“I have had numerous opportunities to use various aspects of your program, with amazing results… All confirm your observations and theories. There have been so many of these small type epiphanies, sometimes my head starts to swim… I feel so strongly that you are on the right track.”
- Brian Amundson, Director of Public Works, Eau Claire, WI
Many of you have been telling us (for years) that we needed to provide you the opportunity – via some sort of low key networking – to further develop and sharpen the consent-building skills that you first learned in one of our Consent-Building courses.
Although we always agreed that this was a very real need, only recently have we taken steps to do something about it.
We are teaming up with the Caruso Group in Colorado to offer a once-a-month workshop via a 90-minute conference call for a nominal fee ($179 regardless of the number of people listening in).
They are handling the phone logistics and registrations, while we worry about content.
If you have questions about how to register, call-in, or any other Brownbag logistics feel free to contact us or the Caruso Group (by phone: 303-694-4728, or Email).
At 10:00am PST, on the second Tuesday of every month, we offer a 90 minute Brownbag workshop to people who have had some, or all, of our SDIC Consent-Building training.
The Caruso Group has extensive experience conducting conference-call-based training for various professional groups and trade associations; they will handle the registration and all the logistics
Each month we will tackle a new, timely, and practical topic.
Barring any national or major holidays, we will hold each Brownbag session the second Tuesday of the month, kicking the learning module off at 10:00am Pacific Time (1:00pm Eastern), going for 90 minutes, and ending as promptly as possible at or close to 11:30am (Pacific Time).
For about 60 minutes, we’ll give a presentation on the topic of the month, including advice on how you can deal with those challenges.
During the last 30 minutes of the session you’ll have the opportunity to ask questions and/or bring up issues (relative to the topic at hand) that may be unique to you, but that everyone else who is in on the conference call will benefit to hear us do our best to answer.
For the first twelve sessions, we have selected topics that regularly come up during the course or in one-on-one coaching sessions.
As many of you know, we often coach agencies who are using the Consent-Building approach their staff learned in one of our SDIC courses, but who face a particular challenge of one sort or another. These coaching arrangements usually consist of us helping the client agency’s team deal with those challenges via a series of periodic (weekly-or-so) conference calls.
Although the public involvement challenges that agencies face are never exactly the same, there are certain patterns that show up again and again.
Whenever we coach an agency on a topic that we just know other teams in other agencies are also facing, we wish all of you could listen in on the coaching conference calls . . . because then all of you would benefit from it, and all of you would, thereafter, know how to deal with that particular challenge.
These monthly 90-minute brownbag sessions are an effort to share with the rest of you the advice we have given to clients on some of the public involvement challenges that – we feel – most of you will encounter earlier or later.
Because the work public-sector agencies do affects a lot of people—both positively and negatively—it’s important that you listen to the people whose lives you impact.
HOWEVER, . . . Here’s the problem with most “listening” efforts. Although you DO get a lot of “input,” that input—that feedback—is NOT representative of how the public as a whole feels. So, it’s reasonable to note how truly valid is that feedback if not representative of the public as a whole…?
In this session, we will give you the tools to have your finger on the pulse of the public as whole, without dismissing those that are most vocal.
Perhaps more importantly, we will help you understand why there is a “silent majority” and why that needn’t be a source of frustration for you and your team.
Whatever you do, don’t let the “lop-sided” input you tend to get be a reason for your project to be held hostage politically.
We often hear from clients that their publics, their PAIs, conclude that “we’ll do whatever we were going to do, no matter what input and feedback we get from them.” And so they ask us, “Is this a fixable problem, or should we just accept it as a fact-of-life?” Our answer, is “Don’t accept this as a fact-of-life!”
Instead, learn that this is symptom of another problem. Once we show you how to identify the problem, you can then prevent and correct it.
It’s a real challenge to create an informed public, and the media don’t exactly help. Instead of presenting a balanced picture, they focus on whatever controversies create the biggest headlines. Yet, they can be a valuable tool for informing your various publics.
So join us to learn what the best strategy is for dealing with this phenomenon, and put the media as an informative tool to work for you.
After years of technical studies and analyses, you present the results of that work—i.e. our conclusions and recommendations—to policymakers at a Public Hearing. Invariably, a number of noisy opponents show up, while your supporters stay home, and if they do show up, they remain silent.
Learn in this Brownbag session what you can do about this and how to keep it from frustrating you or given policymakers a false impression of the level of support for your recommendations.
If your planning process is a slow one, stretching over years—or even decades—your “public” is constantly in flux; stakeholders change, and key-players come and go.
In this session, we’ll explain how your Citizen Participation Program can best cope with this and still achieve “Informed Consent,” even with future residents and PAIs.
Tune in to this Brownbag session if you have a hard time explaining why—as a result of your plans and proposals—some people must sacrifice for the benefit of others.
We will give you the road-map to navigating through this challenge. Our approach never involves spin and always pushes you to achieve Informed Consent as a bare minimum. You can achieve this, even in spite of this challenge.
It’s normal to instinctively try and avoid our most dug-in and fiercest opponents. It’s not uncommon for these opponents to come across as irrational and emotional, making even less appealing to approach them directly and frequently. And yet, in our SDIC training you learned that the key to Implementation Geniuses’ success is their interaction with exactly such opponents.
Tune into this session to learn how they—Implementation Geniuses—overcome the avoidance instinct and turn their focus primarily to their fiercest opponents.
You aren’t alone if you find yourself coming in contact at meetings, reading blogs, and other media, with very emotional and seemingly irrational people; most of whom are opponents.
Our approach, which focuses on developing the Informed Consent of your PAIs (and in particular, your fiercest,most irrational, and emotional opponents) will help you actually—and immediately—have rational dialogues with overly emotional people. Don’t continue to be perplexed, learn how to diffuse such situations and make sense of these PAIs’ emotions (without becoming their personal therapist).
Our aim in choosing topics for these brownbag sessions is to respond to real world problems, challenges, difficulties, frustrations, questions, etc. that we hear from client agencies. For the most part they are issues that – we feel – we don’t give enough time to in our regular SDIC and CPO courses.
Most of them, in fact, are issues that one or more of our clients have asked us to help them deal with through a coaching arrangement. Because these issues are not unique to any one agency, or to any one discipline, most of you – if not all of you – can benefit from the lessons we’ve learned in dealing with them.
You can sign up to take part in one, some, or all of the brownbag sessions. (There is a discount if you sign up for six or more topics.)
The cost for participating in a brownbag session is a flat registration fee of $179 regardless of how many of your colleagues listen in while sitting around your conference phone.
In fact, it’s great if you gather a group around the table for the session. That way, the 90 minute session may spark an internal discussion that continues among you and your colleagues for a while.
Again, for the first hour of each session, we will expound upon the topic, offer our thoughts and experiences, as well as our recommendations about how to handle the pitfalls and challenges related to the topic.
Then, either intermittently or during the last 20-30 minutes of the session, conference-call participants – including you – will be encouraged to pose questions that we, then, will do our best to answer.
Systematic Development of Informed Consent (SDIC)
Kansas City, MO: April 17 - 19, 2012
Lakewood, CO: May 22 - 24, 2012
Seattle, WA: October 2 - 4, 2012
Citizen Participation-by-Objectives (CPO)
Lakewood, CO: June 12 - 14, 2012
Leadership Bootcamp
Eventually to be Taught in Sequence of Online Modules
Monthly Brownbag Sessions
What to do When Feedback is Lop-Sided and Not Representative
Why don’t people believe that We AreListening?
How to Reverse the Phenomenon that “the Media Tends to Make Things Worse, not Better”
Why the Silence of Your Supporters is often Deafening
How can we get the Public’s “Consent” when Key-Players are Always Changing?
Why and How You Must Explain Why Some People have to Sacrifice for the Benefit of Others?
Focusing on Your Opponents: How Implementation Geniuses Overcome the Reflex to Avoid Them
How You can have a Rational Dialogue with Overly Emotional People