One of the few certainties of those who work with Institutional and Governmental Relations (IGR) is that... there are no certainties.
There are many variables and customization is almost a rule.
But of course, everything must start from a methodology.
And our experience shows that the mission becomes easier when the process is summarized in 7 essential questions.
Let's go to these tips.
1. What are the risks and opportunities that impact the institution?
The mission of a Monitoring Analyst, in this stage, is to identify, store, categorize and share information on relevant movements in the political and regulatory environment that represent risks and opportunities for the institution, as this information is the fundamental inputs for the IGR process.
Once this task is completed, the next step is to update already mapped issues, point out new fronts to address and/or simply raise attention points on contextual movements important to the organization.
2. What are the analyses that need to be done to support a strategy design?
As soon as risks and opportunities are properly identified, stored and categorized, it is necessary to broaden and deepen the understanding of the collected material. This occurs by aggregating other critical information, allowing substantiating a more secure strategic definition by those who exercise the role of Strategist.
We can categorize this aggregate content in two ways:
- Internal information - Classifications coming from the organization itself: impact analysis, institutional positioning, etc;
- External information - Related to everything intrinsic to the risks and opportunities previously identified: stakeholders involved, temperature of the related themes, etc.
3. What are the priority strategic fronts?
This stage consists of creating a hierarchy in the treatment of the issues identified in the monitoring and intelligence phases. That is: define the strategy with a direction of actions.
There are issues that change the game and others that just ask for follow-up, even because they demand resources that any team will never be able to gather.
In short: it is necessary to prioritize.
A good way to prioritize issues is to create a risk/opportunity matrix based on impact, probability and institutional priority, and weigh each item according to the availability of resources. In other words:
a) Is the impact high or low?
b) Is the probability high or low?
c) What is the institutional priority to mitigate the risk or capture the opportunity?
d) Do I have the necessary financial resources, people, tools, etc. to mitigate the risk or take advantage of the opportunity?
From there, the Strategist has the role of drawing objectives that mitigate risks and capture opportunities.
4. What are the tactical actions that must be outlined to achieve the objectives?
With the issues defined and prioritized, that is, the strategy assembled, the time comes to point out objectives and goals.
It is in this stage that stakeholders with whom to establish dialogue are pointed out, what messages should be sent, how these will be encapsulated and which channels will be used. Everything, of course, with definition of deadlines and required resources.
5. What action activities do I need to do and record?
In the ESG era, governance requires that every step of the action be properly recorded.
In many cases, organizations' compliance rules demand that everything have documentation - from meetings to lunches with stakeholders. The Access to Information Law (LAI) itself obliges ministries and parliamentarians to record who they held official meetings with.
Therefore, it is essential to map the activities of those who play the role of Actuator.
These activities need to be properly recorded.
6. What are the results obtained from the strategy?
Far beyond compliance obligations, the record allows understanding if the action work is providing the expected results.
That is, the documentation is absolutely useful to feed those who are in the Strategist role.
With these records, this professional will have the chance to understand, for example, whether the dialogues held with a parliamentarian are generating or not the expected consequences to solve a given issue.
7. In which issues is the IGR team working and what are the results achieved?
All these activities have little value if they are not properly evaluated and reported in a clear manner to the company's senior management. After all, most IGR activities originate from decisions by a Board of Directors or a Board. It is these instances, at the end of the day, that need to receive the information and approve or not the results.
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It is evident that there is no cake recipe in IGR, but our experience shows that this set of 7 questions is a good basis for structuring your process.
Here at Sigalei, we have a set of solutions to facilitate the management of the legislative process.
Come talk to us!
Frederico Oliveira is CEO and co-founder of Sigalei
frederico@sigalei.com.br
