As a lobbyist, you are best deployed spending half of your time working to persuade people making and influencing the decisions on your files.
This does not apply if you are telepath or not interested in persuading decision makers an opinion formers.
There is a variation of this. Spending a lot of your time with a small group of fellow believers in a sauna putting the world to rights. It may seem like lobbying, but it not moving the needle on changing minds and votes.
It is too easy to get swamped in inward focused meetings (internal meetings, trade association meetings, alliance meetings), preparing issue updates, listening to debates, finding information on the state of play of a legislative, policy or regulatory file. By the time it comes around to Friday at 5 p.m. you are exhausted and have not had a spare 15 minutes to speak to someone who influences one of your 25 key files.
I worked out that you can’t do it all. So here are some simple things I have done.
Use Some Smart Tools
These are some tools I use/have used. They make your job a lot easier.
- https://otter.ai/Dictate notes, record meetings and debates and get fast and accurate transcripts and summaries.
- https://www.loom.com/If you want to end email chains, give detailed and clear feedback, loom is your tool.
- https://eumatrix.eu/
You want to know how a MEP / Member States vote on your issue. This is the tool.I have used the services of Doru/Davide many times to do deep dives on an issue to see where the votes will land. The numbers don’t lie. It is amazingly useful. If you don’t use them, you are more or less blind. - https://fiscalnote.com/products/eu-issue-trackerEU Issue Tracker is the ultimate second brain of 95% of your legislative, regulatory and policy needs.
- https://www.quorum.us/products/eu/
Have seen this in action. Very powerful.
I’ve heard good things about:
https://www.ulobby.eu/
You Need a Second Brain
You don’t need to walk around what is happening on your 25 plus files in your head. You need tools to avoid cognitive overload. I’m not clever enough to remember exactly where 25 files are and how MEPs have voted on them, so I use/used:
https://eumatrix.eu/
https://fiscalnote.com/products/eu-issue-tracker
New Entrants
https://lanzcape.com/ looks very interesting.
Time Blocking
If you keep switching back and forth from different activities throughout the day, you are day, you are doing yourself a disservice.
I set aside the mornings for deep work, work that taxes the brain, like drafting memos, a call to find out the status of a file etc.
The afternoon is set aside for calls, meetings etc.
Some days are set aside for focused work at the home office, other days for external meetings. I find if you start mixing them, you get less done.
Avoiding the Hive Mind
The only way to avoid the clatter of messages is to close it down.
Emails / Teams message are only looked at twice a day (around 11 and 4 pm).
If anything urgent comes up, colleagues and clients know to call me.
All notifications are closed.
I can get around 3 good pieces of work done a day. I schedule the week ahead on a Friday and double my time estimate for getting any piece of work done. Humans are very bad estimators of how long it takes to complete a task.
It is useful to remember this is a job. It is not a vocation. If that is what you want, join a religious order or a cult. At the end of the day/weekend, shut down and do some really important things. Spend time with your friends and family, read a good book, see a great show. Your brain will be fresher for it.
Take out the guess work – systemise your work
If you want to delegate your work or just make repetitive tasks easier (and most of your work is repetitive), take time to prepare SOPs/Checklists. It will make your work a lot easier.
The only challenge is it forces you to demystify your work and a lot of political consultants try and act like they are translators for some sacred text that is understandable to only the blessed few.
If you cant explain your issue in plain English it is a good sign you don’t understand your issue.
The next step is to explain what you do so that someone new can repeat your process and get the same results. This is hard but rewarding work.
Use a Political Consultant Properly
I think you should choose your political consultant like you choose your doctor.
You want a political consultant who has walked through the fires many times and come back alive with their client in tow.
You don’t want a political consultant who this is their first rodeo.
Choose a specialist with a proven track record of success on the procedure or issue. I’ve met issue experts with little to no experience guiding clients through the legislative pathways. It has never worked out well. If you don’t know the procedure in practice you are likely going to fail.
On sensitive issues, you choose your political consultant like your surgeons/oncologists. A proven track of success with living former patients to provide testimony is a good signal. You don’t want a fresh faced amateur performing politically life saving treatment that they have picked up only from text books from some finishing school.
If anyone is offering “sure thing chance of success”, or access to some all powerful “Illuminati group”, walk away. You have met a snake oil salesman.