The trouble with knowing how Brussels works

What if knowing exactly how Brussels works can occasionally stop us seeing how it could work better?

There is a sentence you hear quite a lot in Brussels. “That's not how things work in Brussels.” Usually, the person saying it has a point. They know the institutions, the politics. Which stakeholder actually matters, which meeting matters more than the conference, which argument will land, which perfectly sensible idea has absolutely no chance of going anywhere.

That knowledge is enormously valuable.

I've been wondering, though, whether there is an occupational hazard that comes with becoming very good at Brussels: you become very certain about how Brussels works.

And perhaps a little less curious about what the person sitting next to you might know.

Different expertise, same objective

Take policy, public affairs and communications.

They should be natural allies. Policy understands the substance. Public affairs understands the political environment, the relationships and the routes to influence. Communications understands audiences, narrative and how ideas travel. 

In practice, they can drive each other absolutely mad.

The policy expert thinks comms has oversimplified something. Comms thinks policy has produced something nobody will read. Public affairs thinks everyone is forgetting how influence actually happens. Meanwhile, everybody is convinced they are protecting the organisation.

I have lost count of the number of times I've wanted to put my hands on the table and say: We are on the same team.

Competent people, real tensions

these tensions is just how competent everyone involved can be.

You spend 15 years building expertise and judgement. People come to you because you know. You develop relationships others don't have. You watch supposedly brilliant ideas fail because somebody didn't understand the politics.

Over time, that expertise becomes part of your professional identity.

Then someone from another discipline wanders over and starts questioning the message, the approach or the strategy. It can feel remarkably like someone who doesn't understand your job telling you how to do it. Sometimes, they genuinely don't understand your job.

They may still understand something you don't. 

The stronger picture

The communications person may be the first to notice that nobody outside the policy team understands the argument. The policy expert may spot the crucial nuance lost in a beautifully simple message. The public affairs professional may know that a clever public intervention will make an important private conversation considerably harder.

Put those three kinds of judgement together and the organisation has something quite powerful.

What are we trying to make happen?

Perhaps three officials need to reconsider a technical provision. Public affairs may know exactly how to approach them.

Perhaps 30 member organisations need to understand and repeat an argument. Communications needs a significant role in shaping how that argument is framed.

Perhaps the underlying policy argument still has holes in it. There is little point producing a beautiful campaign around it.

The objective tells you whose expertise you need, when you need it and how much weight it should carry.

There is a strange thing that can happen when organisations collect very competent people. Everyone becomes exceptionally good at protecting their piece of the puzzle. And occasionally nobody notices that they're supposed to be building the same picture.

So yes. You probably do know how Brussels works. But have you ever asked yourself, without feeling the need to defend your own expertise: What does this person know that could help us deliver?You don't have to compete with the answer. Their expertise doesn't take anything away from yours.