Organisations should be applauded for their willingness to embrace new ways of reaching out to and engaging with their communities. Invercargill City Council has recently decided that there is value in going to where its communities are, rather than making those communities come to them, with two initiatives.

One of these involves physically connecting with people, the other is an online channel.

To improve its people-to-people connections, the Council has bought a caravan. It can tow this around the city to venues and events where people gather and have a comfortable private space out of the weather where people can talk with council representatives.

It has been branded with Council colours and logos and should be a bit of a conversation starter in itself.

Council’s new online engagement initiative is what it plans to call “ICC TV”. This is a YouTube channel intended to provide a range of content about Council’s thinking, initiatives and projects. Hopefully the community will get behind this, particularly if the content is relevant and engaging, and provide useful feedback through this channel.

There are also some exciting ways that both the caravan and ICC TV could be linked to work together, which Council will no doubt seek to explore.

Hopefully Invercargill’s citizens will see value in these initiatives, rather than focusing on the costs. Mind you that will depend on how well the Council puts these new tools to work.

Initiatives like these are generally a good reflection of where an organisation’s mind-set is – embraced by the top levels of the organisation, filtering through planning and operational staff. If it is to be judged by these two exciting engagement initiatives, Invercargill City Council’s organisational community engagement mind-set is in a very positive space.

New Zealanders have a strong and emotional connection with our natural heritage. This is about our spirit of place and respecting and treasuring things that are uniquely ours. Kauri trees are no exception, being massively majestic and long-lived, visually appealing and providing tangible connections to past eras that they were part of and we were not: days that preceded human settlement in and development of this remote island nation. The greatest enemy of the kauri is people who seek to mill it and compromise the environments in which it thrives. Like many links to our natural past and legacies for our natural future, it is under threat.

Fast forward to 2015. A west Auckland property developer acquired a section of land in a good location with great views. It has a bit of native forest cover that’s in the way of any development opportunity, including a kauri tree estimated as being 500 years old, and a 300-year-old rimu tree.

Although the developer had the good sense to check with Auckland Council to gain consent for removal of this forest remnant before starting work, they did not include as part of their due diligence process before acquiring the property, the public impact of removing heritage trees. Auckland Council subsequently issued a non-notifiable consent approving the development of the site including the removal of the trees.

The local west Auckland community and nature lovers from hither and yon got word that something was up and that this piece of forest and its heritage trees were under threat. Protest action ensued, including one game fellow shinning up the kauri beyond the reach of Police officers who issued him with a verbal prosecution notice. News and social media went berserk. Celebrities and politicians got involved. Questions were asked.

Auckland Council said it had complied with legal requirements when issuing its consent, which could not be revoked. Reports prepared by council officers were examined and their initial concerns about development on this site appeared to have been tempered, to support the non-notifiable consent decision.

It was the property owners who wisely decided to back down, rather than council emerging from its legal fortress and changing its decision. From this incident there have been significant costs to both parties – council and developer – both financial and reputational. Costs that could have been avoided if council officers and the developer had thought about issues beyond minimal legal compliance. Simply focusing on compliance with the Resource Management Act and the council’s various plans demonstrates the vast difference between legal compliance and good practice community engagement.

Lessons to be learned from this include that good practice community engagement will always incorporate legal compliance, where required. Legal requirements are a minimum standard to be applied, not the only standard. Identifying and analysing stakeholders is an essential element in any good practice community engagement process. Had this been undertaken correctly, and early, then the developers would have known, before purchasing the property, the intensity of public interest. The council, for its part, would have required the application to be notified.

The importance and influence of affected stakeholders and communities should always be examined, and should be part of any conversation that council officers have with applicants. A council that was in touch with its communities wouldn’t have allowed this situation to happen.

Social Licence to Operate. SLO. The latest buzz phrase and three-letter acronym doing the rounds and one that seems to be capturing the attention of senior managers in diverse enterprises. So what’s it all about? Do organisations really need to gain the approval of communities in order to operate?

“Social licence” is another way of describing the currency of reputation or goodwill. Some people may refer to this currency as Brownie Points™. While that description may be a bit glib, it’s a fair simplification of what’s an operationally complex issue. Complex because embracing it and doing it well cuts to the core of an organisation’s mind-set and culture and underpins that organisation’s brand.

An organisation accumulates goodwill by conducting its affairs in a manner that either meets with the approval of communities or doesn’t annoy them. This currency takes a long time – perhaps years – to accumulate but can be lost in a moment. Organisations that understand this value proposition and its complexities and are still prepared to invest are the ones who will do it well.

There are many examples of organisations that have damaged their social licence to operate. On this list are multinationals who manufacture their products in countries that allow child labour, manufacturers who include non-sustainable palm oil in their foodstuffs, those who trade in products sourced from endangered species, or airlines whose planes crash because of deficient maintenance and staff training.

These are extreme examples selected to make a point. Not all social licence-related issues involve breaking the law. A truth for any individual or organisation is that perception is reality. That perception doesn’t have to be underpinned by facts or sound science but if it’s widely held, then it needs to be understood and respected.

Another reality is that all organisations require a social licence to operate, whether or not they acknowledge that. In some cases the minimum standards necessary are set by regulations administered by government agencies or councils. In these cases the authority needed is provided by proxy from communities through government.

A social licence is based on trust, respect and mutual understanding. These are products of a commitment to partnership, a commitment which for many organisations is, regrettably, undertaken because they have to, thanks to regulations and statutory requirements, rather than because they want to. Such organisations may have no real interest in things like social licences to operate.

Organisations that do care about their social licence to operate generally seek ways to connect with their customers, clients and communities that add value to both sides of the relationship. They probably have an engagement policy, engagement strategies and plans for their major products, projects and processes. They’re probably no strangers to market research, focus groups, online panels, and community-led sponsorship, to name a few tools. There’s also a high probability that they’ve been actively engaging for a while. They will also understand what investing in their brand really means – that this investment involves more than a nifty logo and jazzy advertising.

Organisations new to this world of engagement and consequent reputation building – social licence to operate – may feel a bit confused about how to get started. They may also be organisations that have been around for a while but are feeling threatened or exposed by changes to what their clients, customers or communities are thinking and doing.

They may also be looking for an off-the-shelf solution that can be quickly put to work.

While there are off-the-shelf remedies, they’re unlikely to work in a believable and trust-building way unless the organisation concerned with delivering those is genuinely committed. Remember, communities have highly tuned Bullshit Receptors™ and can spot disingenuous operators in a heartbeat.

The choice of tools and techniques for community engagement and reputation building has to align appropriately with an organisation’s vision and values. If it doesn’t, then it is unlikely that employees of that organisation will make the right connections and any investment made could be money wasted.

But the first step has to be at an organisation’s top table. The board of directors, elected councillors, CEOs and their direct reports. The mind-set of these people is crucial for success. No well-intentioned, visionary and workaholic operational manager will succeed in this space unless they have the guidance, leadership and backing of those at the top of the organisation.

These leaders need to accept that their organisation will operate best with societal approval and all of the reputation and risk issues associated with gaining or retaining that.

So do organisations really need to gain the approval of communities in order to operate? If they want to operate successfully, then yes they do.

Can Engagementworks help organisations who want to better understand what’s possible in this world of social licences to operate? Yes we can. And we’re happy to discuss options and choices.

At this time of year New Zealand’s 78 local authorities are involved in crafting their annual plan documents or, once every three years, a long-term plan with a 10-year vision in accordance with section 93 of the Local Government Act (LGA).

These plans are supposed to be tailored by the needs and aspirations of the communities each council is elected to serve. Their contents and priorities should be shaped after extensive community engagement. Indeed the LGA requires, as a minimum, the Special Consultative Procedure to be used to develop a Long-Term Plan. The LGA also talks about these plans providing a basis for accountability between a council and its communities. A worthy ambition.

Given the importance that a long-term plan plays in shaping a council’s decision-making and priority setting, with flow-on impacts on the levels of rates set to fund those, it is surprising that so few community members take the time to become involved in any associated discussion or debate.

Formal submissions will be sought, usually through advertisements published in newspapers or on a council’s website. Public meetings will be scheduled and held in venues and at times that work best for elected councillors. Many councils will know with a high degree of certainty in advance of a draft plan being released who they will receive submissions from and what those will say. But how representative are those submissions of wider community ideas and opinions?

It may be argued that if there is no interest in or discussion about the content of a long-term plan, then it must be a fair representation of community views. It may also be argued that additional efforts to connect with communities will impose additional demands on a council’s time and money for no apparent additional benefit in terms of information received. That may be true, but what about the connectedness a council should be aiming to have with its communities, particularly the basis of accountability the LGA says should be provided?

Long-Term Plans are large, hard to read documents built to satisfy the needs of auditors. It is not surprising that very few people, other than auditors, actually read them. Councils invest time summarising these into smaller documents that may be put into letterboxes with the outpourings of Big Box Retailers and real estate agents. Adaptations of these summary documents may also get placed on council websites where analytics will reveal they attract scant interest from cyberspace inhabitants.

This could be because community members believe that councils really aren’t interested in listening to them. If they were, then they may be more active in creating opportunities or using engagement tools that communities understand and are comfortable with. There is an abundance of tools that can be used, either for face-to-face interactions as well as online. Citizens shouldn’t have to make a formal written or verbal submission. Such measures are a barrier to engagement, as the numbers of people using those, as a percentage of all community members, shows.

This isn’t a challenge that is particularly difficult to improve on. All that is required is a little imagination and a willingness to listen to communities – earlier rather than later – and show them how what they said was considered and shaped the final outcomes. Councils need to focus on delivering simple messages that are clearly expressed and easily understood, particularly by hard-to-reach community members, such as people with language disabilities. Pictures and infographics work really well as communication enhancers.

From 1 December 2014 all 78 councils will be required to have a significance and engagement policy in place. It will be interesting to observe what changes will be seen in council community engagement, particularly annual plan engagement, from 2015 and onwards.

The public should have a big stake in what sort of community they want for themselves, their children and their grandchildren. Their willingness to contribute to their “ideal” is greatly influenced by the contribution that they are able to make to the long term planning for their community.

Fair enough. But isn’t this what already happens? Regrettably no.

However recent changes to the LGA relating to significance and engagement creates an opportunity for councils to rethink their approach about how they interact with communities. This may act as a catalyst to change how councils make decisions by acknowledging that communities are important and can make a valuable contribution, particularly if successful community outcomes are desired.

This would mean looking beyond just legal compliance to good practice processes. In an LTP development this would involve the community in deciding what should go into the LTP in the first place and being engaged through the various steps ultimately leading to the more formal special consultative procedure consultation at a later stage of development prior to adoption.

This effectively relegates the special consultative procedure to a tick-the-box exercise, as with good prior community engagement, all of the important decisions will have already been made with the full involvement of the affected community.

This time each year New Zealand’s 78 local councils are engaged in annual or long-term plan discussions with their communities. These discussions are intended to focus on ratifying council plans, priorities and related expenditure that shape the size of the taxes levied on ratepayers as rates and other targeted costs for specific council services.

While the purpose and nature of these discussions is known to most contributors, councils often receive submissions that have nothing to do with matters relating to the annual plan. A classic example of such a matter is whether or not fluoride should be added to potable water delivered through a council’s water supply infrastructure.

For a small number of New Zealanders this is an extremely contentious matter. However many others are comfortable with the dental health benefits associated with fluoride and with the assurances provided by the Medical Officer of Health and other reputable agencies.

That said, the anti-fluoride movement has enjoyed some successes in recent years, forcing the removal of added fluoride from drinking water in several towns and cities. These decisions to support the anti-fluoride movement were made by councillors, sometimes with little reference to medical science and often with little discussion with the wider affected community. Hamilton City’s decision to remove fluoride from that city’s drinking water is a good example, where a subsequent referendum on this matter showed that there was overwhelming support for fluoride to be included.

Annual plan submissions are usually the entry point for influencing council decisions on fluoride, probably because for many people this is the only channel they see as being available to express concern about what a council does. But that’s not the best way of handling matters like this, the related costs can be high for a council’s bureaucracy, and the anti-fluoriders have probably figured that they can grind councils down by continually using the annual plan channel.

Some councillors are feeling exposed and there is a growing mood that fluoridisation of drinking water is a decision that should be made by the Ministry of Health, rather than by individual councils.

I think that is the wrong way of looking at this particular issue. Left to the council annual plan submissions process, this matter will reappear annually. That is just silly.

Any decision about fluoridisation needs to be made once, whether that’s on a national or local basis, and decoupled from annual council planning.

It’s an issue that should be taken to affected communities and their opinions sought. Community members should consider the evidence provided by scientists, medical experts and those who believe that adding fluoride to drinking water is a risky, toxic practice. Affected communities should be given the authority to make that decision, to be endorsed by councillors. That discussion could also include a timeframe for revisiting the decision made, if the affected community believed that to be necessary.

Councillors are supposed to be representative of their community’s views and should not be put into positions where they can be bullied by interest groups. Being representative does not prevent councillors delegating decision making to communities on certain matters, particularly those involving high levels of emotion, as long as a robust, inclusive process is used.

The Ministry of Health could take charge of this matter, but ultimately this is a decision that affects individual communities, and what better way is there for those communities to determine their desired future than through their council.

It’s interesting to see how different organisations categorise “engagement”. There appear to be two major approaches:

1. Those who believe that legislative compliance is the main driver of everything they need to do
   
2. Those who see value in having regular interactions with their communities and key stakeholders.
   

At Engagementworks, we really enjoy working with organisations in the second group. They’re excited about making sure the products and services they offer fit well with end users, and that their organisational activities are understood. That’s important for organisations like manufacturing businesses and other ventures that consume resources and have an environmental impact. Organisations like these are strong on building partnerships and listening carefully to what communities say.

The first group is harder to categorise, other than that they have a narrow focus, see legislative requirements as a maximum level, and are reactive rather than proactive when it comes to dealing with external feedback. This group can include small businesses that have limited resources, which is understandable. It can also include government agencies and councils, which is much harder to understand, particularly when they have responsibilities to taxpayers, ratepayers or levy-payers. There are occasions when this approach will cost more than if an investment had been made in engagement activities, particularly when something goes wrong and the cost of putting it right is high.

Legislators who believe that engagement is important, particularly for government agencies and councils, may choose to impose standards of compliance in an expectation that low achievers will get better at it. Planned changes to the 2002 Local Government Act are a signal of what legislators believe are important. Such thinking presumes that there is value in engagement for the organisation in question and for its stakeholders. But that’s a hard sell to organisations who only see additional costs being imposed on them.

Benefits to an organisation from engagement include:

• Higher quality decision-making
  
• More effective and efficient service delivery
  
• Better management, by identifying risks early and reducing costs associated with those
  
• More streamlined policy and programme development
  
• Delivering services and outcomes that meet community needs
  
• Increasing community confidence in projects undertaken
  
• Great levels of innovation.
  

Benefits for communities and stakeholders include:

• Greater opportunities to participate in policy and programme development
  
• More open and transparent communication driving innovation
  
• More efficient and responsive levels of service
  
• Better integrated and comprehensive solutions to complex policy issues.
  

Organisations in the second group get this. They believe in it and are committed to driving organisational practices that support it. Community engagement is something they do because they really want to.

Organisations in the first group don’t really get this. They see additional work and compliance costs. They are fans of Tick Box compliance to a level that keeps their auditors happy. The happiness of their communities and key stakeholders isn’t afforded a similar level of priority. Community engagement is something they do because they have to.

So effective community engagement is about an aligned organisational culture. Changing the culture of organisations in the first group won’t happen overnight. But at Engagementworks we’re Rachel Hunter types (remember those Pantene advertisements of some years ago?), believing that change will happen. That’s one of the reasons we have a commitment to building strong communities of interest in engagement, and why we’ve developed a series of workshops and tools that are designed to help organisations progressively lift their engagement games. While we’re happy to help where we can, we believe that the best results will come from organisations that believe in the value of great community engagement, who own their own strategies and who are committed to delivering those.

There’s more to effectively socialising with key stakeholders than buying them a coffee, sending them a Christmas card or taking them to the rugby. If only effective stakeholder engagement was that straightforward!

Stakeholders are any organisation’s most important asset. They include customers, suppliers, investors, shareholders, members, voters, regulators, law makers, opinion formers and others, not least of which are that organisation’s own employees. All of these people can have a significant impact on an organisation’s success or otherwise.

Managing constructive relationships with each of these groups – remembering that individuals can be in more than one category – is a vital part of what organisations need to do in their marketing/ investor relations/ communication/ member services/ community engagement spaces.

The fact that organisations often have many ways of interacting with the same stakeholders – different touch points in different parts of the organisation, each with their own agendas – is a realisation that should start warning bells pinging. An organisation concerned about how it connects externally may be diverse and complex. So too may be some of its stakeholder organisations. Indeed it’s possible that one stakeholder organisation could be in all of the categories in a contacts database, and in regular contact with all of an organisation’s business units about quite different issues.

Any strategy focused on stakeholder engagement needs to be underpinned by some simple principles that all parts of the organisation share and adhere to. Many organisations already do this for managing things like their finances, human resources and brand. Engagement is no different. Consistently applied internal engagement processes are key.

All parts of an organisation that have relationships with stakeholders need to talk with each other, plan together and have shared engagement principles to guide what they do and how they do it. The value that this will unlock for an organisation will be huge, and reputational risks will also able to be better managed.

A previous blog has focused on engagement principles.

Here’s an interesting link that outlines a way of building some principles and embedding those within an organisation.

And here’s another link that outlines the Six Cs of successful community engagement.

Yes, there’s value to be had from socialising with stakeholders. But like other things in life, success comes from having a clear and shared vision for “success” and a Cunning Plan to get there.

Engagementworks is good at identifying an organisation’s needs, prioritising those and outlining ways those needs can be met, being mindful of the resources that any organisation has to invest. If you’d like to talk with us about this, please contact Don or Brett.

Making a strong investment in planning a project or an event is a good way of ensuring a successful outcome. Project managers are strong advocates for this. So too are marketing managers, communication managers, engagement managers and financial controllers.

So why then do so many projects stumble, fail to meet deadlines, incur additional costs and alienate customers, stakeholders or affected communities?

One reason is that some organisations are not good when it comes to talking to themselves. This includes the relationships and services that a project or event leader needs from other parts of their business and giving good advance notice of what’s needed and what that may entail. Many people probably have at least one example of where their organisation planned to fail by failing to plan.

“We’re launching this new thing on Monday. We’ll need a website for it. And a launch event. And a news release. And we should also let people know what these changes will mean for them. We should be doing something on social media.”

Such announcements invariably cause a measure of panic and confusion amongst those who have just been roped in to help, which is bad enough. Worse is that short timeframes mean that people often focus on meeting the deadline, rather than the substance of what it is they’re being asked to do.

Most larger organisations are multi-faceted. They comprise of teams to whom functional tasks are assigned – like finance, HR, marketing, infrastructure and so on. As organisations get bigger, so too can the gaps between organisational groups, that may even be in different buildings or different towns. Sometimes the only reason these teams talk to each other is because they have to – something urgent has arisen that they need to jointly focus on. Maybe something like a crisis that’s happened because they hadn’t been talking with each other.

Line management structures are not good at many things, particularly enabling conversations to happen across an organisation. Given that the real engine room for what an organisation thinks and delivers happens at level 3, then it’s not hard to see the impact that a reliance on line management for internal communication can have.

Peer group circles for learning and support are highly effective ways of communicating and engaging across organisations. While some circles can form naturally around things like occupations, these shouldn’t be left to chance. There needs to be a strong commitment from senior leaders to the value of these circles to coordinating and delivering key events and tasks. These circles need to have a clear charter and mandate. There needs to be an overarching strategy that they exist to support and even lead.

Circle participants should be appointed and time allowed for them to participate in the circle’s activities. They should be required to actively engage with their home team or group as well as with the circle they’ve been appointed.

Internally engaging provides a great means of building strong teams across an organisation, as well as supporting a culture of innovation and no surprises.

At Engagementworks internal communication is close to our hearts. We’ve both worked for large organisations and are familiar with international good practice. Our courses all touch on the need for good internal engagement, and we’re able to customise these to meet specific requirements. We’re happy to discuss things on a no-commitment basis, so please give us a call or send us an email.

A useful first step before embarking on building a community engagement strategy for an organisation or an engagement plan for a specific project is to develop some engagement principles.

These should outline what your organisation holds dear and how it wants to be appreciated for its engagement efforts. Five or six points that can be summarised on an A4 page.

While Google will probably reveal some useful ideas about what others have done, it’s important that an organisation spends some time to develop its own set of principles and outcomes, rather than regurgitating what others may have done, no matter how great those examples may be.

Why? Because engagement is exactly that: the experience of engaging with others, including colleagues in other parts of your business or even stakeholders you’ll need to work with in other organisations. It’s also useful to engage with senior managers and even boards of directors or councillors in this process.

Done well, the process of uncovering and describing some engagement principles can be a powerful way of gaining support, focus and recognition about the benefits that well planned, adequately resourced and effectively delivered engagement can provide.

We offer short courses and longer, more intensive training that can be customised to meet an organisation’s specific needs.

We’re coming to Christchurch in September and Wellington in October to deliver our three-day workshop series for people who have a hands-on role planning and delivering community engagement for their employers. These workshops are highly interactive and also include individual coaching and mentoring after each one. Participants at the end should have an engagement plan developed for a specific project. They will also have some great shared experiences and networking contacts with other practitioners on the course.

Chief executives around the world aren’t that active when it comes to using social media. New Zealand appears to be no exception.

This may be because CEOs are busy people who are accustomed to delegating hands-on tasks to others.

But one thing they can’t, or rather shouldn’t delegate, is how they project themselves to others. People are always interested in other people, what they may think, believe, do and say. Bosses are no exception. Effectively demonstrating leadership is about communicating oneself, not just a bunch of key business messages.

The art of powerful leadership communication is about knowing how much of oneself to share with others. Different leaders may share more of themselves than others. How much each will share should involve taking some risks and trusting the people one may be sharing with.

Social media offers a variety of channels for chief executives and senior managers generally to engage with others. In the case of channels like LinkedIn, this can be formal and structured, although even there CV formality is not the best way of capturing attention. Other social channels are a lot more informal. Twitter and similar short message channels also require some skills about keeping comments short and catchy.

Even internal engagement can be done through social media. Yammer is a good example of a tool that can be used within a corporate environment, keeping outsiders away from comments and discussions.

Yes, social media involves a time commitment, not only for posting comments but also for encouraging feedback and engaging with that. Leaders who do this well are respected by those they’re engaging with. Their social capital will grow considerably, as will their levels of respect and trust.

At the moment there is a handful of CEOs who are actively engaging through social media and a very large number who aren’t doing anything at all.

If CEOs are nervous about what to do and how to do it, I am certain that within their organisation, particularly in a communication team, there are some people who would be more than willing to provide ideas, support and encouragement. Some CEOs may even have partners, sons and daughters who can offer advice. The rest is up to each CEO to do as much as they feel comfortable doing.

It helps to start with an idea of the space that social media can open up as well as some of the potential risks, but specific destinations can be hard to reach, particularly if one isn’t marketing products or services.

The “right” way of using social media is about doing what works best for the person doing it. That’s going to involve taking some risks. The best way to learn is to dive in.