As community consultation and stakeholder engagement practices continue to grow… I believe negotiating, conflict and dispute resolution skills are going to be as important… if not more important… than media relations and crisis communications skills. This is only one sentence from Jean Valin’s recent remarks at Puerto Rico’s recent Annual Conference (see recent post). Here attached you may find the full text Puerto Rico Speech Power of PR Sep 06.doc of his important speech. Jean Valin, Canadian, is past Chair of the Global Alliance.
I totally agree with Jean, to the point that I think the time has come to focus our discourse (and of course our acquisition of competences) on the value that a public relator brings to an organization by improving its decision making process and accelerating the time of its operational implementation. While many other arguments related to the value of pr are either fuzzy or do not seem really to touch the mind and the heart of top management, it seems to me that in an era where more and more internal and external stakeholder groups demand to be involved in the decision making process as well as decide to resist the implementation of decisions in which they have not been involved, a proven methodology to include stakeholder groups in the decision making process without being caught by the paralysis by analysis syndrome, if of huge business value to any organization. From this point of view, next week in Rome the Global Alliance is holding in Rome, Italy a ‘special session’ in the context of the World Congress on Communication for Development (October 25-27) dedicated to The Role of Public Relations in changing the scenario of international development
°Promoting 26 thousand new micro entrepreneurships in India on behalf of Hindustan Lever Limited through a micro finance program for underprivileged women;
°Defining adequate public policies to achieve sustainable mobility in European metropolitan areas on behalf of Mo.Ve, a Bruxelles based NGO;
°Involving active stakeholders in Nigeria to assess the environmental impact of a $7 bn. processing plant and distribution terminal in the Niger Delta on behalf of BRASS LNG .
These are three highly different and recent experiences in which the early inclusion of public relations competences before taking operative decisions (rather than following these, as usually happens), have helped to improve the quality of those decisions and to accelerate their time of implementation.
The cases will be presented and discussed on Friday 27 from noon to 1.30 pm at FAO’s Rome Headquarters. More than 600 are the communicators, governement representatives and scholars from all over the world who will be participatig to the Congress.
The presenters will be:
°Dr. Jon White, Honorary Professor at the University of Birmingham’s School of Business and associate to the Henley Management College in London, will introduce, chair and moderate the session which will feature, as presenters of the three mentioned cases:
°John Paluszek, Senior Counsel, Ketchum and Ambassador at large for the Global Alliance (USA)
°Toni Muzi Falconi, Chairman of Methodos, Professor of Global Relations and Intercultural Communication at New York University and of Public Relations at Rome’s Lumsa University (Italy)
°Adebisi Olowoyo, Corporate Safety, Health and Enviromnent Manager of BRASS LNG Limited, (Nigeria).and Peter Walker, Executive Chairman of PIELLE Consulting Group (UK).
Each of these three cases will illustrate how Public Relations competences are applied to listen to, understand and interpret stakeholder expectations to organizational management in order to include these expectations in operational decision making to facilitate implementation.
Rein,
sorry for this tardive response to your stimulating note.
I will send your email address to all those who are interested in contacting him, but I wish to avoid you falling into the intense spam attack this blog has been under in these last days. truly unbereable.
The dutch case requires some careful monitoring and I wonder whether you could not contact some University to open up a research on this case, maybe with the support of the dutch Automobile Club? I believe that every case of this nature that we can track, follow in order to demonstrate that this approach works will be extremely useful for the future of our profession.
You always learn more from failures than from so called successes!
Some years ago the Dutch minister of Transport tried to get an substantial policy change (road pricing)implemented by some clever wheeling and dealing (offering some big cities significant revenues). This approach was immediately crushed by a coalition of the Dutch automobileclub and the largest Dutch newspaper.
Now the new Dutch approach ‘Anders betalen voor Mobiliteit (ABvM)’ (Paying Differently for Mobility)is a good example of ‘lessons learned’ and is focussed from the start (with a new minister of transport)to create at first broad public support (by a intensive consulting process of the major stakeholders), then political support. During this long and complex development and implementation process (2004 – 2012)which will bring variable pricing of mobility, another system for taxation of mobility, etc., etc. the communication will have a central key position. Indeed also the Dutch automobile club (that is now supporting this new approach) is pro-actively monitoring the opinions of its members regarding pricing of mobility.
In short this Dutch case showes that a well concepted communication approach might at first take a lot of time, but in the end the development and implementation of a new mobility policy goes much faster.
I think that as this is valid on a national(Dutch)level,it will prove to be also valid on a supranational EU-level when the EU wants to develop a policy for urban mobility (Green Paper expected in 2007)!
If somebody wants to discuss this case and/or wants to know more about this fascinating process in the direction of sustainable mobility feel free to contact me.