I’ve long backed the use of a lobby plan.
I realise the idea has limits. Below are some limits and how to avoid them.
10 things to TIA
If you are preparing a lobby plan, you need to go through some simple steps.
1. You need to define what your goal is. What do you want to achieve, or want to avoid. Here you need to embrace reality. Changing an EU law in a year when it is not in the political priorities or work programme of the Commission is just a pipe dream. Changing an essential element of a law through the backdoor of secondary legislation is a case of faith giving way to legal reality. Blocking a provision in a directive that has overwhelming support and is going into the final trilogue, is at best unlikely to happen. And, as someone who has secured wins at these late stages, it is not say it can’t happen, but it does mean the chances of getting it are low.
2. You need a strategy. All that means that is a sequence of actions that are going to results when you take action. The challenge is based on the 80/20 principle, 80% of your results come from 20% of your effort. So most of what you do is a waste of time. So, the real key is figuring out what actually delivers results. You can then spend more time doing that, and less time doing the things that really don’t produce results. I’ve found internal meetings eat up too much time and do little to deliver results.
3. You need have short feedback loops to see whether what you are doing is working or not. If it is not working, you need to quickly let is go. Plans are not fixed in stone at the beginning, unchanged. If your positioning has not been pickuped with the people you need to have support from, adjust.
4. We are often operating in an uncertain environment or an uncertain future. If you could predict the political decision or vote months or years out, you’d likely have retired wealthy early. So, if you don’t have that gift, you are going to need do some scenario planning. If you can’t deal with uncertainty, get out of the game.
A good way to reduce uncertainty, is to look at previous votes and decisions on similar issues that have happened. Look at the decisions of the Commission, and votes of the Council and EP. Here Vote Watch Europe is invaluable.
5. This is where most lobbying falls down, you need to implement. You can have the best plan in the world. But if you don’t put it into effect appropriately, it doesn’t work. All plans are looking at between where we are now, and where we want to be, there are a series of intermediate steps. All you need to do is go through those steps. All planning is about is to do with what will cause what else to happen.
Plans are pointless if you don’t move into action. A lot of people who like strategising and planning are not very good at action. This is one of the key reasons campaigns fail. Sitting behind closed doors in strategy sessions, rather than taking the idea out on the political road is a sure way to lose.
6. You need to continue to monitor and evaluate and see is it working. Establish some basic criteria at the start. I find checking back in with officials and politicians to see if what was said resonated with them a good tool. If your case is not hitting the mark, change it, or get ready to lose.Measurement is going to be critical. We have got to have some way of seeing of what we’re doing is working. It is amazing how many people beat their head against the wall, and continue to try to do what doesn’t work. The critical thing is to be able to know that it’s not working, and then to do something else. Anything has a higher probability of working than what doesn’t work. But in order to do this, we’ve got to know then that it’s not working. It is not that hard. If you lose votes, don’t gather enough support, get meeting requests turned down, get a hostile reception from politicians or officials, you know things are not working.
7. You will have to modify the plan. Most things don’t work exactly the way you plan them the first time, almost everything is going to require some kind of adjustment as you go along. If you can’t adjust, you will lose.
8. Most lobbyists think that if you put enough energy and effort effort, you’ll be able to do it. They are wrong. That only works if it’s well planned, well thought out, and massive strategic action that’s going to produce the kind of results when needed. You need to focus on productive action. In most campaigns, we all do a lot of dumb things. It is better to look at what works and focus on those things.
9. This is very common, you need to avoid self sabotage. Many lobbying efforts fail because the the campaign self sabotage itself at the very end. Avoid it.
10. Finally, it is important to realise that you can go through all the processes and still lose at the end.