A checklist for helping you work out why is your message not landing

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A good rule of thumb for successful lobbying is to engage with the right person, at the right time, with the right message.

If that were all there was to it, there would be a lot more successful lobbying going on and victory parties in Brussels.

A lot of the time, your message does not land. So even if you step in at the right time, with the right people, your message does not persuade.

Why is your message not landing

Here are some obvious reasons:

  1. Your message is not clear.
  2. Your message is in the wrong language for the audience.
  3. Your message communicates the wrong values to the target audience.
  4. Your message is politically unpalatable.
  5. Your message is off the reservation.
  6. Your message is delivered too early or too late.
  7. Your messenger can’t communicate.
  8. You want to present your message, on your terms, from your perspective and have not thought about the audience.
  9. You don’t realise your message is not landing
  10. Your message is understood but rejected

It is hard work to get your message right for the target audience.  Most lobbyists don’t have the time or the inclination to deep dive into what would persuade the target audience. If you don’t, all of your hard work is likely going to go waste.

How to improve the chances of your message landing well

  1. You need to make sure your message is clear. That means your policy asks, evidence, and solutions are clear to both the expert and non-expert alike. There can’t be mutual contradictions on what you want.
  2. Your message must be in a language for the target audience. Many technical and policy experts write as if they were at a post-doctoral retreat discussing an issue understood by 100 people worldwide.  Use the appropriate level of language for your target audience. A safe way to go is plain English.
  3. If you are a ‘settler’ who wants no change and harks back to the ‘idyllic past’, your values are unlikely to persuade a prospector, let alone a pioneer.  You need to know what makes your target audience tick.
  4. You are working in the realms of changing political decisions. Whilst  “Nothing is More Powerful than an Idea Whose Time has Come”, if you have not done the groundwork to get your idea on the agenda, it won’t be taken up. See the ‘Overton Window’.
  5. If what you want is only championed by those on the fringes, you have a challenge. Your ideas need to be supported by the political mainstream. If the likes of former Roger Helmer are your allies, you will lose.
  6. You must get your message to the right people at the right time. For that, you need to know the right time to step in. The right time is not the same time as something is publically decided. It is earlier. I’ve chunked down the steps for adopting both ordinary and secondary legislation, and most of the key moments to step in and influence are not public.
  7. A good advocate is a rare creature in Brussels. You need a person who can communicate at the right level for the audience, clearly, precisely, and with empathy and humility.  You need to give the audience time to digest what you are putting forward and give them time to ask questions. Don’t try and waterboard them with ‘evidence’, speaking fast in a language known to 5 people.  And, it is unlikely that anyone can persuade anyone who is not already on side on the first meeting. That is called hypnosis.  It takes a good relationship built on trust.
  8. You need to personalise the message you present for every person you want to persuade.  Try and think about the issue from their perspective and amend what you are going to say/write from that basis. Most people don’t think about their audience.
  9. You need to check that your message is landing and is persuading people to support you. If not, all your hard work has been a waste of time. If it is not working, think if you want to change. If it working, see if you can refine and improve your message to bring even more people over to your side and strengthen support.
  10. The only real measure of success is if your position is backed and voted into law. Nothing else is important. If people support you for totally different reasons than you put forward, live with it. A lot of the time, by the time you get involved, positions are so entrenched that even though your position is understood and sometimes even sympathised with, the people who need to support you won’t.  Influencing public policy and political decisions is not easy.

A Visual

As a decision tree, it would look something like this.

 

 

If you went through this checklist today, how many yeses and nos would you get?

This is part of a longer piece on practical steps to improve your success in lobbying.