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Latest NewsIs your rural stakeholder engagement just one-way communication re-badged?
You hear the term 'stakeholder engagement' a lot these days, but it is overrated. In the same way that communication is meant to be two-way and enable productive business relationships, so too it is with engagement. Indeed, if engagement activities...
How ecology can help organisations navigate change
Leaders already know that rural industry service bodies need to adapt faster to survive rapid and disruptive change. External drivers of change dictate this need for adaptation, as well as the costs of complacency; such as loss of relevance and...
10 indicators of resistance to change
Terms like restructure, reform and change can evoke negative emotions in people. Alternative language, such as reinvention, renewal, evolution or adaptation, feels more positive and optimistic. However, what can’t be sugar coated is that when the...
How perceptions trump evidence
A recent Oxford University study found in blind taste tests that wine judges could not pick the difference between $30 and $630 bottles of champagne. It suggests that the perception of value (brand) trumps the evidence (taste). Yet so often in...
Hurdling the main barrier to institutional innovation
Managers, members and stakeholders involved in industry and sustainability bodies often know that their organisation is out of step with its market. They know innovation is needed for high performance, but can’t get momentum. In fact, the harder...
When more evidence and analysis is unhelpful
Think about it. Have you ever read a research paper that did not say more research is needed? The more we learn and discover, the more we know about what we don’t know. Complex change processes are inherently risky, so when stakeholders call for...
No room for fence sitters in modern rural advocacy
Many farmers in Australia and other developed economies have become acutely aware of how interest groups such as the animal rights movement are succeeding in disrupting the conventional advocacy model for agriculture. These groups have moved from...
What rural industries can learn from NRM bodies
Natural Resource Management (NRM) and similar bodies face an ongoing challenge and tension to build their engagement and influence on NRM knowledge and practice. Experience says that there are no simple solutions, but evidence from the field...
Hidden reasons why re-invention of member-based rural bodies gets derailed
Having set up, wound up, led and advised on restructuring of agricultural industry bodies, we have observed a familiar pattern. From start-up, they grow, mature and then either slide into terminal decline or innovate and experience a revival....
You can build it, but they won’t come: Pathways to meeting demand for knowledge
Governments and researchers are often frustrated that businesses, industries and regional bodies don’t eagerly ‘adopt’ the information being supplied. Research reports, government policy statements and...