I am very pleased to say that I have had a chance to attend the Canadian Public Relations Society’s conference on Engagement + Impact in Montreal this year. It has been a great conference to attend and present at.
This morning, if you did attend my presentation, you have learned the Delaney’s ten-step process for developing engagement plans that truly engage. These are the things we have learned over 20 years of engagement, and you can apply them to your organization, too:
- Engage early and often
- Never use the legal requirements as the ceiling, but rather the floor
- Bring people and groups into the design process based on real and perceived impacts
- Design beyond the squeaky wheel
- Plan your designs to be stakeholder-centric
- Engage on values … never on positions
- Gain the decision maker buy-in from the get-go
- Integrate P2 into broader decision-making process
- Assume that hope is not a strategy
- Embrace that you need to be (process) control freaks!
- Never guess
- Engage on process before content
If you haven’t had a chance to attend the presentation, see here for the CPRS Handout and CPRS Conference Presentation.