Ray Dalio “Truth – or, more precisely, an accurate understanding of reality – is the essential foundation for any good outcome. Most people fight seeing what’s true when it’s not what they want it to be” (Principles, p.135).
One of the greatest risks in lobbying is you are going to fool yourself or have a lobbyist try and fool you. I am shocked how often I hear of stories about firms say “if you employ us, this issue will go away”. This sale’s pitch appeals to our natural instincts. Most people hope for the best. They think that most people see the world as they do. And, if they live and work in a relatively isolated group, with most of their friends and acquaintances seeing the world through the same prism at they do, their confirmation bias is strong.
When you face a tricky public policy issue or new legal proposal, you are likely going to think that most MEPs, Ministers and officials working on the proposal see the world as you do.
You’d sadly be wrong.
I deploy a different approach. I plan to win by starting from the reasonable worst-case scenario. I am a Free Trade Social Democrat – a very small constituency – so winning is a welcome blip. Over time, I’ve changed how I lobby and campaign. I now base all assumptions on hard data, whether real evidence, studies and voting records.
How You Can Overcome Your Political Blindness
Over 20 plus years, I’ve seen an army of lobbyists and lawyers provide the expensive and worthless therapy of confirmation bias. Confirmation bias is too common in Brussels.
If you are smart you’ll build in mechanisms to overcome your political blindness and avoid confirmation bias.
I’ve found the best way to see the political world for what it is, rather than how I’d like it to be, is to use VoteWatch Europe.
After having used VoteWatch for many years, it is rare that I would not use them before starting work on an issue.
VoteWatch helps exposes all my political blindness – there are many. Their hard cold data expose how MEPs and countries really vote, and not how you think they do.
They have useful tools that help you identify which MEPs will help you promote your agenda. If you looked at the voting influence of MEPs like Roger Helmer, you’d see that his political support was a death knell for your cause. VoteWatch will help you identify whose support you really need.
You can use this to your advantage.
You can discover every trigger point that will help you bring different political groups into your camp. You can alter your language and messages for various interests and speak with them and not at them. The more you listen upfront, and draw on the voting analysis and mix if with raw political intelligence, the more your chances of saying the right thing to the right person increase.
If you see your goal as getting enough votes to get you to want, for a particular moment in time, VoteWatch is the best tool you’ll have.