Business communicators should find very instructive the mushrooming of issues and emergence of discontent evident during the summer Congressional recess.
When Congress recessed for the annual August month of hometown visits and foreign junkets, healthcare reform seemed to be the one issue the lawmakers would have to contend with when they returned to generally friendly home turf.
They couldn’t have been more wrong, and therein lies the lesson for business communicators.
Concern, anxiety and a general lack of specific information about massive healthcare reform programs proved to be an ideal environment for nurturing barely covered seeds of consumer/voter discontent.
Human emotions are human emotions — regardless of whether they are directed toward manufactured products, acts of corporate social irresponsibility, or political behaviors. Therefore, business communicators should find in these current events a number of good learning points. But first, let’s see what those on the front lines perceive and told The Wall Street Journal.
- “A lot of the anxiety we face here has less to do with healthcare and everything to do with the overall state of the economy and government,” New York Rep. Anthony Weiner, Democrat.
- “I have seen a level of dissatisfaction and even anger that I haven’t experienced in the years that I’ve been a member of Congress,” Arizona Sen. John McCain, Republican.
- “What we’re seeing now, both in terms of numbers and the feel out there, is how big waves feel early on,” Cook Political Report editor Charlie Cook.
- “A year is an eternity, maybe two eternities, in politics,” Rothenberg Political Report editor Nathan L. Gonzales.
- “What we’re seeing here is this larger debate about what the role of government is; the healthcare debate is at that fault line,” Republican pollster William McInturff.
Thus, business communicators responsible for reaching out to and persuading constituencies should find these take-always worthy of remembers in your practice of stakeholder relations and issues management.
- Don’t delegate critical issues — Never assume that you can rely on someone else to precisely define your agenda so that it provides the details you intend. Obama said he wanted massive healthcare reform and left it to Congress to write the bill. As a result, he has lost control of the messages and, indeed, specific content.
- The obvious may not be the most important — Don’t assume that the top-of-mind issues are all that you really need to deal with. Look deeper. What have you passed over as “finished,” could rise up to threaten you. Obama largely assumed that global warming [thus cap-and-trade], the takeover of GM, bank bailouts, and the increasingly massive federal debt were issues past. The healthcare anxiety only provided a springboard for consumers/voters to roar back on those “past” issues.
- Anticipate the unexpected — Remember the cynical adage: “No good deed goes unpunished”? Well, the lesson is: prepare, prepare, prepare.” The “Cash for Clunkers” program was a good idea on many fronts, but federal bureaucratic snafus continue to delay government payments to dealers, who are holding hostage car-buyers’ vehicles. This major speed bump only highlights governmental disorganization — reminding consumers/voters that this is the same government that wants to handle expanded healthcare coverage, new environment controls, and provide private businesses with management policies.
- Numbers are dangerous — Be very careful with specific numbers; they can live on to haunt you. The White House budget forecasters recently said their current revised, revised high-end budget deficit of $7 trillion needed to be increased by another $2 trillion to provide a revised, revised, revised $9 trillion total. Stay tuned for revised numbers!
It has often been said that government exists at the consent of the governed. And so do businesses, lest we forget. The only difference is that when a business makes a mistake, there’s a chance that they can cease to exist; governments live on.
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