A lot of time is spent trying to influence the Commission. A lot of that time lands up wasted. The Commission doesn’t take on board your ideas, policy recommendations and solutions. There are 11 reasons they don’t.
11 reasons your ideas are not taken up by the Commission
- You don’t know the rules of the game.
- You don’t know how to play the rules of the game.
- You are not skilled at playing the game. You are an enthusiastic debutante.
- You don’t have a compelling case and story.
- Your case and story are not backed up by credible evidence.
- You step into the game late in the day as the game is about to end, or more often than not after the game has ended.
- You present your case in such a way that the audience has little to no idea what you are saying. They nod politely, thank you, and don’t return your calls.
- You present deeply unpopular views, that are so out of sync with accepted wisdom, that only a Klingon would entertain them.
- Your supporters and fans would lead any right-thinking official to support the other side.
- You develop selective amnesia and don’t recognise that the other side is the governments you are up against. They own the ground you are playing on.
- You forget that the game you are playing is not just a pure-play technocratic match. You are playing a political game, with political rules.
If you do a root cause analysis of any case when you failed to persuade the Commission, it is likely going to be for one of these reasons. Use this checklist and let me know if you snatched defeat from the jaws of victory because of one of these avoidable reasons.