Policy is often inscrutable to people, and residents don’t always know how to engage with important matters. Rewrite all policy to first person action phrases, and put them on stickers for residents to select what is important to them.

Outcomes

Make policy accessible to people by using plain language and stickers, to see what policies are the most relevant and needed by your respondents.

Preparation

1. Review what problem you are trying to solve, they can range from examples such a redesign a public plaza or proposals around policing, but to be successful you need to relate that policy to people’s direct needs.
2. Now take that policy, which was probably written and/or vetted by experts and lawyers, and rewrite it to first-person action phrases. They should be less than a tweet length. Yes, that might be an oversimplification, but if your policy proposals end up being multi-clause or longer, break them up to allow people to mix-and-match
3. You will probably need to have those phrases re-vetted
4. Down select the top 8-10 policies. Any more than that then people go crosseyed.
5. Print them out in nice colorful stickers. You can do that either using Avery stickers (3” x 3” work great) and print them out on your office laser printer, or you can use one of the many online sticker makers to print out the stickers.
6. Have a postcard or wall for people to sticker on. If you want to address the letter to a specific person, then a half sheet letter format is good. If you want to show policy interest, have people sticker them on a wall, across a spectrum (highest value to lowest value).
7. Create a discussion guide of additional questions you might want to ask residents, a few per policy sticker. Just in case people take you up on conversation

Activation

1. Set out the stickers in a public place, and make sure all the policy proposals are visible.
2. Ask people to review and pick a few policy proposals which they feel are important to them.
3. Have them put it on the letter or wall.
4. Ask any followup questions. This is an invitation to go deeper, using your already prepared discussion guide
5. If people want to take policy stickers, let them. You are helping people spread and share possible policies. Give them a whole lot!
6. Use the Participant Count tactic to chart how many people pass by

After the event

1. Take photos of everything! Closeup photos, mid-range, and overall photos. This is your evidence.
2. Count how many of which policy stickers were used. Enter them into your activation log
3. If possible, scan all the responses.
4. See which policies have the most responses, ask yourself why this might be.
5. Try to find the patterns and insights from your respondents.
   Write a quick report on what you heard from your residents, and use the responses and documentary evidence.
6. Spend some time in iterating what the next questions might be, or what avenues of exploration and study you need to do based on what you’ve heard from your residents.

Staffing needs

• 1 person

Setup needs

• Sign
• Focused policy proposals
• Stickers
• Place to stick
  • Letter
  • Wall
• Discussion guide
• Activation Log
• Participant Count 

Suggested duration

• 2–4 hours

Core behaviors segments

• Sleeping
• Scrambling

Useful to:

Build momentum and evidence for Executive.

Validate course of action and gather evidence.

To understand the problem space in order to act.

Journey moments:

EXAMPLES IN THE WORLD.

NYCLY Listening Room

Policy responses on the future of policing in NYC.

Tactical Democracy is a toolkit to help you make meaningful person–to–person engagement in order to empower successful communities.

Learn about the Mindsets you need, how the Players behave and act; what Situations might be best to
deploy Tactics for engagement, to move the Players through their Journey, creating deeper empowerment.

Whoa, there's a lot of terms – check out the Glossary of Terms, and if you want to see everything, goto the sitemap.

Read some blog posts: