🚪 A lobbyist walks into the prime minister's office in a t-shirt. What happens next?

In today’s interview, Dom covers…

1. Why a clear brand/positioning short cuts the time policymakers need to understand what you represent (and a great example of that in practice)

2. Why public affairs KPIs that focus on meetings with politicians are often the sign of an ‘all show, no substance’ strategy

3. Why, if you can, you should prioritise policy change objectives that do not require government itself to implement

As ever, hit reply to let me know what you think (the good, the bad, the ugly).

Tom

Know your brand and what you represent

I never wear a suit. I go to Number 10 Downing Street and I don't wear a suit. It’s an intentional approach. The people we represent do not wear suits, so as their representative, why would I?

I went to a roundtable in Number 11, and out of the 12 people there, I was the only one not in a suit. The Chancellor walked in and said, ‘You must be the startup guy. How’s it going?’ That was us doing our job correctly. Fundamentally, it was about knowing our stakeholders and how they act and operate and trying to match that energy.

Acronyms are a time tax

I never liked our old name COADEC [the Coalition for a Digital Economy], even though it was well-known in Whitehall. People couldn't spell it and they didn't know what it meant.

When I was thinking about our new name, my measure of success was when I gave a quote in the press, they didn't have to be like ‘COADEC, the organisation that blah blah blah’, you know what I mean?

We needed a name that wasn’t an acronym and didn’t need another five words to explain what we did. 

That simplicity has opened new doors for us

As COADEC, we were always treated as a key stakeholder wherever the tech work was done. But now, as Startup Coalition, it’s much more acceptable for civil servants and ministers across departments to engage with us on everything from small business policy to climate tech policy as an important stakeholder. It’s like ‘well, that's what's in the name.’

So the big advantage of the new name was that the organisation moved from being a niche tech sector trade body to being seen as much more widely relevant. It opened doors for us. Although we are small, we knew we wanted to pack a punch like some of the larger trade bodies while keeping the cool factor of the startup ecosystem.

→ If your organisational name/brand is holding you back and not opening doors for you, we have extensive experience renaming and rebranding policy-focused organisations in London, Washington, D.C., and Brussels. Email Natallia for more information.

Public affairs metrics? Who needs them

So much work in public affairs is crap. Part of that is this focus on measurables–I  just don't know how effective measurables are in this world. It drives you down really weird avenues, and generates visible work but… that's not the actual work. 

If the KPI is ‘we need to meet this many MPs’, but there are only three MPs that matter on your topic, who cares? The answer is their KPIs care. That’s not the way it should be. 

It’s the same when it comes to prioritising ministerial engagement over engaging officials. If I see the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, and have a polite small talk chat, I’m not there being like ‘these are the lines’. 

The work on policy detail is not done there. It might get elevated there as the final decider, but people treat it as though the minister is going to come in and impose their will, and unless it’s a really specific decision, it’s very rare that's how it works.

Who cares if the KPI is ministerial engagement…. You need to do the leg work with the officials to get things done.

The Strong Horse Theory

We did 20 webinars defending the Future Fund when the government was getting hammered over it. The day the fund opened it was oversubscribed by 4x. All it needed was the willingness to hold position and experience pain for that period.

Sam Bowman talks about the Strong Horse Theory which I’m a big believer in. The idea is basically that when people see a strong horse, they naturally follow that strong horse if the outcomes work out.

My bet with the Future Fund was that when this gets delivered and people have the money, they’ll be fine. We knew the policy was right, the only problem was that it hasn’t yet delivered the outcome.

So the truth was that we were going to have to eat crap for that month. But the day after it opened, and it was oversubscribed, and the mood in the community shifted overnight.

We’d rather stake out a strong position and be a winner. When you’re associated with and achieving successful policy outcomes, it’s a signal you are strong, and makes you more likely to win in future.

State implementation programmes are tough

In terms of the things I’ve learned working in this world, I assume a much lower level of state capacity now than I did at the start of my career. When government constructs a programme to deliver an outcome that was defined nine months ago, it so often goes wrong. 

Our biggest failure was on Help to Grow Digital. My grandma ran a bag shop on Barnsley Market and could definitely improve her productivity if she took card payments. We were working on how you do that at a national scale, and we wrote this paper and did a load of work towards what was effectively a subsidy for businesses to adopt software.

The government announced it, and I think it was a £500 million scheme, which cost the government about £30 million to set up, and in the end they only ever handed out about £5 million worth of vouchers. It was a complete disaster.

There were so many lessons. The first was sign up processes really matter. In this case, it was a nightmare for businesses to sign up, and was one of these things that was so obviously crap.

And then the actual software they were offering… for the eCommerce offer, they didn’t have Shopify. Shopify is the global leader. It’s the platform people want to use. And the government just said ‘well, Shopify doesn’t qualify under our criteria.’

That means that the government’s criteria were wrong, doesn’t it? It’s just obviously wrong if the market leader doesn’t meet the criteria.

But because the criteria they have designed has been approved by a minister there’s nothing you can do. It’s a really good example of how good ideas die in implementation.

Policy influence is a sales job

Policy is a sales job, fundamentally. You don't buy something from someone you don't like. It’s really basic but people don’t want to treat it that way because they want to treat it like it’s the West Wing. 

One lad who worked for me said ‘I thought policy would be all debating ideas and it turns out what it is is texting some people and seeing if they’ll do the thing you want.’

He was right.