This year is likely to be tougher than ever – public bodies are faced with the challenge of faster, better, leaner whilst facing reorganisation and extraordinary budget squeezes.  Moreover, in-depth debate is needed about the ingenuity of proposed solutions too.  For example, to understand if a four day week is palatable in our schools and councils.

Time is a precious commodity when it comes to consultation and engagement.  Often council officers are faced with too little notice for adequate preparation and are asked to deliver benefits against a hard deadline.  This can lead to mistakes and increases the risks of predetermination and poorly formed assumptions.

The process of participation is also unforgiving.  On the one hand, participants must be given adequate time for consideration and response and on the other elected members must be given time to carefully consider the fruits of consultations.  Ironically this can even influence a consultation design – ask too many open ended questions and the burden of analysis becomes greater.  Bizarrely, too much feedback can be a bad thing!

Explaining complex issues, ensuing there is sufficient awareness, creating and compiling consultation materials, impact assessments, it all takes time.  Yet taking too much time can also be a hazard.  Participants will not appreciate delays in the decision making process but more significantly, impacts and assumptions may become obsolete.  Fundamentally the consultation is less relevant if the issues have moved-on. 

We think there are some practical steps on how this ambition can be achieved during conception, dialogue, analysis, decision-making and reporting – but if we go quicker then we have to go better.   It is for this reason we have decided to focus our forthcoming ACEP conference on the theme of ‘faster, leaner, better’.  

One approach is risk based – that a faster process can be the solution where there are fewer impacts.  Those impacts can be expressed as the amount of positive or negative change but also consider the dynamics of the impacted stakeholders.  However, history has shown us that it is often the simpler consultations with less attention that tend to be the ones in trouble.  

Realistically, therefore, we want to share our top 10 tips that consultation & engagement professionals can do straight away:-

  1. Create stock enablement materials.  This can cover anything, from consultation pack templates to ready to standardised questions in a questionnaire.  The aim should be for better consistency but also to provide prompts for people who are compiling information assets.
  2. Invest in training and skills.  A better and broader appreciation of what is best practice will pay dividends at every stage.  Briefings for elected members and senior officers can help recalibrate behaviours and expectations.  Explainer video resources on an intranet can help .
  3. Optimise processes.  This might include defining a mandate or approval process workflow or standard operating procedures.  The aim is to manage expectations and exceptions, catch issues early and avoid common pitfalls.
  4. Focus on resource alignment.  Treat salient consultations like a project – forming a project team and project plan with appropriate levels of comms.  Co-ordinate service owners with consultation experts, an analysis team, web team and so-on.  Outsourcing or adding resources dynamically is another option – although that’s guaranteed to add cost. 
  5. Use engagement insights to inform the design and debate.  Access to data about similar and prior consultations can help you predict the dynamics of a future debate and accelerate questionnaire design by recycling prior examples.
  6. Harness existing networks.  Existing networks can help you rapidly identify and contact stakeholders impacted by a proposal.  For example, citizen panels (particularly equalities spaniels) can help fast-track design and option development.
  7. Create a planner.  Effectively a forward planner for planned listening exercises, at least you will know what is likely to be scheduled.   Ideally the planner will have the schedules of neighbouring authorities or partner agencies too.
  8. Fail gracefully.  We’re human, things go wrong.  Taking a practical approach to putting things right as the dialogue unfolds – reacting quickly to negative feedback or mistakes that become apparent (particularly in the first few days).
  9. Peer review everything.  It’s the simplest form of quality assurance, particularly if your peer reviewer is a process expert.
  10. Deploy tech.  Technology can certainly help – from using AI to analyse large data to re-engagement of stakeholders using nudges and insights. Â