Lists and lessons

Mark Pack has a very good post up on Lib-Dem Voice – advice for budding politicians: ‘30 things every would-be politician should do this summer‘ (he was inspired by a similar post for aspiring journalists elsewhere).

I really don't know if Niccolò would endorse this advice...

Thirty is a big number – too big for me. But I’ve got a few observations that I’ve been working on that I’d like to offer – in beta – that are intended to help people who are already politicians adapt to the way that interactivity has changed the way that public life is conducted.

There are new possibilities, pitfalls and expectations that need to be met. Here are my ten (draft) ground rules for interactive public representation.

Some of them involve a fundamental rethinking of the standard advice that has been offered to young politicians through the ages:

Cut your workload by effective listening. A lack of thinking-time results in indecision and procrastination. Find ways of asking for solutions to small problems and internalising the answers without it disrupting your work. Establish a network of informers – people who will give you short summaries of the key questions that you are facing and answers to little questions. A briefing on how you consume shared information will help here. This is what Twitter can do for you.
Build a network of people that you deal with. Social networks are important – they ensure that you have a well of goodwill to draw upon. New technologies allow you to stay in the peripheral vision of large numbers of people. You can even approach a sub-set of your networks and invite them to take very simple steps that will promote your work more widely. To join your ‘relay team’.
Find ways of keeping that network informed without doing any extra work. Increasingly, you can show your networks that you’ve read / done / attended something by adapting your personal systems. Many effective communicators use social networking tools effortlessly once they’ve investigated how some APIs and RSS feeds work (you can ask a social media geek to spend a short time sorting this out for you if you need to). This can effortlessly solicit useful recommendations and let the people who work with you know what you’re really interested in. Remember, we all vastly overestimate how much the people we need to know about us actually do know.
Switch ‘broadcast’ off. There are ways of effortlessly providing your network of informers with positive feedback and evidence that you have heard them. This will motivate them to provide you with more, better information. The really valuable thing that social networks offer is a cluster of articulate people that you can eavesdrop upon (in a non-sinister, non-intrusive way, naturally). Broadcast is becoming less useful to you anyway for reasons that I’ll come to shortly.
Don’t ask for solutions – ask for descriptions of problems. To do the former will attract lobbyists and force you into a frustrating auction of promises. Doing the latter will give you time to think, allow rival pressure groups to neutralise each other, and help build a consensus around any decisions that you ultimately make. Your network of informers and staff need to understand that you expect high standards from those who brief you but this often encourages rather than discourages them. Psychiatrists never tell you what do to. They tell you to talk through your problems. The right answers suggest themselves. That’s ‘the talking cure’.
Show your working. By making decisions in a more transparent way, you can explain trade-offs, enhance your reputation for inclusivity and avoid accusations of partiality. The ‘crowdsource a description of the problem’ advice helps here. In the past, this involved bureaucracies and checks and balances. It created monopolies and gatekeepers. It is so much easier to do this now in a highly visible, productive and human way. This is what a blog can help you with.
Certainty stops you thinking and silences your advisors. Projecting an air of open-mindedness and a willingness to be persuaded results in better decisions and fewer unintended consequences.
Avoid unnecessary partisanship. Politicians always overestimate how much it impresses others. It creates unwanted enemies and cuts off the valuable flow of information that your networks can bring you. Politicians often confess that their best advice sometimes comes from candid and not-unfriendly opponents
The ‘big idea’ is dead. Think about it. When is the last time that a politician or organisation ‘unveiled’ a ‘solution’ or a ‘Big Idea’ that no-one had thought of before? Remember how well that was received? Forget it. People don’t want to read your prescriptions. They want to work with you to write them. Your problem – indeed, this may be the biggest ethical challenge that you face – is how you ensure that your interactivity doesn’t skew your decisions in favour of the interests of ‘active citizens’ and away from those of people with mild preferences or those who are unable or unwilling to interact with you when you’re framing your policies.
Be good. There was a time that politicians could inhabit a closed order in which they were only judged by the standards of their caste. Those days are over. By being open and interactive, by building a network of friends and informers, by showing your working and being inclusive in the way you make decisions, you will be able to take your place among the more trusted and respected associates that the public encounter every day.