How do you connect quickly with a politician or policy maker.
The traditional path is the position paper. It has its place. But, often position papers are organic cures for insomnia. I have a few by my bed side cabinet to help bring the sleep and dreams. They are amazingly effective. 2 paragraphs down I am with the smurfs.
Pictures and films work for me
I think visually, things start to make sense to me when I see them. It brings the issue alive. It makes it plain and simple (even if it is not).
Wonk led organisations – and in Brussels that is most of them – sometimes don’t like the dumbing down. They are wrong. It is not dumbing down.
The problem with position papers and long reports is that you may as well put sanskrit texts in front of me.I’ll look at them, think it looks nice, am sure it is very important, but not understand a bloody thing in the report, probably get annoyed you have waisted my time by sticking a pile of jibberish in front of me, and walk away frustrated and angry.
What Dream Works Can Teach Us
Now, if you want to win, you can you use a small package of tools to make it all very simple, and dare I mention, fun and interesting.
You can chunk down all the complexity for me. A nice infographic will help me understand it better. A short film will lead me on and help me understand it even more. And, when you have got me hooked, you can hit me with the well written report and position paper.
Do you really want to win?
Now, this is all based on the idea you want to win. If you want to win by using the position paper and long report I don’t think you actually want to win. You want to go through the motions. You want the inner security of having done things your way. But, if you are not prepared to step outside your inner zone of comfort and work out what will influence and impact the people making decisions your just not that serious about winning.
A nice film below about the wonders of the Danube brought this blog on.
Enjoy
[youtube]http://youtu.be/1F5INzMvDYk[/youtube]