4. Keep Things Organized
Governing institutional knowledge will always boil down to organization and file management. Keeping track of all the relevant information has to be a team-wide effort with regular enforcement and an accountability strategy.
“We keep copies of all of our correspondence: when we meet with folks, what we talked to them about, etc.,” says Wilkinson. “I've been doing this for 20 years but somebody for who comes on board, I've got to bring them up to speed on everything we're doing and get them to try to get those relationships established on their own with different offices so everybody knows everybody.”
Setting up a collaboration and workflow system and enforcing it will be crucial to make sure you keep disruptions to a minimum when there’s a change in staff or elected officials, plus it will help you demonstrate value to your key stakeholders by providing you with access to the right information, at the right time.
“Some of that institutional knowledge, boy, it'd be great if it was all categorized in an electronic system somewhere, but a lot of it ends up being up here [points to head] or in a file in somebody's desk somewhere,” says Schoenherr.
5. Be Helpful for the Next Person
Beyond keeping track of all interactions with your key stakeholders and progress on your legislative priorities for your internal purposes, it’s also important to do so to ensure your efforts carry on even if you are the person moving away to a different position.
“As you're doing your job, think about what you can do to make the person who follows’ job as easy and effective as possible,” says Schoenherr. “We all know that this continuity, this body of knowledge is so easily lost. We're all busy but what can you do to try to at least capture some of it so that the next person doesn't have to start over from scratch. I think we all appreciate that so I think it's just being mindful of who's going to have to follow you. How would you want them to be treated?”
This will help you strengthen your relationships and help with continuity of the work you had already put in.
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Congressional members and staffers on the Hill influence and craft legislation that could have a huge impact on your priority issues. With such a high volume of legislative activity and staff turnover, you can’t afford to have your message get lost in the shuffle.
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