📉 The illogicality of the KPI

In late 2001, Politico published an article calling Paul Adamson the ‘godfather of lobbying’. It conjures up an image that couldn’t be further from the truth. But a source of wisdom on public affairs, he is.

Paul’s key points:

1. KPI’s make little sense. The impulse to measure the things that can be measured—like meetings—can drive you toward things that have no impact.

2. Brussels is a different league to Westminster. It’s more complex, more arcane, multilingual—and you can't rely on the old school ties that can work in the Westminster village.

3. The flaw of a generalist civil service. The UK civil service's generalist culture means officials never stay long enough in the EU to build institutional knowledge, or the relationships that matter.

Finally, the next cohort of our 5 week online training, Generative AI for Policy Communicators, kicks off next week. Find out more and register here.

Have a great weekend when you get there,

Tom

The UK civil service problem

The UK is incredibly bad at keeping people in one policy domain for an extended period of time. They never build the relationships they need to have those trusted conversations about what needs to happen–they remain generalists.

It's so embedded in UK civil service culture. It's almost like a badge of honour on the Foreign Office side to be a generalist. You can acquire technical knowledge quite quickly, but what you're missing is the institutional knowledge, the historical knowledge. What's happened in a similar area in the past?

It's that whole thing about if a tree falls in the forest and nobody sees it, did it actually happen? They don’t know if the tree fell.

Personal relationships are also dependent on how long you stay in a place, and while you wouldn't think so in an age of AI and technology, knowing somebody is as important as it was when I arrived in Brussels 44 years ago.

Brussels is an entirely different beast to Westminster

Any Westminster operator reading this will say, ‘Goodness, he's being so dismissive about the Westminster scene.’ I just think Westminster is quite simple compared to Brussels.

Party fragmentation is now a reality, but for a long time the UK had a two-party system. Westminster was a closed shop. Outsiders didn't talk to civil servants in representing interests, although that is now changing. And at the end of the day a lot of debates in the Parliament weren't particularly interesting. Interest representation seemed an easier job to do.

You can use ‘techniques’ in Westminster that you would never be able to deploy in Brussels: ‘oh I was at school with somebody’ or ‘I went to a wedding of somebody’, because at the end of the day it's a village, the Westminster village.

In Brussels, you can't have been to school with all 27 commissioners, or know every member of the European Parliament. It’s not a physical possibility. The system is more complicated, it's more arcane, and it's multilingual. It’s a totally different beast.

Cultivate the ignored commissioners

Cultivate people who are slightly ignored. Everything in the European Commission is currently through the prism of von der Leyen and one or two other commissioners. But there are lots of other commissioners out there who are undervalued.

If you want to do an event, as long as it's not too specific, invite the commissioner for X or Y. People say 'well he or she is not responsible for that,' but they sit around the table at the weekly College meetings. They'll probably be very pleased and more available as well. So many commissioners, especially in the current Commission—and it's only a year old—are being almost neglected.

The same applies to the European Parliament. Every five years there's a 60% churn. That means 400 new members of the European Parliament roughly speaking. The top jobs, the rapporteurships, the committee chairmanships are held by the incumbents who have been there for a while—the grandees.

But there are lots of new MEPs who people don't really know about and who are looking for a role. They may have an interesting backstory–the European Parliament, unlike the House of Commons, has lots of interesting people who had real lives before becoming MEPs.

When you've got a chance to influence (and when you haven't)

You have no chance to influence when you're late to the game.

Don't self-censor, and don't be self-defeating. Don't think ‘because this thing I'm representing is unpopular’—or not even unpopular, but not on people's list of priorities—that it won’t happen. Just try it out and see what happens.

The most sensible approach is sincerity. You have to be sincere, otherwise it won't work. And make whatever you're trying to do part of the current political zeitgeist. The Draghi report, the competitiveness debate—that's a good current example in Brussels. If you can tie what you're representing to the competitiveness agenda, that is really helpful.

The illogicality of the KPI

People say we have to have lots of KPIs—a certain number of meetings, a certain number of events, or count the number of people you've met. I find it totally ridiculous, but that's the way of the world.

How do you measure influence? There's a disproportionate emphasis on the things which are measurable, so that when clients say 'what have you done for your fee?' you can point to the number of meetings or encounters you’ve had.

I’m being dismissive of course, but it’s important not to lose sight of the actual outcome.

AI reinforces the need for the personal touch

You see criticism about MEPs using AI to make speeches in Parliament. LinkedIn is full of AI-generated content, and people are writing reports and presentations in seconds.

It's creating noise but not really helping. People used to sweat hours doing PowerPoint, now they can do it in seconds. Great! But so what? Did you get the result you wanted?

Thank you to the 73 Policy Unstuck readers who have referred a colleague. If you enjoy this newsletter, please do ‘add to address book’ or reply and give me feedback (positive or negative). These are ‘positive signals’ that help Policy Unstuck land in your inbox.