Finding an alternative answer to a difficult problem

I did a piece of work recently that I was really proud of.

This was one of those pieces of work that I thought could actually make a difference, a big difference in people’s everyday lives. It was also one of those pieces of work that made me stop and remind myself why, as communicators, we need to take a step back before we get to developing the communications. More thinking time pays off.

The client had put a problem in front of me. I could have gone straight into thinking about the communications around it, but I knew this would be high stakes. So I spent some time properly understanding the problem first.

I looked at it from different angles and identified the core problem (not the assumed problem), alongside seven other strategic issues that needed to be worked through. Then I started thinking about the people involved: what were they likely to be worried about? What might make them distrust what they were being told? Where might they feel that something was being done to them rather than with them?

I identified eight psychological challenges that I thought could have a significant impact on the project. And this was where the work got particularly interesting for me.

Because some of these weren't problems that could be solved logically. You can't always solve anxiety by giving someone more information. You can't necessarily solve distrust by giving someone more facts. And if a group of people has become polarised, making your argument harder and louder isn't necessarily going to bring them back together. We’re dealing with humans, and it turns out humans aren’t all that rational.

Sometimes you need to understand what's actually driving people's behaviour and respond to that.

Looking at what people might actually do

So I started thinking about what the psychological solutions might be. Could you reduce anxiety by giving people back some sense of agency? Could you address distrust by changing how people experienced the process, rather than simply telling them why they should trust it? Could you reduce polarisation by changing the dynamic between groups rather than trying to find the perfect argument?

I also looked at the heuristics at play (the mental shortcuts we all use to make sense of things, particularly when we're under pressure or don't have all the information). This helped me think about some of the biggest threats to the project, but also where there might be opportunities.

I looked at things that didn't seem entirely logical. The anomalies. The moments where you might think, why on earth would someone do that? Those things can actually tell you quite a lot about what is really going on.

From there, I could start to think about the behaviours we might reasonably expect as the project progressed. What might people assume? What might they be afraid of? What might they do if they felt they were losing control? What might happen if their identity became wrapped up in the issue? And, importantly, what could we do early enough to change some of those dynamics?

By the time I got to the communications planning, I was looking at the problem from a completely different place.

I wasn't starting with, what do we need to say?

I was starting with, what's actually going on here, and what do we need people to do differently?

It meant I could think about how to manage fear, identity and trust, rather than relying on legal compliance or financial value to do the heavy lifting. The approach was deliberately light-touch, values-led and psychologically informed.

And by psychologically informed, I don't mean that I was pretending to be a psychologist. I mean I was trying to understand what was actually driving people's behaviour, and using that understanding to make better decisions about what we did next.

The aim wasn't to get everyone to approve of the project. It was to buy trust and time, because that is what the client ultimately was looking for.

And then things changed

This is where the story gets a bit uncomfortable.

The work wasn't ultimately adopted properly. The circumstances around the client changed, my contract changed, and other things were happening that I wasn't party to. That's one of the realities of consultancy. You can do the thinking, give people a really good piece of work and explain why you think it matters.

We're only as good as the boundaries and freedom we're given. And sometimes as good as the decisions we make about when to push and when to step back.

I can look back now and wonder whether I should have pushed harder. At the time, I had other crises that needed my attention, and I made a judgement about where to put my energy. That's part of being honest about the work too.

I'm not interested in writing a story where the consultant gets everything right and everyone else gets it wrong. When something goes wrong, there is usually plenty of responsibility to go around. I'm as interested in understanding what I could have done differently as I am in understanding what happened around me.

As the project progressed, some of the dynamics I'd identified in the original work did start to play out. When things eventually became difficult, some of the responses were very similar to the behaviours I'd anticipated. And other important information came to light that hadn't been available to me when I did the work.

That doesn't mean I predicted the future. I didn't. It does mean that the thinking had been useful.

This is why I don't always start with communications

I think we can sometimes make communications too small. A difficult project gets handed to the communications team and the question becomes: How do we explain this?

But sometimes that's the wrong question. Sometimes the better questions are: What is really going on here? What are people worried about? What are they likely to do? What might we be getting wrong about their behaviour? And what could we change now that might make the outcome different?

Communications can only do so much if the problem underneath it hasn't been properly understood. No amount of beautifully crafted messaging can compensate for a fundamental misunderstanding of the people you're trying to influence. I've seen enough badly worded consultation documents to know that better copy is not always the answer.

That's probably the bit of this work I'm most proud of. Not the plan that came at the end. The thinking that came before it: taking a difficult, messy problem and really getting under the skin of it; looking at the strategy, the people, the psychology and the behaviour; working out what might happen next; and then using all of that to decide what would actually make a difference.

That's the kind of work I want to do more of.

I’d recommend reading the new Crisis Communications for Boards Handbook by the CIPR. Or listening to the Engage podcast about the new handbook (disclaimer, I am on the Engage editorial board and oversaw this episode). They speak more into the value of communications at governance and board level. So many decisions boards make are ultimately about trust, relationships, perceptions and communities.

If you've got a difficult problem that doesn't have an obvious answer, that's the bit I'd like to help you with.