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Relationships

Canberra is a place where who you know matters. Policy is made and funding is allocated by multiple, interconnected decisions-makers at many levels within the bureaucracy as well as in Parliament House.

Successful engagement requires identifying the key decision-makers working on agendas that will influence your business or organisation, connecting with them and building lasting relationships of trust. Your target relationships won’t just be with politicians. Your allies might include the media, think tanks and universities, senior bureaucrats, alliances and collaborative partners.

Lynchpin Advocacy can help you map your strategic relationships, make connections and build engagement plans that ensure you will be at the right tables with the right people when decisions are being made.

Strategy

Successful engagement requires detailed understanding of how government processes and bureaucracy work. Policy making and budget allocation are influenced by the political climate, the legislative calendar, trends in public administration and the views and predilections of key decision-makers. You need to understand all of these elements in order to plan when, where and how to pitch for results. Good strategy begins with asking some important questions:

  • What laws and programs impacting your business/organisation are in currently in place?

  • What policy process (Ministerial and Cabinet decisions, departmental consultations and discussion briefs, reports and white paper, regulatory impact statements) are coming down the pipeline?

  • Who will be making the decisions?

  • Who controls the money?

  • Who influences the decision makers?

  • When is the best time to engage?

Lynchpin Advocacy can help you interrogate these questions and develop a strategy to set realistic objectives which are achievable in the current political climate. Ambit claims may be lofty and pure but are rarely achievable. Your strategy needs to break bigger goals into smaller, more pragmatic steps, which can be rolled out in an ongoing engagement implementation plan.

Evidence

One of the primary rules of government engagement is that you never take a meeting without bringing some evidence to put on the table. Get specific: what is the problem/opportunity and what do we recommend?

You will need a set of carefully tailored ‘asks’ to present to your identified stakeholders and these asks need to be backed-up with evidence. This can come in many forms including technical/scientific research, industry surveys, economic modelling and policy analysis. Your evidence can then be crafted into a range of engagement tools to suit your objectives:

  • Policy brief – a short, sharp and shiny one-pager that captures the key background, analysis and asks
  • Policy paper – a more detailed document, usually no more than 10 pages, which contains more material for technical/bureaucratic/expert stakeholders
  • Submissions – carefully crafted position papers designed for formal processes where government has invited contributions from business/non-government/ community groups
  • Elevator pitch – a three-minute spiel that tells your whole story in the time it takes you to get from the ground floor to the tenth floor should you find yourself in the lift with one of your target Ministers/decision makers
  • Meeting talking points – the five, one-sentence dot points you want to make sure you cover in your meeting
  • Media release – raising awareness of issues and garnering support through mainstream and social media can have a big impact on decision-makers

Whatever form your evidence takes, it should be presented in clear and direct language, avoiding technical and bureaucratic jargon. Lynchpin Advocacy has 30 years’ experience in writing for government and can help you craft compelling evidence to support your objectives.

Engagement & Influence

Successful engagement requires that the right person, at the right time be in the right place with the right message to achieve influence. It’s not rocket science, but if you get it wrong you can seriously harm your strategy.

Influence is about communicating the benefits and solutions you bring to the table. Defining and measuring how and what your business or organisation contributes to the economy, the nation and its people is crucial to getting a foot in the door. Telling your compelling story helps you gain traction, draw attention to your issues and garner support.

Ahead of your engagement meetings, Lynchpin Advocacy can help prepare you with background briefings on the positions, views and objectives of your stakeholders, as well as tailoring your evidence materials to suit specific stakeholder interests and opportunities.