What can you do if you face a proposal that is dealing with a problem that does not exist in reality

Occasionally, you’ll face a proposal that is away with the fairies. It is the sort of proposal designed to solve a non-problem or a proposal whose intended and non-intended consequences will be detrimental to the interests that the author intends to solve.

Wherever ambitious politicians or civil servants exist,  there is always the risk of a proposal going off the rails of reason. Brexit is a good example – making a country poorer and less free got tabled and adopted. Dan Heath’s Upstream lists more examples.

The good news is the Commission has filters built in to deal with evidence-free problems. It is called Better Regulation. The Regulatory Scrutiny Board are there to call out the evidence-free or evidence-weak proposals. Even then, their veto can be overridden by Commissioners.

 

What can you do

In case you face an initiative that is dealing with a non-problem issue, here are some practical things you can do:

  1. Eternal vigilance. You need to be vigilant. Just because an idea has no bearing, in reality, does not mean it can’t be tabled.
  2. Filter the output of Academica and the public policy community. That’s a good place to find non-problem issues germinating.
  3. Develop a robust, evidence-rich, and credible briefing that the non-problem issue highlighted by someone is not a problem.
  4. Have your answer in your filing cabinet. One day, when you least expect, the non-problem issue will come up.
  5. If you want to cut off the debate early on, see if a god-like expert can join the debate in the pages of the academic-public policy-press. Hopefully, their intervention will be clear and forceful enough to close down any future discussion.
  6. Engage in the public policy debate. Silence is not an option.
  7. If a study says something you disagree with, commission the best study by independent gods and publish the results.
  8. Engage early. The longer an issue is in the public arena, the higher the risk of it being taken up.
  9. Ensure the non-problem issue does not get into the new Commission’s Political Guidelines and Mission Letter.
  10. Address the issue not from the perspective of your values but from the perspective of the decision-makers’s values.
  11. Present your case visually. Data and words alone are seldom enough.
  12. Present your position with clear language, metaphors and analogies. The reason why a non-problem issue has got so far is likely due to the power of clear communication.
  13. Have the world’s experts at hand and available to present their evidence.
  14. Follow most of the suggestions in this post.