About the Bleikers

Hans, Annemarie & Jennifer Bleiker

We are a husband-and-wife, and now daughter too, firm.

You ask WHY we do what we do?

It’s not really about us, it’s about YOU — and the mission the public gave you.

Each of us had professional aspirations that had nothing to do with teaching, citizen participation, or even making government more effective.

Yet — here we are.

The three of us derailed ourselves from perfectly good, honorable, profitable careers (about which you can read more about below) —

— because we couldn’t let another public-sector professional fail to implement his/her mandate when we had the recipe to help them succeed. 

Don’t let your work end up on a shelf

As we see it — if you work in a legitimate public agency — your work is downright VITAL.

Your expertise is worth too much to be wasted on developing proposals that don’t get implemented.

The public gave you your mission to address certain problems and opportunities.

The public NEEDS YOU to succeed in fulfilling your mission.

If you fail at accomplishing that mission, then we ALL fail — because those problems don’t go away.

Our methodology has an impressive track-record of giving professionals with important missions the tools to succeed.

We’ve trained between 30,000 and 40,000 public-sector professionals — people just like YOU.

We have a huge list of references, testimonials, and quotes.

If you work on legitimate problems, and use our approach to get your FIERCEST opponents’ Informed Consent, we can almost guarantee your ability to fulfill the mandate the public gave you. 

That’s why for each of us, it feels fantastic to provide people like you with the tools to get the job done.

Making government more effective isn’t just good for public-sector professionals, it has healing effects for the community at large.

That, is why the three of us eagerly devote ourselves to teaching, mentoring, and coaching problem-solvers like you.

    • We believe public agencies were meant to be Problem-Solving entities,
      • Not to create bureaucratic red-tape.
    • We believe you get up every morning because you understand how CRITICAL your mission is.
      • Not so you can feed at the government trough.
    • We believe, if your work is technically rigorous, lacking Informed Consent is the only thing that will keep you from fulfilling your mission.
      • Not budget constraints, not the political climate, or NIMBY.

Hans Bleiker, Lead Instructor

Annemarie Bleiker, President & Instructor

Jennifer Bleiker, Instructor & Online Content Developer

Informed Consent:

Our “Hidden” Agenda

Imagine: not only having the know-how, the training and expertise it takes to tackle the mission the public gave you, but the political savvy too.

Picture yourself: able to implement your most important (and controversial) work without making any concessions on your technical work.

Imagine: NOT having your best work put on the shelf because it’s “just too controversial,” or being torpedoed by NIMBY or NIMTOO (Not In My Term Of Office) opposition, or even by budget constraints.

Too good to be true?

Not in our experience.

This is a reality for the 30,000 – 40,000 professionals (just like you) we’ve trained.

 

What’s Your Problem?

So why can some public-sector professionals implement their work while you and your colleagues hardly tread water?

  • Their public is NO more warm and fuzzy than yours,
  • Their Decision-Makers are NO more impressed by their competence or technical work than yours,
  • Their budget restrictions and pressures to tighten up on resources is NO less than what you feel,
  • Their Silent Majority is NOT any more involved than it is in your working community.
  • They DON’T even do more public involvement, they DON’T hold more meetings, NOR do they rally more support.

None of the above is what sets you apart from Implementation Geniuses. 

 

So what the heck is it?!? . . .  It’s Informed Consent.

Implementations Geniuses ensure they have Informed Consent, whereas you don’t. 

 

While working diligently on technical material, Implementation Geniuses develop Informed Consent:

  • Internally, with their supervisors and subordinates,
  • Externally, with supporters and Decision-Makers, but
  • Especially with their work’s fiercest opponents.

Are Implementation Geniuses experts in Citizen Participation?  Public Involvement?  Citizen Engagement?

Nope.

They DON’T do more Public Participation, they aren’t masters of holding meetings…

But they DO do it differently.  Methodically.  Intentionally.  Systematically.

 

In fact, the three of us (Hans, Annemarie & Jennifer) never would have guessed we would have opted to spend our lives teaching, coaching, and mentoring folks like you on a subject we don’t care much about — Citizen Participation.

Heck, we published a best-selling text on that subject, yet we don’t find Citizen Participation in itself very interesting!

We only care about making YOU more effective.

Our “hidden agenda” is to make government work as the problem-solving entity our nation’s Founders intended it to be.

We aren’t REALLY here to teach you about Citizen Participation, or even to woo you into thinking Informed Consent is in itself all that amazing.

Our sole purpose is to help YOU get the job done.  Solve problems.  Address opportunities.

We are here to help you fulfill the (legitimate and important) mission the public gave you.

With our approach, you can go from shelf to shovel. 

 

Why all the talk about Citizen Participation?

Citizen Participation is the vehicle to get from here (frustrated, torpedoed, shelved) to there (implemented, mission fulfilled, problem solved).

To be focused on the tool itself, as are many others who offer training in Citizen Participation or Public Participation, isn’t the end of the world . . .

It just isn’t what is important or interesting to us.

We’d rather spend our time and our lives helping you SOLVE PROBLEMS and accomplish your mission.

 

Think of it this way:

  • If there’s something seriously wrong with your car, you want your mechanic to use the right tool to fix the problem.
    • Not just grab his favorite wrench and start grinding away without first identifying what’s wrong.
  • If you have a mysterious ailment with serious symptoms, you need your doctor to focus on making you healthy, rather than prematurely grabbing a medication that may or may not resolve the underlying illness.
    • If she sends you off for radiation treatment because there’s a new regime that has proven to be really successful with certain cancers, that doesn’t mean it’s the right solution for you.
  • If you have a piano that needs tuning and the repairman shows up with only a hammer, but he’s really skilled at using that hammer, you’d be wise to keep him from touching your piano.
  • Similarly, if the public doesn’t understand what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, or why you’re making the recommendations you do — then you have symptoms that something is broken in your relationship with your public.

But without further diagnosis work, it’s not clear if it’s a matter of:

  • Mistrust
  • Misinformation
  • Alternative agendas by some stakeholders
  • Misperceptions
  • Political angling, or
  • Something entirely different

 

From Shelf to Shovel

We help you diagnose what’s REALLY wrong before you go grab a tool, an instrument, or a Public Participation technique.

If you misdiagnose what’s wrong, how can you remedy it?

Once you know what’s broken in your relationship with your public, THEN you can select the most suitable, more effective Citizen Participation tool to fix it.

That’s why we aren’t necessarily fans of Public Participation in of itself.

It’s a means to an end. . . Getting the job done.

Get your most important work off the shelf and into the community.

Use our Consent-Building methodology to solve the problems your public needs you to solve.