A model to measure strategic communications quality

This has been floating around at the back of my mind for sometime and finally I've put it down on a piece of paper (or rather on a PDF but it looks quite a lot like paper).

I reckon, that in terms of strategic communications, it is possible to tell a good organisation from a bad one. It is also possible to improve a bad organisation so that it gets better at strategic comms. This model is my first attempt to provide a tool to allow that to be done in a systematic way.

This is how it works. There are five sections. Within each section there are up to five statements or groups of statements with an associated score. If the statement can be said, with evidence, to fairly describe the organisation in question then the associated score should be allocated to the organisation. In each section only one statement should be used to deliver the score.

The scores for each section can then be added. The total score gives a measure of strategic communications quality relative to a theoretical ideal. An organisation meeting the highest quality statement in each section would score 39.

So if you can fairly say:

Our customers understand what we are seeking to achieve and they can explain how we keep them informed/ Our customers also understand how to influence our decisions and they can explain how their views influence our decisions.

Then you can award yourself 10 points

But if the best you can manage is

We provide some information about what we are seeking to achieve but we do not know whether customers understand this. Our customers can't explain how they influence our decisions.

Then the best you can have is 3 points.

I've put a worked example in the PDF which is for a (entirely fictional) IT consultancy which scores 12/39. Then they can use the model to see what improvements would bring the biggest benefit in terms of scores (in the example the board can get better or they can improve customer relations).

Download it here and let me know what you make of it.

Ask people stuff, do stuff better

It's a red letter day in my household because, following months of waiting, the Place Survey results are finally out. Now I understand that not everyone is as fascinated as I am by the results of opinion polls undertaken by local councils but honestly, this is cracking stuff.

For the less nerdy amongst you, a quick re-cap. For some years now local councils (and some other local service providers) have been subject to a data collection and monitoring regime called Best Value. Essentially the government forced Councils to collect a load of numbers about their services and report them annually. This they did. These numbers (called Best Value Performance Indicators or BVPIs) were then used to monitor bodies to set targets and put at the heart of the inspection regime. BVPIs were much maligned for reasons that need not detain us here.

BVPIs have been done away with and replaced with a radical new regime under which councils are forced to collect a load of numbers and report them annually. In an exciting twist the numbers are less directly connected with Council services but more connected with the experience of the citizen. They are being used to set targets and at the heart of a new inspection regime. Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose as the man said.

A set of these National Indicators are gathered in an opinion survey undertaken by each local authority in a standard way. This means we can compare the performance of local public service providers. You can be sure that doe-eyed performance officers have today been looking at how their area shapes up compared to others in England (the other nations escape all this madness).

Local papers will be bombarded with the exciting news that Sedgemoor has the most popular rubbish dumps in the country. Not complaining, I'd do the same. But there is more interest to be had from the data.

I'd like to draw your attention to National Indicator 27 which asks people to what extent you agree that the Police and other local public service providers seek people's views about anti-social behaviour and crime in the local area. Overall about 25% of people think that they do and about 26% think that they are doing something to tackle it (National Indicator 21).

Now you and I probably think that seeking people's views on crime and anti-social behaviour is the sort of thing the police (and councils) should be doing but not everyone agrees. Where's the evidence they might say? What's the point? And now you have an answer in the graph at the top which plots the scores for public bodies seeking views against the scores for people saying they think something is being done to tackle community safety issues.

So it turns out that if you ask people what they think then either you do a better job or they are happier with the job you're doing. And in terms of this new load of numbers either will do.

Community involvement. What for?

I really must encourage you to spend some time with the snappily titled "Empowering communities to influence local decision making. A systematic review of the evidence" which has just been published. It was commissioned by the Communities and Local Government department in the UK government. It is densely written but not un-readable and buried within its academic prose are some absolutely riveting nuggets.

Now if you have stumbled on this blog because of my posts concerning the RSPCA's media strategy then this may not be the post for you. Call back soon; I'll be criticising another much loved charity. If you are involved in communication for local authorities, housing associations, health services or the myriad other bodies that might be congealed into a local strategic partnership then read on. For you it's going to be (quite) interesting.

The review has looked at a range of ways in which communities have been brought in to influence local decision making. It also looked at ways in which this might have been expected to bring benefits. Then it looked at whether these benefits did in fact accrue.

Quick sidebar. What a good idea it would be to list, when planning a new community engagement strategy for example, all the benefits that we would like our strategy to deliver.

It is the section on community governance that pricked my interest. This looks at projects that aim to involve communities in the governance or management structure of a project (think housing association board or local strategic partnership).

Who benefits?

They said that community governance could bring benefits to up to three areas: to the decisions that are made, to the participants and (or) to the community. I have provided a sophisticated diagram summarising this. Which has appeared to the left here.

Then after a great deal of use of the word Boolean they say that there seem to be four types of community governance in use and that these have different strengths and weaknesses. They bring benefits to some areas but not, necessarily all.

Which type are you?

The four types are organisational proxy, semi-professional, local knowledge or expertise, local representation. Not titles that trip off the tongue but let's briefly go through them.

Organisational proxy is a form of engagement where voluntary groups (or even an organisation representing voluntary groups) sits on a board or partnership to represent the members of a given community (they are their proxies you see). Interestingly the authors struggle to identify any benefits flowing from this model. They also mention that VCS representatives (for so are they named by bureaucrats) often get a reputation as "the usual suspects" and in consequence are sidelined in any case. I certainly recognise this from a number of partnerships I've been involved in. It is devisive and destructive. Just don't do it.

Semi-professional is the model where people from the community are recruited (often in a formal way with an application and interview) to serve on partnerships and boards. Usually it is their personal skills and abilities rather than their community links which get them selected. This model does at least show some benefits to decision making and the individuals involved often benefit from training and skills development. They can't find evidence of benefit to the members of the community though.

Local knowledge is where people from the community are invited to play a role in decision making because they are the experts on the local area. They don't play a role in the final decision though. The authors said about half of the case studies they looked at were this sort of engagement and it is easy to see why: many public bodies prefer to retain decision making for councillors or board members but are happy to provide them with evidence in the form of community views. The report finds that it is usually difficult to see the link to the actual decisions and that very often those taking part recieve little support themselves. So there may be little benefit to decision making and little benefit to the participants. There could be some benefit to the wider community.

This is an interesting area because it should lead to better decision making but mostly doesn't.

Finally local representation is their term for a situation where memebrs of the community take part in decisions and are open and accountable to their community for their decisions. Case studies only got included in this category if they also showed ways in which members of the community were supported and involved in the process as well as having their representatives taking decisions.

It's a big ask in resource terms. It is the only situation they looked at where decision-making, participants and the wider community all benefit. They called it the best for of community empowerment.

In conclusion

I have to say I find simple models like this pretty useful. Every situation is different of course but looking at a new project or an existing scheme or partnership and asking which of the four types it most closely resembles and who benefits from the process could be the first step on to developing better forms of engagemnet and empowerment in your area.

Dennis Skinner MP may be the only one who gets it

The big mystery surrounding the Telegraph's apparently unstoppable run of revelations into MP's expenses claims is why our erstwhile representatives are just waiting. They know that the Telegraph has all of the data. They know that they have locked a bunch of people in a room to do (for once) some proper reporting. They must, therefore, know that the paper will eventually report whatever they have been up to.

So the only prudent thing to do is to get the story out first and explain yourself while you do it.

So why is Dennis Skinner the only MP to have appeared in the Guardian pre-empting a Telegraph report? Admittedly he has little to be concerned about but it's still the smart move.

Cnut, Jenkins and the law of Brownian motion

I wonder if they still do the experiment with smoke at schools to observe Brownian motion. Essentially you peer down a microscope at tiny particles suspened in air and track the complex paths that these particles follow. In doing this you are following in the footsteps of scientist Robert Brown who gave his name to these paths. What causes the complex shifts and changes in direction is the result of many tiny collisions at the microscopic level. Imagine a huge gang of people surrounding and running together towards a giant beachball. The ball will move but you won't be able to predict the direction.

The same effect can be observed in the media coverage of the MP's expenses scandal. Journalists are pushing in one direction, MPs another, the public have joined in, lobbyists and activists are running to the scene. There's an election so minor parties, PPCs, and councillors all want their piece of the action. The police, the speaker and the CPS have all been sucked in. The story is bouncing, not at random but in complex and unpredictable directions. 

So it is impressive that the electoral reform lobby managed to judge the moment and move the story in their direction. This is only possible because so much work has been done with the political class over the past ten years to embed the possibility of reform. Once it was mentioned, many people clutched at the issue as a way to move the story on. This helps journalists who are becoming bored at yet more duck islands and it helps MPs who want to talk about something, anything else. So there was a lurch in that direction but everyone's caught up now and so the Brownian jumps start all over again. 

Cnut isn't everyone's choice of poster child for public relations but he is well worth hanging above your desk. You will recall that he proved the limits of his wordly power by ordering the tide to stop. To no effect. Everyone caught up in the current maelstrom should remember that we can ride and harness the tides but we still cannot control them. 

David Cameron hopes that he can reap the whirlwind of reform without having to deliver proportional representation. Historically the Tories have been able to swat away the PR lobby with a quick comparison to Italy but Tony Blair and Roy Jenkins have provided a viable model. Alan Johnson has already called for a referendum on this model. It falls well short of what the Lib Dems seek but that wouldn't stop them supporting some reform rather than none.

None of us can really see where this is going. Most of us don't have to make calculations based on the unpredicatable path of an out of control public narrative but the leaders of our political parties do. Let's hope they remember Cnut and Brown as well as Jenkins.

Image is Cnut the Great and is public domain

We need a fair electoral college

Last night, you very possibly, like me, took part in the most important expression of European, if not global, democracy. Across time zones and across borders of nationhood and identity, all eyes were turned towards a single purpose: voting for the greatest song in Europe. It was an amazing spectacle, certainly, and managed to involve citizens in an active discussion and debate about their future (or at least about the costumes worn by many of the participants). 

Even so, I cannot have been alone in worrying about the distorting nature of the voting system. Can I?

Eurovision uses a simple electoral college. Each country has 58 points to allocate and they allocate these on the basis of a popular vote combined with a jury system. The jury system is an unusual democratic innovation but one that I will gloss over in this post. What I want to focus my attention on is the electoral college and how it can be reformed. 

The problem with the electoral college is that every country has the same number of points irrespective of their population. So Andora (population 67,000) carries the same clout as Russia (population 142,000,000). This is a massive disenfranchisement of the population of Russia at a time when we should be encouraging democratic values in that state.

The simplest solution is to award points in the electoral college on the basis of population size. There are 2,436 votes available. If these are allocated to countries based on population size (relative to the whole Eurovision population of 758,000,000) then Andorra receives 0.22 points in the electoral college and Russia 417. Had the votes been weighted in this way last night, then Norway would still have won but Azerbaijan would have gained second place, Turkey third, UK fourth, pushing Iceland (last night's runners up) into fifth. 

There would still be an unfairness in this system because countries cannot vote for themselves. This would disadvantage larger nations because they could award more points than they could receive. 

I have modelled a simple correction for this bias. Take the largest nation (Russia) and the next largest (Germany) and identify how many points each would award in place of today's 12 points (94.44 for Russia and 54.7 for Germany). The difference is the bias against Russia, so this amount is deleted from Russia's electoral college points and distributed equally between the remaining 41 countries. Then the next two countries are considered (Germany and Turkey) and the difference distributed between the remaining 40 countries and so on. 

Once this correction has been established, Andorra now has 3.22 votes in the Electoral College compared to Russia's 416.7 votes. If these corrected votes are applied to last nights scoring then, sadly, it makes no difference at all to the top five places.

Of course this is really an imperfect way to correct for population biases. A more satisfactory model is provided by the Qualified Majority Voting once widely used in the European Council (though being edged out because of the power of veto it can provide to smaller countries). Under QMV each country has a vote as a country, and a number of votes proportional to its population. To win a majority a vote has to have the support of more then 50% of the countries and more than 50% of the population. Eurovision does not lend itself to this system but I have adapted the model into what I choose to call Modified Single Transferable Qualified Majority Vote.

Under this system each country votes as at present, awarding 1,2 3, 4,5 ,6 ,7 8, 10 or 12 points. However, these points are not totalled, they are treated as a ranking system and considered in stages. 

First we look at all the countries awarded 12 points and award votes for these countries based on the population of the country awarding them 12 points. Then we add all of these points up and see if any country has the support of 50% of the voting public of Europe.

In last night's contest, Greece was awarded 12 points by only one country: Albania. In stage one Greece would be awarded 3,751,000, which is the population of Albania (adjusted using the method detailed above to correct for bias against large populations). 

Once all the 12 point votes were added, no country had passed the 50% mark, so the 10 point votes were considered. Once these are totalled and added to the 12 point results it is clear that Norway has the support of over 50% of the viewing public. 

That's not the end of the story of course. We also have to look at how many countries awarded them 12 points, because they need a majority of countries voting as well. Well 16 countries awarded them 12 points and nine countries awarded them 10 points.

So, even with a fairer voting system, Norway would still have won and the UK would still have come fourth. 

Sorry Jade, I did my best.

Watch twitter mess up and shudder with horror

OK so twitter is the shiny new technology and though I'm there (follow me at twitter.com/likeaword) I'm still unpersuaded of its transformative power. 

Whether or not we all become sucked into the twitterverse, the system is currently providing a salutory lesson in how not to handle service changes. On Tuesday 12 May Biz Stone (the uber-twitterer) posted an announcement to the twitter blog about a change in service. He said:

We've updated the Notices section of Settings to better reflect how folks are using Twitter regarding replies. Based on usage patterns and feedback, we've learned most people want to see when someone they follow replies to another person they follow—it's a good way to stay in the loop. However, receiving one-sided fragments via replies sent to folks you don't follow in your timeline is undesirable. Today's update removes this undesirable and confusing option. However, receiving one-sided fragments via replies sent to folks you don't follow in your timeline is undesirable. Today's update removes this undesirable and confusing option.

The detail of this change will not interest you in the slightest unless you are already a keen twitterer and to explain it to you would throw you into a moribund state even more promptly than my usual witterings. 

What's important (in this blog at least) is to note that this is portrayed as a service enhancement. It is not based on what people want, it's based on what people need. 

So that's mistake one. People like to be consulted. And when you've asked them what they want you can say "loads of people told us that". Rather than "this will be better for you".

People were severely not chuffed with this change. And, this being social media land, started talking about how cross they were.

Mistake two is revealed by the next post added to the blog by the same Biz Stone one day later. In this post he explains:

The engineering team reminded me that there were serious technical reasons why that setting had to go or be entirely rebuilt—it wouldn't have lasted long even if we thought it was the best thing ever.

So it wasn't a service enhancement, it was a technical issue. And in 24 short hours they have annoyed a huge proportion of their userbase, generated a huge amount of ill-feeling across the twitterverse and prompted untold obscure bloggers like myself to heap our ill-informed bile upon their heads.

So the lesson is this: if your change is a technical necessity say "we're terribly sorry but the techs tell us we've got to do this, this is what we're going to do to try and fix it for you" if your change is a service enhancement, ask your service users first. And always, always decide which one it is before you announce it.

Local authority, rocket scientist or uber-cool web 2.0 business, the rules are always the same.

Image is Physics Teacher by | E = mc2 |™ released under CC-SA-2.0