Developing a public affairs strategy
Without a defined goal every political activity is just occupation.
Developing a durable public affairs strategy: goals, priorities, messages, resources and measures.
What it is about
Most public affairs programmes fail not for lack of access but because nobody in the company can name the three decisions that really matter over the next two years.
A strategy therefore begins with an inventory: which regulatory decisions are coming, which of them touch the business model, which of them can be influenced at all. At the end of that exercise rarely more than three or four topics remain, and that is exactly the return.
Then come goals that can be checked, messages used consistently internally, and an honest assessment of available resources. A strategy assuming more capacity than exists is abandoned in the first quarter.
The points that decide
Inventory
Capture every upcoming decision, then prioritise ruthlessly.
Goals
Written so they can be checked, otherwise assessment is a matter of taste.
Messages
Three sentences every executive in the company says the same way.
Resources
Internal, external and time. The third is underestimated most often.
How we work on it
High-Level Strategy & Campaigning
A business strategy becomes a communications programme that reaches its goals faster.
Professional Analysis & Monitoring
Curated monitoring of initiatives, draft legislation and public debate - assessed against your business goals.
Stakeholder & Network
Simply "knowing" people adds nothing. Robust relationships of trust with decision-makers do.
Frequently asked
What time horizon do you plan for?
Eighteen to thirty months, oriented on the parliamentary terms in Vienna and Brussels. Shorter makes no sense in a political process because most procedures run longer. Much longer is speculation.
How do you measure public affairs success?
By costs avoided and conditions obtained, not by contact counts. Concretely: was a threshold moved, a deadline extended, an exemption added, a procedure accelerated. Those measures have to be defined in advance, otherwise the later assessment is arbitrary.
Related focus areas
Political monitoring
Curated observation of legislative initiatives, consultations and debate in Vienna and Brussels, assessed against your business goals.
Open pagePolitical due diligence
Assessing political and regulatory risk ahead of investments, shareholdings and market entries.
Open pageCEO positioning
Building a durable public role for chief executives and managing directors, inside and beyond their own industry.
Open page
Facing an issue in this sector?
A first conversation usually settles quickly whether and how we can help.