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SDIC:
Systematic Development of Informed Consent
A 3 Day Management Course by Hans and
Annemarie Bleiker, offered as In-House training
and as an Open course.
In this course you learn about "Informed Consent": the key to the phenomenal success
of Implementation Geniuses.
"The
best professional training and advice I've had in my entire professional
career of 17 years. I'm embarrassed that I was not aware of your program
years earlier."
- Mark Achen, City
Manager, City of Grand Junction, CO
What's SDIC all about?
What we try to do in all of our courses is:
share with you what we have learned from 30+ years of R&D into
the methods and tactics of Implementation Geniuses. Even though we do that in all of our various
courses, we do it best in this course! SDIC is the management strategy that -- as far as we can tell --
Implementation Geniuses use. The SDIC management strategy
is what's behind their astonishing ability to get even their opponents
to "Grudgingly Go Along" with them. The SDIC course, therefore, is the most important course we teach.
Once you realize that Implementation Geniuses really
can implement projects that others cannot, you're bound to
ask yourself: "What's the key to their phenomenal success?"
For example:
- They don't do more public involvement . . .
- In fact, they often do less . . .
- More importantly: they do it differently . . .
- They develop a strange . . . complicated . . .arrangement with
their opponents... especially with their fiercest opponents . .
. that is neither an agreement nor a conventional disagreement.
- We describe this arrangement as "the Grudging Willingness of Opponents to (grudgingly) go along with
a Course of Action they, actually, are Opposed to . . ."
- . . . we call it "Informed Consent" . . .
- Implementation Geniuses systematically develop Informed Consent.
- They use Citizen Participation strictly as a tool in their Consent-Building efforts.
- They - unlike most other public officials - never do Citizen Participation as "an End in Itself" . . . but only
as "a Means to an End", . . . the "end" . . . or objective
. . . being the Informed Consent of their fiercest opponents.
Working with Implementation Geniuses - primarily officials
who have become Implementation Geniuses as a result of our SDIC/CPO training
- demonstrates several amazing things:
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1. The relationship between the professionals
in your agency, the elected and/or appointed political decision-makers
who make policy for your agency, and your various potentially affected
interests . . . is rarely what people think it is, . . . and always has the potential for being very different from what it appears
to be!
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2. No matter how much of an "Over-My-Dead-Body"
attitude your opponents have, . . . and, no matter what those opponents'
motive is, . . . and, no matter how impossible it looks, . . . you
probably can develop their Informed Consent . . . The possibility is
there . . . . provided you work for a legitimate organization . .
. and your proposal is legitimate.
- 4. Informed Consent is not natural . . . not with
interests who will be hurt by your proposal . . . And, you will, with
virtually every proposal you make, be forced to hurt someone . . . because
it's a fact of life that virtually every solution to a complex
problem will hurt some interests.
- Opposition, even "Over-My-Dead-Body" opposition, is a far more natural response
when your proposal threatens to offend someone's values, . . . than
agreement, consensus, or even "grudging" consent . . . Unless you
design Informed Consent, . . . build Informed Consent, . . . engineer
Informed Consent, . . . it won't be there when you come out with
your proposal.
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5. When the professionals in an agency develop
for their political decision-makers -- and deliver to them -- a technical
proposal, without also developing and delivering INformed Consent, they
virtually guarantee political grid-lock . . . and indecision . . .
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6. On the other hand, . . . Implementation Geniuses get the same political decision-makers to make decisions,
. . . even difficult, painful, unpopular decisions . . .
- 7. One reason their political decision-makers are
able and willing to bite the bullet appears to be the effect
Implementation Geniuses have on the "political climate" surrounding
their proposal:
- Implementation Geniuses create an informed public.
- That informed public engages in an informed public debate.
- That, in turn, creates an informed political debate.
- And, that - in turn - leads to informed political decisions.
- 8. Ordinary, humble technical or professional public-sector professionals --
who are dedicated to their mission, and who have the courage to do things
differently from the way they're done by most of their colleagues -
can be phenomenally effective . . . amazingly influential, . .
. stunningly successful . . . !
The SDIC course helps you discover the larger decision-making
framework that you fit into as a professional working in a Jeffersonian
Democracy. It gives you a big enough perspective where "politics"
no longer is a four-letter word, and no longer is synonymous with "irrational"
and "frustration". From that bigger and better perspective, you
discover that you role as a technical expert doesn't have to be one of
near-irrelevance in the political decision-making process . . . You discover
that the potential exists for you to have much greater influence over
political decision-making than you ever thought . . . without becoming
a political player yourself . . . and, without manipulating the publics
or the political decision-makers . . .
SDIC topics include:
- Why, and how proposals are torpedoed.
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How you can . . how you must . . . satisfy this society's
concepts of Fairness, Rights, Freedoms, Liberties, and Responsibilities.
You'll see how you can incorporate these concepts into
your day-to-day project planning processes.
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Why it is more difficult, and more important, for public
officials in this country to develop Informed Consent than in any
other country. . . i.e. How and why Thomas Jefferson's idea of trying
to create a society where individual values are (relatively) sovereign
has resulted in:
- a government that is fundamentally different from all other governments
ever created anywhere . . .
- a government that is primarily responsible with protecting the
rights of the individual.. . .
- a government that has lots of responsibilities but relatively
little clout . . .
- a government that was designed - by Jefferson - to have to develop
its public's consent over, and over . . . and over . . . if it is
to get anything accomplished . . .
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The role values play - i.e. people's likes, dislikes, hopes, dreams,
fears, aspirations, etc. - i.e. the roles values play:
- in building Informed Consent
- and in creating "Over-My-Dead-Body" attitudes . . . including
potentially violent "Extremists".
Who can benefit from it?
Public officials with responsibility for important -- but difficult-to-implement -- projects,
programs, regulations, and missions are the most obvious beneficiaries
of this training. Engineers, scientists, systems analysts, managers, administrators, and
other hired professionals in public agencies benefit most
because it's their professional work -- and their careers -- that
are wasted when their recommendations are torpedoed. However, elected
and politically appointed decision-makers can also use SDIC. They suffer many of the same frustrations as do the professionals.
Although the R&D that went into the development of SDIC was carried
out primarily in the public sector, private-sector managers whose
proposals are vulnerable to vetoes can also use SDIC to raise their
batting averages.
What are the benefits of
learning SDIC?
There is GOOD News and BAD News:
- the BAD News: The SDIC management strategy is neither easy to learn nor is it easy
to use.
- the GOOD News: It is learnable.
In fact, you can learn the basics of it in just a few days, (It
took us 30+ years to learn it . . . ) and it is do-able.
And, once you start using it, you become more and more effective.
You too will become an "Implementation Genius".
| "Makes more sense than anything else I've heard of in all my years of
education and life-experiences. If I use even half of what I've
learned in this course, I will be much more successful in my work
as well as with the rest of my life." -Paula Schmittdiel, Remedial Project Manager, US Environmental Protection
Agency, Superfund; Denver, CO |
What's in this Course?
Experienced administrators who attend this course often tell us that it has
been one of the most empowering, enlightening, valuable, useful . . . learning experiences they've ever been exposed to.
The main topics include:
- the VETO phenomenon: why -- and how --
even a single, small, but determined opposing minority or special
interest can torpedo a project, . . .
- SEACA (or Informed Consent), the solution
to the VETO problem, . . .
- Values: their structure, and their pivotal
role in Consent-Building, . . .
- 60 Fundamental Principles and 15 Objectives
of Consent-Building, . . .
- the six most common seriously damaging
Errors in Consent-Building, and
- the PAI-Matrix: a method for simplifying
even a very complex mix of special interests into a manageable system.
| "SDIC provides a very logical system for building consent...
and the system can be incorporated in our project management." - Roger Dolan, General Manager, Central Contra Costa County
Sanitation District, Martinez, CA |
 Click
here for SDIC Open Course Schedule
For information on scheduling In-House SDIC
course
 Register For a Course
 Fee Schedule
 For
more information on IPMP and our (Hans and Annemarie Bleiker's ) overall approach
to becoming effective public officials, visit our Citizen
Participation Handbook page.
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IPMP