Quick end-of-year reflection ahead of my annual âregs to richesâ policy agenda post â
đ I think that one of the biggest challenges for policy people is developing their (our!) policy ears.Â
A crucial part of our work is reliant on our ability to listen to the pain points and frustrations that people are experiencing and map them back onto regulatory realities; re-articulating the problem in an appropriate policy context.Â
But no one ever really tells you that, because we like to pretend that intellectual work is literal when itâs often figurative. I think that the sources that policy prioritisation seems to have become dependent on are seriously impeding that ability. We are clouded with literal inputs that are overly direct: social media sentiment analysis that proxies mood, expensive word searches, and public opinion polling that asks respondents to react to carefully scripted questions.  Â
Letâs face it: everyday people just do not use the wonky terms that we revel in. Over the past two years, as I have championed the merits of competition reform, I have become convinced that people talk about competition policy ALL the time - they just never use those words.
If you pay a firm to search for âefficiency defenceâ âmerger controlâ âcompetition policyâ (the terminology that someone at the Competition Bureau is steeped in) instead of also understanding what people are chatting about with the terms âLoblawâ âWestonâ âinflationâ âgreedflation,â (etc) than I think you can really miss the mood (*this is sort of a bad example as Canada is having a competition moment, so just imagine it in a 2021 context). Â
More bubble bursting: on top of that, most people see government(s) as âthe government,â and could care less about the organisational divisions we relate to across orders of government and ministries. They see problems and want a solution, while we wring our hands over âwhoâ should lead the file. Maybe we need to get over ourselves a little bit, and lean in a little more to the all-of-government approach we see proceeding with some success in the US as it relates to competition. That isnât to suggest that the art of policymaking becomes a total free-for-all, but perhaps more of an invitation model could help us move farther, faster on key items. Policy teams need the freedom to lead while inviting support from relevant ministries and peers. Tilting towards more of a âchampionsâ model would allow us to more closely mimic the policy experimentation that we expect to see in our federated model.Â
Stop being scared by cross-functionality and scoffing that policy planks need to âstay in their lane,â and get ready to veer out of your lane to pursue necessary connections in an increasingly intersectional policy environment. Â
Doing the work of developing your policy ear is an unspoken challenge for problem solvers of all kinds. Itâs probably even thornier from a small business perspective, where entrepreneurs are saddled with the imperative of taking their personal case studies and abstracting those to a specific policy change, which is no mean feat. An additional force acting out against individual firms articulating their needs is the fear of speaking out that is common in concentrating industries or simply anywhere that a significant power balance exists. This âFOSOâ was well-covered in the AELP report, âThe Other Red Tape,â and no, there is not a Canadian version of this report because Canada.Â
Basically: policy work is also an act of translation and storytelling. Itâs not just how we listen but also where - it canât just be the Globe and Mail or the Toronto Star. People are seeking and building peer communities on Discord, Mastodon, and venting in sub Reddits. It seems like much of political communication takes place on Twitter, where likes and retweets are poor substitutes for other authentic inputs - itâs a performance platform. So we wind up talking past each other with different words and nothing (or little) gets done.
Comforting yourself that [~something~] isnât a problem because the associated policy keywords donât show up in your media scan is like when then-Toronto Mayor Rob Ford chided reporters for ânot asking the right questionâ about his substance abuse. Maybe setting policy priorities is less about asking the ârightâ questions and more about actually listening to the answers people are voluntarily expressing.Â
Next year, letâs commit to getting creative about improving our policy listening in the name of a more responsive and realistic policy agenda.
This is really good.