Every day and in every industry we are continually adding ideas or processes. But so often we forget to stop doing things we’ve always done.
When we review or audit community and stakeholder engagement within organisations, we see how passionate our engagement colleagues are. Their passion for engagement means we’re adding innovations and improvements every day. But do we review what we should stop doing?
Give things to stop doing in your engagement practice
1. Outdated processes
Legislation is being updated every year in different sectors and states.
If your engagement policy or framework was completed more than 5 years ago, it may need updating.
Since then, we’ve seen new legislation, policies and standards introduced at the national level, as well as the state level in Queensland, NSW, Victoria and South Australia. Stop using outdated processes.
2. Newspaper notices
Unless it’s required by legacy legislation, a newspaper notice is simply not enough to attract community attention.
Very few people read newspapers and even fewer read the notices section. So stop doing it and start using the channels where your community will get your message.
3. Burn out of great professionals
At the IAP2’s last engagement conference, I was moved to tears by tales of great engagement professionals who felt burnt out and traumatised by having to work with daily angry, aggressive or bullying behaviours.
We need to make sure our colleagues are supported and encouraged on those tough projects.
4. Jargon
Yes, even engagement people can over-use jargon.
So if you find you’re spending too much time talking about scope, deliberative, collaborative partnerships, levels of engagement, the DPM, honeycomb profiles and more … then stop and translate to your project teams.
5. Engaging solely on problems
If you’re only engaging when things are contentious or there’s a risk, then you need to stop doing that.
We could spend an entire blog talking about this, but in essence it causes:
a) a failure to engage on topics that the whole community wants to engage on
b) an engagement capacity gap – where we unintentionally build the skills of those who always turn up, and diminish the engagement skills of those who don’t
c) we don’t ask the right questions of community
d) our innovation is focused on problems rather than opportunity
e) it can create a false sense of what community really thinks.
If you’d like to keep up with the latest in engagement strategies, why not enrol in the Strategies for Complex Engagement course.
