This husband-and-wife, and now daughter too, team have dedicated their professional lives to making organizations with important missions -- especially public agencies -- better at accomplishing their missions.

They are devoted to helping make public-sector agencies more effective, thereby improving the lives of both the citizens of their students and the bureaucrats they train. Their Consent-Building methodology is both cutting-edge and entirely unique to their research.

Dr. Hans Bleiker, Lead Instructor

Once he had his doctorate, Hans worked as the Planning Director for the City of Lynn, Massachusetts (population 100,000), as Project Manager for MIT's Transportation Systems Division, and as Director of the Planning Department for a large Environmental Engineering Consulting firm, ARIX, that works in the entire Rocky Mountain region.

Hans began his last "real job" as a tenured professor at the University of Wyoming in 1975, where he was recruited to create - and then administer - its Graduate Program in Community and Regional Planning. For twelve years he served as Director of that program.

It was at the University that Hans first began teaching his unique approach to Citizen Participation, in a series of courses: Leadership, Professional Ethics, Citizen Participation by Objectives, and Dealing with Domestic Terrorists and Extremists, etc. In 1987, he devoted his full-time attention to developing and teaching these leadership and consent-building skills to public-sector professionals nation-wide.

The Bleikers' Consent-Building methodology to Public Involvement actually began in the mid-1960s while Hans was doing Public-Sector Decision-Making research as part of his Doctoral Thesis. His thesis focused on a practical management strategy that would allow public agencies to be both responsible to their mission and responsive to their diverse publics. i.e. How to be responsive to the conflicting demands of the various publics without compromising the agency's mission. As part of his thesis, Hans did case studies on four of the most complex transportation problems in the US.

Since retiring from the University, Hans and Annemarie have worked solely on teaching their methodology to tens of thousands of students around the country, and at times internationally.

Annemarie Bleiker, President

As a student of Urban Anthropology, Annemarie studied what happens to community conflict when people who are at each other's throats -- because they have very different values, even diametrically opposed and offensive values -- discover they have something in common after all (i.e. "common ground"), although they were convinced there was none.

In 1977 Annemarie created the Institute for Participatory Management & Planning (IPMP). The mission of IPMP is to make government agencies more effective by making them better at accomplishing their (legitimate) missions. IPMP was based on, and over the years has built upon, what she discovered in her Masters Thesis at Brandeis, and what Hans discovered in his Doctoral Thesis at MIT.

What Annemarie uncovered in her work is that even when there appears to be no common ground, one simply has to work harder to find it because it does indeed exist. In his research, Hans had discovered that if a legitimate public agency proposes a reasonably well-thought out solution to a legitimate problem, the typical scenario of "all hell breaking loose" (i.e. political decision-making gridlock) actually is avoidable -- provided the professionals work diligently and systematically to develop consent on their technical work.

The combined effort and backgrounds of both Annemarie and Hans has led to the development of their powerful approach to systematically discover the common ground between people of different values -- which enables communities, agencies, organizations, consultants, etc. to get their work accomplished rather than become victims of controversy or "politics."

Over the course of nearly four decades, Hans and Annemarie have worked, and continue to work, at helping people with public-sector missions (hired professionals, as well as elected and appointed officials) be consistently effective at accomplishing their mission. By using the Bleikers' consent-building methods and process, these professionals improve their effectiveness by developing viable solutions to problems it is their responsibility to address, and then get those solutions implemented in spite of fierce opposition and/or controversy.

Jennifer Bleiker, Assistant Instructor

Today she occasionally travels with Hans and Annemarie to assist in training, but the primary scope of her work is in developing an online version of training modules. In addition to the developing online courseware, Jennifer continues to produce training materials (CDs and DVDs) on Citizen Participation Techniques and Meta-Techniques as taught by Hans and Annemarie.

Jennifer also works as a hands-on coach to students of IPMP, giving advice on

• How to identify all the relevant Potentially Affected Interests on a project, an all the Issues that are of relevance to these Interests,
  
• How to do a Citizen Participation (CP) Needs Assessment, and then how to prioritize the CP needs on a given project,
  
• How to design a CP Program that is tailored to the needs of the project at hand, how to select CP Techniques that utilize the team's strengths in accomplishing the CP Needs for that project,
  
• And, how to execute the selected CP Techniques in a manner that Informed Consent will be a by-product of the team's work.

In pursuit of her need for a foot in public health, Jennifer also works as a fulltime professional firefighter/EMT, and the Public Information Officer for a fire department in a town near Boston where she resides. Although the two job paths are quite different on the surface, she has learned a great deal from her hands-on experience as a public servant who is directly affected by the same issues that affect any public-sector professional.

How the Bleikers Can Help You

The Bleikers can help you and your team get your mission accomplished when others can't. They offer management training in each of these several skills areas. These skills-areas will rather quickly set you apart from the average manager.

Most often clients have them conduct these management seminars as In-House training sessions strictly for their staff. Once or twice a year the Bleikers offer these same courses as Open-House training sessions. . . mostly in Monterey, CA,  Denver, CO; Des Moines, IA; and Olympia, WA.  Dates of the open-enrollment courses are shown only for the next year or so . . . See the listing of Courses Open to the Public they currently offer.

Give them a call for a more detailed description of the training session(s) that you are interested in, for additional dates, for a fee schedule, for references of public officials who are using the Bleikers' methods, etc . . . Hans, Annemarie and Jennifer can help you become more effective, . . . better at accomplishing your mission, . . . They have done the research; they have developed several tools that can help you do just that!