mean?

In the world of social media we tell people, without a hint of irony, not to broadcast, and we trot out the mantra that consultation must be meaningful, but do we practise what we preach? How many of us have sat in meetings working out whether or not we’ve said our fair share, as one by one each participant interrupts the other?

The most important element of conversation is listening, but many of us struggle with this. Here’s 10 rough and ready tips.

1 Have the confidence to say nothing. In a discussion where the battle for attention is at its most intense, try staying silent for 15 minutes. You’re likely to learn more about the subject, and more importantly your colleagues, by just listening and keeping schtum.

2 Keep count of how many times people interrupt before someone else has finished, and who does it most. The answers are usually very illuminating.

3 Speak only when you’ve got something to say. Substance should always trump noise. And meetings would be shorter.

4 if you’re going to consult about something, be genuinely prepared to listen to what people have to say and do something with what you’re told. If you’ve already made up your mind, don’t bother.

5 Don’t dress up communication as consultation – you will get found out.

6 if you don’t believe your organisation is a listening organisation, then say so.

7 If nobody is interacting with you on social media, it’s probably your fault. If they’re not listening to you, then they won’t talk to you, so change the way you engage.

8 Being told you might be wrong, and why, is 100 times more valuable than being told you’re right. Difference of opinion adds value, affirmation maintains the status quo.

9 Broadcasting on social media platforms has its place, but should be limited. Conversation is key. If someone walked into a pub shouting their views without waiting for a response, you’d think they’d lost it. So why are you any different?

10 Listening is a skill, but it shouldn’t be. It’s just good manners.

I’m aware of the paradox of this blog, so all views are welcome!