Accordingly for what it is worth, I have decided with some reservation to add my little two cents as follows:
1. The People's Partnership must understand that they would have won the elections without the PR bells and whistles. From the outset, I knew they would win and may have even done better had they understood where they stood in terms of public opinion.
However, the communication approach that helped to win the election is completely different from what they need to stay in power. They rely too heavily on the mass media.
They continue to take people out of the media where they would be most helpful and make them part of the management of government institutions.
At the same time, each Minister wants to have his/her own PR unit and this is not coordinated. There is not enough face-to-face communication. The media help set the political agenda but do not change deeply rooted beliefs and attitudes. Even in an election situation, a handshake is worth more than a billboard.
2. People judge a government by its actions and not its communication. The actions of this government sometimes seem helter-skelter and contradictory. One of the lessons in life is that you cannot please everyone.
3. There is information overload and overkill, too many voices competing with one another in the same marketplace of public opinion. Even worse, one of the research findings on public opinion is that when people don't hear what they want to hear from official sources they gravitate to who will tell them what they want to hear.
Already, people are going back to the PNM or leaving what they believe is the “bacchanal” that is the People’s Partnership.
4. The best message is one that is reinforced in all the media at the same time. Dissonance creates uncertainty and right now there is too much dissonance in the public's mind.
5. Even the PM will find that she and her Ministers are talking too much, giving too many speeches. Unless the information is new, don't talk. The worse thing is for people to ask, “Why are you telling me all this?” or “How many times they say the same thing?”
6. The maverick ministers seem to be competing with each other.
7. The Government does not seem to have a definite course of action or plan to which it is committed. Communication cannot take place in a vacuum without an action plan to support same, otherwise communication will be about personalities and not about the policies.
8. The people who benefit from any government intervention (bridge, house, road whatever) are the people who should be featured and not just the ministers. Let them say how good the government is.
9. Communication should be used as a means of changing the environment to get something you want or value. There are only two ways of getting what you want through communication.
One is by compliance and you cannot get compliance from your own kids any more. The other is by negotiation. However, that requires looking at the big picture, knowing what you want and knowing, more than anything else, what the other person wants.
If communication is not “win-win” — if, in other words, one of the parties feels they have been screwed in the negotiations, they're going to get you somewhere down the road.
10. There is a point at which you have to stop blaming your predecessor and that has just about expired with this government.
It is clear that based on his handling thus far of the CLICO bailout, the Public Service negotiations and the outstanding monies owed to contractors, her Minister of Finance is already (from both the internal and external perspective) a failure. Several other Ministers are almost as bad.
Maggie Cromwell | Arouca
No comments:
Post a Comment