WHAT DOES STRATEGIC ADVICE IN GR MEAN ?

Developing an effective government relations programme requires careful thought and planning. Understanding the legislative and regulatory landscape and considering how both affect an organisation’s finances, operations, and business /advocacy goals is essential to figuring out the right kind of government relations strategy. In order to develop a successful government relations programme, it is necessary to understand the client, his business, his goals and his concerns. The consultant will work with client to craft and implement a creative, strategic plan to advance his  goals. The consultant will work directly with client to develop policy recommendations and positions; identify strategic coalition partners and build coalitions that can deliver client’s message; effectively utilize media to grow public opinion and gain awareness and support; and organise client’s employees, members, leadership, and others to engage policymakers.

The process involves identifying the goals and objectives that align with client’s  business and/or policy interests and establishing a blueprint that can serve as the foundation for building or adding onto your government relations programme in a way that best fits client’s needs. This calls for a four-step effort that involves the following components, customised to client’s particular organization’s previous experience and current goals:

1. Political/Policy Audit: Assessing the organisation’s political assets with respect to relationships with policymakers, thought-leaders, and other stakeholders in a position to facilitate or thwart efforts that can support the  organisation’s goals. Assessing the advocacy efforts to date, including written and oral communications, use of social media or traditional media, coalition participation, and direct lobbying efforts and how those have helped meet goals.
2. Conducting an Environmental Scan: Conducting an internal needs assessment, soliciting information the organisation’s leadership and other relevant stakeholders on perceived priorities, needs, and threats. Likewise, conducting an external needs assessment and determining how government has previously considered or plan to consider issues that are directly tied to the organisation’s interests.
3. Creating a Prioritised Strategic Plan: Working with the organisation to develop a written set of goals and objectives for a proposed government relations programme for a defined period of time. This plan will draw upon the information obtained in the audit and environmental scan and will outline policy recommendations and activities for consideration that also reflect on the current budgetary and political environments. The plan will include advice as to whether the organisation needs to build strategic partnerships or coalitions to support efforts, and it will also discuss how to involve an effective public affairs strategy that considers pairing public relations and media to support client’s objectives.
4. Developing a Government Relations Agenda: Drafting a targeted government relations agenda, identifying legislative and regulatory priorities, a timeline, tasks and action steps, staffing options to support work, and metrics for evaluation. Government relations should be results oriented, because the Board, leadership team, investors, employees, and/or membership will want to know how the organisation’s investment in government relations ultimately supported and advanced the organisation’s goals.

Strategic Advice purposes

1. Providing Information

Perhaps the most common reason for seeking assistance is to obtain information. Often the client just needs to make better use of data already available. In any case, no outsider can supply useful findings unless he or she understands why the information is sought and how it will be used. Consultants should also determine what relevant information is already on hand. Moreover, professionals have a responsibility to explore the underlying needs of their clients. They must respond to requests for data in a way that allows them to decipher and address other needs as an accepted part of the engagement’s agenda.

2. Solving Problems

The consultant has a professional responsibility to ask whether the problem as posed is what most needs solving. Very often the client needs help most in defining the real issue. Thus the consultant’s first job is to explore the context of the problem. To do so, he or she might ask:

• Which solutions have been attempted in the past, with what results?
• What untried steps toward a solution does the client have in mind?
• Which related aspects of the client’s business are not going well?
• If the problem is “solved,” how will the solution be applied?
• What can be done to ensure that the solution wins wide acceptance?

A consultant should neither reject nor accept the client’s initial description too readily. The wise course is to structure a proposal that focuses on the client’s stated concern at one level while it explores related factors—sometimes sensitive subjects the client is well aware of but has difficulty discussing with an outsider. As the two parties work together, the problem may be redefined.

Thus, a useful consulting process involves working with the problem as defined by the client in such a way that more useful definitions emerge naturally as the engagement proceeds. Since most clients—like people in general—are ambivalent about their need for help with their most important problems, the consultant must skillfully respond to the client’s implicit needs. Client managers should understand a consultant’s need to explore a problem before setting out to solve it and should realize that the definition of the most important problem may well shift as the study proceeds. Even the most impatient client is likely to agree that neither a solution to the wrong problem nor a solution that won’t be implemented is helpful.

3. Effective Diagnosis

Much of consultants’ value lies in their expertise as diagnosticians. Nevertheless, the process by which an accurate diagnosis is formed sometimes strains the consultant-client relationship, since managers are often fearful of uncovering difficult situations for which they might be blamed. Competent diagnosis requires more than an examination of the external environment, the technology and economics of the business, and the behaviour of non managerial members of the organisation. The consultant must also ask why executives made certain choices that now appear to be mistakes or ignored certain factors that now seem important.

Although the need for independent diagnosis is often cited as a reason for using outsiders, drawing members of the client organisation into the diagnostic process makes good sense.

Clearly, when clients participate in the diagnostic process, they are more likely to acknowledge their role in problems and to accept a redefinition of the consultant’s task. Top firms, therefore, establish such mechanisms as joint consultant-client task forces to work on data analysis and other parts of the diagnostic process. As the process continues, managers naturally begin to implement corrective action without having to wait for formal recommendations.

4. Recommending Actions

The engagement characteristically concludes with a written report or oral presentation that summarizes what the consultant has learned and that recommends in some detail what the client should do. Firms devote a great deal of effort to designing their reports so that the information and analysis are clearly presented and the recommendations are convincingly related to the diagnosis on which they are based. Many people would probably say that the purpose of the engagement is fulfilled when the professional presents a consistent, logical action plan of steps designed to improve the diagnosed problem. The consultant recommends, and the client decides whether and how to implement.

Though it may sound like a sensible division of labor, this setup is in many ways simplistic and unsatisfactory. Untold numbers of seemingly convincing reports, submitted at great expense, have no real impact because—due to constraints outside the consultant’s assumed bailiwick—the relationship stops at formulation of theoretically sound recommendations that can’t be implemented.

 In the most successful relationships, there is not a rigid distinction between roles; formal recommendations should contain no surprises if the client helps develop them and the consultant is concerned with their implementation.

5. Implementing Changes

The consultant’s proper role in implementation is a matter of considerable debate in the profession. Some argue that one who helps put recommendations into effect takes on the role of manager and thus exceeds consulting’s legitimate bounds. Others believe that those who regard implementation solely as the client’s responsibility lack a professional attitude, since recommendations that are not implemented (or are implemented badly) are a waste of money and time. And just as the client may participate in diagnosis without diminishing the value of the consultant’s role, so there are many ways in which the consultant may assist in implementation without usurping the manager’s job.

A consultant will often ask for a second engagement to help install a recommended new system. However, if the process to this point has not been collaborative, the client may reject a request to assist with implementation simply because it represents such a sudden shift in the nature of the relationship. Effective work on implementation problems requires a level of trust and cooperation that is developed gradually throughout the engagement.

In any successful engagement, the consultant continually strives to understand which actions, if recommended, are likely to be implemented and where people are prepared to do things differently. Recommendations may be confined to those steps the consultant believes will be implemented well. Some may think such sensitivity amounts to telling a client only what he wants to hear. Indeed, a frequent dilemma for experienced consultants is whether they should recommend what they know is right or what they know will be accepted. But if the assignment’s goals include building commitment, encouraging learning, and developing organisational effectiveness, there is little point in recommending actions that will not be taken.

6. Building Consensus & Commitment

Any engagement’s usefulness to an organisation depends on the degree to which members reach accord on the nature of problems and opportunities and on appropriate corrective actions. Otherwise, the diagnosis won’t be accepted, recommendations won’t be implemented, and valid data may be withheld. To provide sound and convincing recommendations, a consultant must be persuasive and have finely tuned analytic skills. But more important is the ability to design and conduct a process for (1) building an agreement about what steps are necessary and (2) establishing the momentum to see these steps through.

Consulting means convincing a client to take some action. But that is the tip of the iceberg. What supports that is establishing enough agreement within the organisation that the action makes sense—in other words, not only getting the client to move, but getting enough support so that the movement will be successful. To do that, a consultant needs superb problem-solving techniques and the ability to persuade the client through the logic of his analysis. In addition, enough key players must be on board, each with a stake in the solution, so that it will succeed. So the consultant needs to develop a process through which he can identify whom it is important to involve and how to interest them.

Consultants can gauge and develop a client’s readiness and commitment to change by considering the following questions.

• What information does the client readily accept or resist?
• What unexpressed motives might there be for seeking our assistance?
• What kinds of data does this client resist supplying? Why?
• How willing are members of the organisation, individually and together, to work with us on solving these problems and diagnosing this situation?
• How can we shape the process and influence the relationship to increase the client’s readiness for needed corrective action?
• Are these executives willing to learn new management methods and practices?
• Do those at higher levels listen? Will they be influenced by the suggestions of people lower down? If the project increases upward communication, how will top levels of management respond?
• To what extent will this client regard a contribution to overall organisational effectiveness and adaptability as a legitimate and desirable objective?

Managers should not necessarily expect their advisers to ask these questions. But they should expect that consultants will be concerned with issues of this kind during each phase of the engagement.

In addition to increasing commitment through client involvement during each phase, the consultant may kindle enthusiasm with the help of an ally from the organisation (not necessarily the person most responsible for the engagement). Whatever the ally’s place in the organisation, he or she must understand the consultant’s purposes and problems. Such a sponsor can be invaluable in providing insight about the company’s functioning, new sources of information, or possible trouble spots. The role is similar to that of informant-collaborator, and it is often most successful when not explicitly sought.

If conducted skillfully, interviews to gather information can at the same time build trust and readiness to accept the need for change throughout the organisation. The consultant’s approach should demonstrate that the reason for the interviews is not to discover what’s wrong in order to allocate blame but to encourage constructive ideas for improvement. Then members at all levels of the organisation come to see the project as helpful, not as unwanted inquisition. By locating potential resistance or acceptance, the interviews help the consultant learn which corrective actions will work and almost always reveal more sound solutions and more willingness to confront difficulty than upper management had expected. And they may also reveal that potential resisters have valid data and viewpoints. Wise consultants learn that “resistance” often indicates sources of especially important and otherwise unobtainable insight.

The relationship with the principal client is especially important in developing consensus and commitment. From the beginning, an effective relationship becomes a collaborative search for acceptable answers to the client’s real concerns. Ideally, each meeting involves two-way reporting on what has been done since the last contact and discussion of what both parties should do next. In this way a process of mutual influence develops, with natural shifts in agenda and focus as the project continues.

Effecting consulting is difficult unless the relationship moves farther in a collaborative direction than most clients expect. Successful consulting is expensive not only because good consultants’ fees are high but also because senior managers should be involved throughout the process.

7. Facilitating Client Learning

Consultants like to leave behind something of lasting value. This means not only enhancing clients’ ability to deal with immediate issues but also helping them learn methods needed to cope with future challenges. This does not imply that effective professionals work themselves out of a job. Satisfied clients will recommend them to others and will invite them back the next time there is a need.

Consultants facilitate learning by including members of the organisation in the assignment’s processes. With strong client involvement in the entire process, there will be many opportunities to help members identify learning needs. Often a consultant can suggest or help design opportunities for learning about work-planning methods, task force assignments, goal-setting processes, and so on. Though the effective professional is concerned with executive learning throughout the engagement, it may be wise not to cite this as an explicit goal. Managers may not like the idea of being “taught to manage.” Too much talk about client learning comes across as presumptuous—and it is.

Learning during projects is a two-way street. In every engagement, consultants should learn how to be more effective in designing and conducting projects. Moreover, the professional’s willingness to learn can be contagious. In the best relationships, each party explores the experience with the other in order to learn more from it.

8. Organisational Effectiveness

Sometimes successful implementation requires not only new management concepts and techniques but also different attitudes regarding management functions and prerogatives or even changes in how the basic purpose of the organisation is defined and carried out. The term organizational effectiveness is used to imply the ability to adapt future strategy and behaviour to environmental change and to optimize the contribution of the organisation’s human resources.

Consultants who include this purpose in their practice contribute to top management’s most important task—maintaining the organisation’s future viability in a changing world. This may seem too vast a goal for many engagements. But just as a physician who tries to improve the functioning of one organ may contribute to the health of the whole organism, the professional is concerned with the company as a whole even when the immediate assignment is limited.

Many projects produce change in one aspect of an organisation’s functioning that does not last or that proves counterproductive because it doesn’t mesh with other aspects of the system. If lower-level employees in one department assume new responsibilities, friction may result in another department. Or a new marketing strategy that makes great sense because of changes in the environment might flounder because of its unforeseen impact on production and scheduling. Because such repercussions are likely, clients should recognize that unless recommendations take into account the entire picture, they may be impossible to implement or may create future difficulties elsewhere in the company.

Promoting overall effectiveness is part of each step. While listening to a client’s concerns about one department, the consultant should relate them to what’s happening elsewhere. While working on current issues, he or she should also think about future needs. When absorbing managers’ explanations of why progress is difficult, the consultant should consider other possible barriers as well. In these ways, the professional contributes to overall effectiveness by addressing immediate issues with sensitivity to their larger contexts. And clients should not automatically assume that consultants who raise broader questions are only trying to snare more work for themselves. To look at how the client’s immediate concern fits into the whole picture is, after all, the professional’s responsibility.

Important change in utilization of human resources seldom happens just because an adviser recommends it. Professionals can have more influence through the methods they demonstrate in conducting the consulting process itself. For example, if consultants believe that parts of an organisation need to communicate better, they can consistently solicit others’ thoughts on what’s being discussed or suggest project task forces of people from different levels or departments. When a manager discovers that an adviser’s secret weapon in solving some problem was not sophisticated analysis but simply (and skillfully) asking the people most closely involved for their suggestions, the manager learns the value of better upward communication. The best professionals encourage clients to improve organisational effectiveness not by writing reports or recommending books on the subject but by modeling methods of motivation that work well.

Consultants are not crusaders bent on reforming management styles and assumptions. But a professional diagnosis should include assessment of overall organisational effectiveness, and the consulting process should help lower whatever barriers to improvement are discovered. Good advisers are practitioners, not preachers, but their practices are consistent with their beliefs. When the consulting process stimulates experiments with more effective ways of managing, it can make its most valuable contribution to management practice.

As managers understand the broader range of purposes that excellent consulting can help achieve, they will select consultants more wisely and expect more of value from them. And as clients learn how to express new needs, good consultants learn how to address them.