A lot of the time, people hope they can change a law or policy position if they know the policy, process, and people. That’s a good start, but more is needed.
- Process
You need to know the process you are dealing with. If you are dealing with ordinary or secondary legislation, an agency decision or Commission decision/guidance.
You need to know the rules and dynamics of how all the above are reached, not just on paper, but in practice.
I’ve found it helps to have a checklist, process chart, and case studies to guide you.
2. Issue
You need to know the issue at hand. You need to know the issue from the perspective of the people making and influencing the decision from their perspective better than they do.
This is a technique used by Charlie Munger.
“The ability to destroy your ideas rapidly instead of slowly when
the occasion is right is one of the most valuable things.
You have to work hard on it.
Ask yourself what are the arguments on the other side.
It’s bad to have an opinion you’re proud of if you can’t state the
arguments for the other side better than your opponents.
This is a great mental discipline.”
— Charlie Munger
Many people find this too painful to do. It helps expose gaps in your own reasoning. You may just find your case does not add up.
You may as well do this before going live.
In every meeting as a regulator, advisor, or lobbyist, I’ve found that this one technique would have saved a lot of pain if done before the meeting. The one question you don’t want to be asked will be asked.
3. Skills
You need the skills to bring your case. If you are a living example of ‘how to lose friends and not influence people’, maybe you are not the person to present your case. If you don’t like civil servants and politicians and think misogyny is okay, find a colleague with the right skills to make the case.
4. Solutions
If ever there were a time you could go in and gripe and not bring a solution to the table, that time has long gone.
You need to walk into the room with a real solution, above saying ‘no’.
For me, you need to have the ideal legislative text and a short justification for the text. Behind that, you need a one to two-page summarised the case. You can refer to studies and evidence, and bring them in on a memory stick. But, if you don’t have the ‘legislative language text’, you don’t have anything, except an idea.
If you don’t, the meeting is going to be brief and not followed up on. You’d have made your case, you’d have been heard, and your ideas will be quietly filed away never to see the light of day.
5. Evidence
You need real evidence to support your position. Relying on the voices of animal spirits may work in some places, but innuendo and hints are not enough.
I have a weakness for independent, robust evidence prepared by real experts. It’s easy to spot if it is real. If it says everything without any blemishes for the interests putting it forward, it is too good to be true.
6. Delivery
Once you have decided to work on the issue, you need to be focused on delivery. Most changes to public policy fail because people are too busy with other stuff. They want the change to happen but have 1001 other things to do, and they don’t have the resources to make it happen.
An easy rule of thumb is first, ask for a copy of their plan to address the issue. Second, see how long the issue has been going on, and third, see when any key political or policy decision is being taken. Usually, if you get a few pieces of paper, you know your chances are low.
In those cases, people usually wake up two minutes to midnight, and sometimes after, and sink considerable resources into bringing about change. The chances of success are very low, around the 5-10% range.
7. Opportunity
You need a window of opportunity to get the decision you want. If your issue is not on the agenda, it’s hard work to get it onto the policy agenda.
When it comes onto the agenda, you need everything ready to go. If you hang around stuck in internal dialogue you are going to miss the window of opportunity to impact the proposal or final decision.
8. People
You need people to back your case. If you can’t get enough of the right people, at the right time, to step up and support you, all your work is for nothing.
Lobbying is about winning over people. If you can’t, or refuse to do that, your likely going to hit the wall.
If you don’t get enough of the votes in the EP and Council, you have lost. If you can’t get the right people in the Commission to back you at the right time, you’ll hit failure.
Many times, the real decision to back an approach is taken long before it becomes public. Voting lists in the Parliament are prepared weeks in advance. Positions of countries on an issue are well known. Less than a handful of people in the Commission have a role on any decision. If you miss the very narrow window of opportunity to influence them, your work will be in vain.
This can be simplified to ‘PISSED OP’.