How we like to work with government

Over the past month, I have had the pleasure of working with a wide range of clients. Some, I have known for a long time, some new and some prospective – all doing exciting things. Through these interactions, I have been able to share how the SAS Group likes to work with government, and now I want to share it here with you.

There are many examples that come to mind, but I can think of a couple of clients with large projects in the last year, where the project teams put in years of work and serious capital behind a transformative opportunity – the sort of project where a setback at the wrong moment can put you a long way back.

Along the way, the signals around the project started to seem ominous: Industry chatter about risk; government had gone quiet; key government personnel the client would expect to hear from had not been in touch for a while. If you were running the government relationship transactionally, you would be forgiven for fearing the worst – projects do get abandoned, and silence is not generally a good sign.

What it often took, in the end, was one key, trusted conversation with government to clear things up – rooted in a relationship built up over years: “Nothing wrong with the project; everything’s on track”. 

A conversation that takes only a few minutes to stop weeks of anxiety.

Two ways of doing this

There are two primary ways of approaching government relations: transactionally and relationally. The transactional approach is turning up when there’s a tender or a specific issue you need solved. The relational approach means being around year-round, whether or not you have an immediate issue. Almost every firm does some of both. The question worth asking is: what’s the right mix? Because the mix is what reveals itself in moments like the scenario above.

What the relational approach secures

The first thing the relational approach secures is resilience. Expenditure restraint is the order of the day for both the Commonwealth and the states. Inflation has put pressure on every line of every budget, and even programs delivering genuine support are being looked at with hardened eyes. In that environment, it makes a real difference whether ministers, advisers and senior bureaucrats know who you are. Knowing them doesn’t immunise you from a cut. It does mean you’ll usually hear about it before the rest of the world does, and you’ll have a chance to put your case to someone who’s heard of you.

The second advantage is opportunity. Advisers ring you because the minister wants something positive to announce and your project fits: site visits get suggested; you hear about a consultation before it’s public; or you get an invitation to a working group before the terms of reference are out. None of these flow to you transactionally. It flows to people already part of the conversation.

The third, and probably most underrated, benefit is intelligence. When you understand what a minister is genuinely trying to achieve, what’s actually feasible inside the public service, and where the political risk really sits, you make far sharper decisions about when to push and when to wait. Clients who are plugged in waste far less effort than clients who aren’t.

The investment needed

The relational approach is an investment. It takes time, money, and senior members of an organisation who should be working on the business instead of spending hours meeting with government.  It means meeting a backbencher before they hold any portfolio of consequence, on the chance that one day they will. It means hosting site tours on whichever Thursday afternoon happens to suit the politician’s diary rather than yours and going to functions you wouldn’t otherwise have bothered turning up to.

That’s not to say every relationship pays off, either. Reshuffles happen. A bureaucrat you’ve worked with closely for two years might get promoted out of your area, and you start again with whoever takes over. We have a client currently going through exactly that with a new state health minister. There is no shortcut – you just put the work in again. The argument for relational engagement isn’t that every relationship will deliver a return on investment. It’s that, across a portfolio and over time, the clients who do this work consistently come out ahead.

You could treat government like counter you walk up to when you want something. Plenty of organisations do. But the clients we see getting the most out of their engagement over the long run are the ones who treat it as a key relationship. The work is slow and it isn’t glamorous. However, when you secure that important conversation with someone who already knows your name, you will be very glad you put the years in.