Another year around the sun and strategy
BY LESLIE SPRING
The traditional gift for a ninth anniversary is pottery or wicker, which both have a lovely, handcrafted feeling to them. This visual hits home for us. As a deliberately boutique agency, we have our hands on lots of projects all at once, and we also invest time, energy and craftsmanship into what we produce for clients.
This has been true since our most humble of beginnings when our founder Jenny Windle started JPW out of her spare bedroom “with a hope and prayer.” And even when we were a shop of one, we had one guiding belief: local government deserves the very best in strategic communication services.
Strategic being the operative word.
Local government does not provide the shiniest of services (think: public utilities, public works, planning, etc.), but they matter a great deal to everyone’s day-to-day lives, even if most are blissfully unaware of this reality. The communication challenge, therefore, becomes answering the question, “how do we make people care about [fill in the blank] when there isn’t a problem?” The answer comes back to strategy.
A good strategic plan draws upon an agency’s strengths and community value to create a narrative that strengthens its reputation – in good times and bad. Communities would surely notice if their water stopped running, toilets stopped flushing or other government services halted, but these scenarios are not the time to introduce your services to constituents. It’s too late for that.
From our earliest days nine years ago, strategic planning has been the foundation of our work because without it, communication efforts are aimless, and therefore effectless. Benjamin Franklin is quoted as saying, “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail,” and we could not agree more. The work our clients do is too important to leave the outcomes to chance, so we plan. Similarly, it’s too risky not to purposefully involve the public early to help shape solutions, so we engage. The failure to do either leads to unfortunate rework, recalibration and reevaluation, which can be costly financially and reputationally. At a time when trust in public remains pitifully low, government agencies do not have much latitude to ask for forgiveness or a redo.
One of Jenny’s motivating factors when creating JPW was her frustration at hiring numerous consultants who either didn’t understand the realities of government or lacked the creativity needed to make people take notice. Since then, we’ve helped solve problems as wide ranging as planned rate adjustments to emergency outreach, and in all engagements, we lean into research and planning. Can you plan for all comments during a public meeting or catastrophe? No, but you can surely do some pre-work and strategic thinking to be as prepared as possible.
It also helps if you’ve been there before.
With our 75+ of collective government experience, we help clients see around the corner, anticipate issues before they arise, and prepare for the unexpected. We know this is one of the greatest values of a PIO within an agency, and as extensions of these internal teams, we provide an added layer of insight, experience and advocacy for getting communicators a seat at the decision-making table. From this seat, trust can be built with a community, and from this vantage point, strategic plans can be implemented successfully for the betterment of a community.
That was the goal nine years ago, and we continue to work toward it. To see how we’ve helped agencies like the County of San Diego, City of Tustin and Western Municipal Water District complete a strategic planning exercise, read a few of our case studies.