Keeping the relationship spicy (in a good way)
I was having an honest conversation with a friend of mine who had been tapped on the shoulder and encouraged to nominate and run as a local Councillor in her local area. She works for Council and would need to take a leave of absence from her employment to do so, and was of course weighing up the pros and cons.
I found myself harshly describing the role of a Councillor – “It’s hard to be involved in the things you are really interested or passionate in – you will need to declare a conflict of interest, and potentially remove yourself from the situation.” “You’re such a doer, you might get stuck in the politics of the situation and feel frustrated by the inaction and/or political siding.” “You’ll love being across all of Council’s services and business, but you’ll need to read a lot of uninteresting information to get across a topic. Some officers can be unsure what to give you so they throw all of it at you, others use information as a way of deterring you from getting into the topic, others will be scared of you (which you will hate) and so they will feel they need to overly justify their recommendations.”
As much as I would love a local government system without as much politicking, I know it’s kind of the lay of the land and necessary to go to bat for your community and get what they need. I also know anti-corruption measures need to be in place to avoid the misuse of power and public funds, but I do feel sad when the shiny new Councillors come in and they often can’t get involved in the matters that really interest or are important to them.
Provision of information is something that can be controlled and I think needs some rework across some Councils. We think really deeply about the way we present data from projects and the audiences we are writing for, similarly our findings can be written with caution so as not to over promise commitments, or too technical or too simply so as not to create alarm. There are some good things we do consistently to support members of the general public to understand complex issues and even more so with changes to the Local Government Act 2020 and deeper requirements of engagement.
From an engagement perspective here are our top tasks to tick off your list this Caretaker period to help your elected officials: Create an engagement summary report structure (simple and complex project level).
Consider training them in community engagement (see our Striking Up a Conversation – perfect for in person conversations).
Create customer/community personas to help show the intricate differences in your community (Examples).
Create templates designed to present complex information in an easy readable manner. We are loving SCIPAB Tool https://www.mandel.com/scipab-messaging-tool as a framework to communicate complex information. Adding a graphic treatment like these examples (Environment Discussion Guide) can help to make it even more appealing.