Managing Phony Issues & Conflict on Social Media

Managing Phony Issues & Conflict on Social Media

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Managing Phony Issues & Conflict on Social Media

During Clinic #96 on “Protect Your Work from Citizen Anger (and Politics!)”, we outlined how to prevent being end-run by your projects’ opponents.

More importantly, how to see end-runs as a symptom of a problem — rather than the problem itself.

If minimizing pseudo-input is key, what can professionals do about the massive amounts of phony issues being slung all over Social Media?

This is worth a whole webinar of its own! (In fact, it will be the crux of the Clinic #99.)

There is SO much mis-information on the Internet, much of which your public cannot decipher from facts related to your work —  don’t think you’re going to combat that volume of content.

But you can get pretty close!

What you can do, is take note. A lot of notes actually.

Keep a running list of what pseudo-issues are being shared on Social Media.

Use Social Media as a listening device — even if most of what you’re hearing is garbage.

Try to identify who is generating and perpetuating these issues. (Not publicly, but for your own understanding of what communication lapses your team isn’t already aware of.)

If fake issues circulating (about your project) are getting ANY traction on the web, you need to know it!

You can’t possibly address these phony issues, and help the public see them as “pseudo-input” if you aren’t even aware of them.

Use Social Media, to deepen your understanding of the whole ecosystem of phony issues, mis-information, or misunderstandings and the people who promote them.

Even though these issues are misleading for stakeholders, and qualify as “pseudo-input”, you have to publicly identify each issue as such before soliciting for real input.

If an online user says “No, don’t do it!” — that isn’t input unless you:

  • – Didn’t anticipate that reaction from anyone.
  • – Expected to hear that from other stakeholders, but not THAT stakeholder.
  • – Had no idea this person, group, or sister agency saw themselves affected by your project.

If that’s the case, then that’s a symptom that you also need to have a better handle on who your PAIs (Potentially Affected Interests) are, and how they see your organization and Mission (Clinic #95)… As well as what pseudo-issues they are conflating with bona fide issues.

Granted, scanning Social Media and online outlets for phony issues isn’t exactly fun, nor where your expertise is…

However, once you demonstrate that you have a complete handle on nearly all the pseudo-input out there, have adequate responses to each, you’ll help clarify what is real input, and what is pseudo-input, for the rest of the public.

Do that, and you’ll have made some serious progress!

 

Learn more about:

  • – preventing pseudo-input,
  • – dealing with stakeholder emotions, and of course
  • – how to keep politics from interfering with your effectiveness

by selecting from nearly 100 topics in our Clinic Library.

Anti-Government Stakeholders Expect More of You than They Realize From Citizen Participation

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It’s not news to you that the public expect things —

  • Roads to be maintained . . .
  • Restaurants not to make them sick . . .
  • Water to be safe to drink . . .
  • Schools to educate kids . . .
  • First responders to aid in emergencies . . .

But — did you realize, that INCLUDES stakeholders with “anti-government” attitudes?

  • They too expect these things (and MUCH more) from government — which is YOU.

Know the secret to unwinding this paradox? 

How do you get those who profess to HATE government — who make calls for a smaller and “more competent” government, for blanket cuts to organizations and regulation — to realize the don’t really mean what they say?  That they need government agencies like yours, just as much as anyone…?

One way is through your Citizen Participation.

  • Beware, that does NOT mean more public involvement.
  • It means doing your outreach in a strategic way — aimed to diffuse anti-government sentiments so they realize the paradox themselves. 

Your Citizen Participation has to create a paradigm shift in the minds of anti-government stakeholders.

  • Chances are, your current Citizen Participation is actually exacerbating this paradox.

 

While this is no small task, it’s entirely doable! 

In Clinic #77, we help you see how to create Citizen Participation that diffuses such hatred, and illuminates the true expectations and needs of these anti-government stakeholders.

During this clinic, we cover

  1.  How you set up a room can contribute to the “Us vs. Them” misperception your public has
  2.  FOIA requests — are you triggering them?  How do you respond when your receive one?
  3.  Chances are, at least some — if not all — of your Citizen Participation is well intentioned, but wrong-headed.
  4.  Are you inviting the public’s input, when there’s no room in the technical process for it?
  5.  Do you expect your public to buy your solution before you’ve sold the problem?

All of our training, including these monthly clinics, are aimed to HELP YOU . . .

Don’t buy into the rhetoric that

  • there’s nothing you can do about anti-government attitudes
  • there’s nothing you can do about “politics”
  • changing opponents’ minds

None of that is true!

It isn’t easy, but PREVENTING and HEALING Anti-Government attitudes is entirely doable.

 

For 45-minutes, turn off your phone and close your email so you don’t miss out on how YOU CAN DO THIS.

Get the Recording of Clinic #77

Social Media: A Tool or Weapon for Informed Consent Building?

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Social Media is so much more than a high-tech medium.
But you already knew that, right?

It’s what we call, a “Meta Consent-Building Tool”.

IF (big IF!) you know how to use it, it can do SO much for your effectiveness, credibility, and legitimacy.

Of course, it could just as easily ruin you.

That’s the thing, it’s a great tool, or a weapon — depending on HOW and WHO is using it!

This webinar is geared JUST FOR YOU — if you ever ask yourself:

    • Should we use Social Media? Or will it just put a big target on our back?!?
    • How the heck do we know what to post?
    • What are the risks for a public-sector organization like ours (and/or our clients)?
    • Is there a recipe we can follow when using Social Media?
    • What if someone is using Social Media to spread rumors and misinformation?
    • How do we get the public to engage with us in a meaningful way?
    • What can we do when someone post their opinions as “facts”?

Even if you aren’t ready to get our Guide to Cracking the Code on Digital Engagement & Social Media, you can still download our FREE 7-Point Social Media Checklist.

  • These tools were designed with YOU and your public-sector mission (and critics) in mind.

Don’t Jump to Decision Making Solutions! Protecting Your Public from Fatal Conflict Resolution Pitfalls

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Consent-Building Clinic #72: Recorded September 2015

Help! When we involve stakeholders early in our planning process – which is something we strive to do – many of them jump prematurely to a solution.”

This can happen even with the more sophisticated stakeholders, such as other government agencies. They immediately want to know: “What are going to DO?” . . . This, at a time when you’re still in the head-scratching phase of trying to understand what the problem is. The trouble is: Early in the process you normally DON’T yet know what the solution is that you’re going to wind up proposing.

 

And yet, if you begin to reach out to these stakeholders only AFTER you’ve decided what solution you’re going to propose, they’re likely to say: “NOW you come to us, AFTER you’ve decided what to do?!”

What we have here, is a head-on collision of several Public Involvement truths:

  • The most constructive public involvement results from EARLY – and continuing – involvement.
  • The first nine steps in any Problem-Solving/Decision-Making process have to do with understanding the Problem and its causes. For example, in our 16-step planning process “Generating Solutions” is Step 10 . . . i.e. It is NOT an early step.
  • But, the human brain – even the brain of subject-matter experts – tends to race almost IMMEDIATELY to the Solution Generation step . . . side-stepping, short-changing, pole-vaulting-over . . . the several Problem Analysis steps . . . It appears that THIS mistake is in our DNA! So, of course your stakeholders are going to make it. Just be sure YOU don’t make it!

 

As is true of so many of the frustrations on which our Brownbag sessions focus, there is a lot more to this particular one than meets the eye. The three enumerated statements, above, ARE true.

The trouble is, every time you think you’re going to involve your stakeholders early in your process, . . . WHAMMO! . . . these three truths collide head-on, creating a public involvement car-wreck!

 

Always remember: It’s for stuff like this, i.e. for figuring out how to minimize damage to your effectiveness in Public Involvement car-wrecks, that you are paid the huge salaries that you are paid (ha!).

Tune in; we’ll do all we can to help you pull the fat out of the fire for your team and demonstrate to your team and your supervisors that you’re worth every dollar of that “humongous” salary.

Get the Recording