If you are doing everything, you are doing nothing – A brutal method for Issue Prioritisation

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This week I was asked if I would do some training on issue priortisation. I declined. It is not in my small circle of competence and I have an approach that many would be traumatised by,
This is it.
Summary
Step 1: List the Public Policy/EU legislative Issues your organisation wants to work on.
Step 2: List the resources you have to work on those issues.
Step 3: For a handful of issues, do a SWOT analysis on them.
Step 4: Choose 3
Step 1
Below is a made up, but realistic list, of issues any organisation – Industry or NGOs – could be working on:
  1. Get Issue A Taken up in work programme.
  2. Get Issue B in Proposal 1 through the EP and Council.
  3. Get Issue C successfully passed in a Delegated Act even though Commission against your position.
  4. Get Issue D successfully passed in an Implementing Act, except that France and Germany are against you.
  5. On Issue E, bring an enforcement action against MS A for incorrect implementation of the Directive you worked so hard to get passed.
  6. On Issue F, provide speakers for a group of MEPs holding an exchange of views.
  7. On Issue G, support your in house scientific adviser to present finding to an Expert Group and attend for two years.
  8. Feed into 4 ongoing public consultations on 4 separate issues that your colleagues are ‘interested’ in.
  9. On Issue H, respond to media enquiries, even though you have not focused on the issue for 8 years.
  10. On Issue D, see if you can get the interpretation of the Member States and the Commission aligned and in your favour, or see your last 10 years of hard work thrown in the bin.
  11. Monitor issues of relevance to your organisation.
  12. Submit a funding request to support your office’s work.
  13. Respond to colleagues asking you to take up ‘something really important that the EU can solve’.
  14. Make sure your colleague from London does not come into Brussels and cause a diplomatic incidence and get you barred from the Commission and EP.
  15. Dealing with a colleague who wants to make his Ph.D thesis the main element of your organisation’s work in Brussels.
  16. Spend a day a week in internal meetings in your organisation.
  17. Spend another day a week in internal meetings with partner organisations/alliances.
  18. Allocate expert’s time to preparing feedback into consultations on Guidance notes.
  19. Work with your Communication’s team to turn a 100 page report into something that’s accessible to people who did not do their post Doc on the issue.
  20. Harness the opportunity of the European Council calling on the Commission to submit a proposal on your core issue. Dust off draft proposal sitting in your filing cabinet.
  21. Coach your team to ensure that they can do the ‘impossible’ job you have given them (1-18).
  22. Play catch up on a new legislative proposal that you missed because you were so busy, managing 9 other priority issues.
Step 2
For 1-22, list how much € you have to support your activities.
Step 3
Look at the issues you are you working on, and see what is ‘essential’.
Do a Strength, Weakness, Opportunity, Threat (SWOT) analysis, with some Adds-Ons.

Add Ons
[] Is your issue on the legislative/policy agenda.
[]Do you have a credible champion who could help you.
[]Is your organisation respected/trusted in the area.
[]Do you have a clear public policy/legislative soltuion
[]Do you have creidble evidence to support your asks.
[]Do you have the financial resources for the long haul. Realise that move an issue low down the policy agenda, to a proposal, get it adopted, relatively unscathed, and implemented, in practice, is going to take you 10-15 years.
[] Do you have the right people – issue experts, lobbyists, communication experts, lawyers , scientific advisers etc – to get you to where you want to be.
If you can’t tick all the boxes, have a really serious think if you should work on the issue.
For example, if your issue in not in the Commission’s Political Guidelines, Mission Letters, and Work Programme, and there is no clear support from the majority of Ministers and MEPs, your chance of getting your issue tabled are between nil to low.

You can choose to hibernate for the next four years or to have the policy solution,  evidence, and legislative text filed away in case your issue appears in the policy cycle by chance.

Step 4
Choose 3 issues to work on.
Head Space
I doubt many organisations can work on more than a few things at the intensity that is needed to move the needle.
It is not that some issues are not as important than others.
It is if you are working on everything, you are working on nothing.
An organisation’s credibility depends on its expertise. An organisation can’t be an expert on everything – try as they might.
My Preference
I have a preference for working on just one thing – or at least 80% of the free spend on that one issue.
It stops an organisation doing too many things.
I’d recommend having no more than 3 issues and a contingency fund set aside of 25% of your campaign/legislative work for opportunies that come about.
  • Issue 1
  • Issue 2
  • Issue 3
  • Contingency
The contingency is set aside for the invetiable ‘too good to be true’ opportunities, the must engage on , a Court case to take, etc.
Resource Allocation
  • Issue 1 – 50%
  • Issue 2 20%
  • Issue 3 – 5%
  • Contingency – 25%
Most of the resources should go into the key issue. There could be 2 other issues that get resources are lower.
Few will ever do this so explicitly, but in practice focus a lot of their time on one core issue. But, they’ll miss out on the benefits of 80/20 thinking, and be stretched on too many other issues.
What to do when new issues come up
If something new comes up, choose which issue you stop work on immediately.
Shift your scarce resources to the new issue.
If you want to succeed in bringing long lasting and effective public policy/legislative change you need a single minded focus on the file.
This is a painful process. You’ll land up stopping people working on their pet issue.
If you don’t, you’ll set your organisation up for irrelevance or political failure.
I picked a lot of it up working for the excellent political campaigning NGO, IFAW.
Further Reading
Richard Koch, The 80/20 Principle
Gary Keller, The One Thing

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