"Proactive" - the infuriating word reached for in difficult times
Surprise! Surprise! A review of Wellington City Council’s communications and engagement team said the team had not widely publicised the council’s vision and priorities, and was sometimes “reactive” instead of proactive.
It’s a statement straight out of the review consultants playbook. If I had a dollar for every time senior management said “we need to be proactive” over the last 30 years I’d be a very wealthy man.
The twist is that on this occasion, Ross Tanner, a highly experienced public sector operator, used the word “sometimes”. That’s high praise indeed for the comms and engagement team because it really means that often they are proactive.
“Proactive” became popular in the 1990s when the emergence of digital media and the tools for self-publishing meant that mainstream news media were no longer the only game in town when it came to information distribution to the general public.
The difficulty has been that many corporate managers are so immersed in their projects they have little appreciation that others don’t share the same depth of interest. Modern life is so busy and complex, so overloaded with information, that people focus on the things that are a priority for them at their particular life stage and situation.
Website content developers quickly learnt that the key to a good user experience was making an organisation’s content easily searchable to customers looking for the particular subject or service they wanted information on. In the case of local authorities the hot topics are usually roads, rates, rubbish, water, parking enforcement, libraries parks and recreation.
The Wellington City Council website has long been recognised as a leader in its field. The biggest item on its front page are the words “Kia Ora. What can we help you with” -followed by a large search box and a series of popular links.
In a discordant note, the reviewer said that while the council’s vision and priorities were included in its 10 year plan and easily searchable online, they were not signposted on the front pages of the council’s website. I don’t know whether the website has already been changed in response to the review but one of the “popular” signposting links on the front page is the 10 year plan. One can only hope that it is a genuinely “popular” link and not a knee jerk reaction.
More positively, the review found that the communications team was skilled, hard-working and committed, and it did not recommend any changes to staff or staffing levels. That’s as about as high a “pass mark” any team can get in such a review.
One of the Council’s taonga is it’s veteran media spokesperson, Richard MacLean. Richard tells it like it is and along with Andy Knackstedt at Waka Kotahi is one of the few specialist spokespeople left in the trade. But in keeping with the “proactive” cliche the review talked of the need for a “draft media strategy”, which is usually corporate jargon for “we’re in the news too much for the wrong reasons so we’ll put a plan in place to fix it”. Good luck with that Wellington City Council management!
The most insightful commentary on the review, however, came from Councillors Jill Day and Fleur Fitzsimons who both wrote to the council’s leadership staff. Fitzsimons said the communications team did an “incredible job” engaging with the public on social media, while Day said staff did an “excellent job” of listening to the community.
So behind the corporate speak what are the real lessons from this review? In my book there’s two: Don’t shoot the messenger and LISTEN to the community.... Here’s hoping....