In our Woodlawn ducks blog, CO2Land org talked of planning regulations and coping means in handling Sydney’s waste. An equally compelling need is the community consultation process.  Increasingly professional ‘people managers’ are given the job of forming ‘representative’ groups that give ministerial comfort to ‘opinion’. In short this means those in the community that speak out are then branded ‘radical’ and not ‘representative’ of the community.  The evidence to date suggests consultation attempts tend to be dysfunctional and unsatisfactory and ‘participation representatives’ are restricted to complaints, insufficient information for adequate follow-up and tend to focus on managing ‘outrage’.

What lessons are learn’t from this ‘representative’ model?  Importantly, anyone who wishes to benefit from a better understanding of the process should look at all the tools available. Media plays a big part, including social media networking. The tools are necessary and form part of mature industry approaches, and give a more legitimate social license to operate your process, and can give valuable evidence pieces to show conformance to legally compliant governance structure.