The Great Doug Hattaway on the Art and Science of Effective Communications – Transcript

Eric: [00:00:00] Welcome to, let’s Hear

Eric (2): It.

Eric: Let’s Hear. It is a podcast for and about the field of foundation and nonprofit communications produced by its two co-hosts, Eric Brown and Kirk Brown. No relation,

Kirk: who well said Eric. And I’m Kirk. And

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Eric: Let’s get onto the show.

Kirk: So that’s a nicely a pointed, uh. Shoe storage thing over your shoulder there that I’m seeing

Eric: a, again, with the, starting the conversation in the middle. [00:01:00]

Kirk: It’s just, you gotta catch up. You gotta, you gotta see where we’re at in the plot. ’cause ’cause you’re in a very ing spot right now.

I can’t even describe it. I’m gonna start picking things out. Is that, is that a limp rush over one of your shoulders? It is. I’s not sure what I’m seeing there. Multicolored background. Uh,

Eric: if you’re, if what you’re saying is that I appear to be in my mother’s closet, then you are correct

Kirk: once again. Once again, let’s hear to speed broadcast from your mother’s closet.

You know, you’ve done some great work in your mother’s closet, and I’m happy to explore that fully here if you’d like. . You know what?

Eric: I don’t have the money to spend on the therapy that you just caused me. . That was like the nastiest thing you ever said to me, ,

Kirk: come on, you’ve grown, you changed, you’ve evolved.

You are, I know the story for why you’re in this closet right now, by the way, and I just wanna mighty props, Mr. Brown, to you. The choices you make in your life, the care you provide others, it’s a, it’s a, it’s a really nice thing to see. And that’s, that’s a sincere statement I’ll make. I, I know what’s going on for why you’re actually having to broadcast from your brother’s closet [00:02:00] today.

Eric: I’m going to have to fill in some of this because people might misconstrue. I’m my. , my mother is making the migration to San Francisco. So I am here to, uh, to facilitate that.

Kirk: Moving to a house that you’ve purchased for her in, in, in the mighty Pearl called San Francisco, which is really nice of you.

Eric: Well, it’s a good thing that it’s so inexpensive to live in San Francisco.

Exactly. Good. Took advantage. Took advantage of, you know, deep discounts.

Kirk: Good time to be buying into the market. So I have four words

Eric: I’m gonna share with go. Oh, wait, wait, wait, wait. Yeah. Yeah. Welcome in. Everybody see . It’s great. We’ll hand it off. Please. Step in. Come on in. There’s cookies.

Kirk: See you’re uncomfortable.

You’re, if we don’t welcome people in, you’re uncomfortable. And I think it’s one of my favorite things to start do for this podcast. Somebody has to feel

Eric: welcome if it’s not me, at least it’s our good friends.

Kirk: I have four words for you to describe what we’re about to hear. Go

Eric: for it. Go for

Kirk: it. Impressive, inspiring, sad.[00:03:00]

Dissatisfying.

Eric: Oh my God. All right,

Kirk: set it up.

Eric: Well, I had a conversation, uh, with a friend and colleague Doug Hattaway, who is really one of the, I don’t know, one of the, the great lights in foundation communications, and I’ve known him for a really long time. Always wanted to have him on the show. And as you’ll hear, as you heard or as you were going to hear, really just such a thoughtful and, and incredibly effective communicator and consultant.

And I learned so much from this conversation. Then I’m very happy to share it with folks.

Kirk: So this is Doug Hattaway from Hattaway Communications. I wanna, um, get to two things you talk about later in the interview, but learn by Hattaway Communications, inspire and S-P-I-R-E, Spire by Hattaway Communications. Um, two resources that you’ll find on Hattaway.com on the How Do We Communications website Learn is the digital storytelling platform they’ve created for, um,

Just providing a series of courses in [00:04:00] this whole area. And their first is about creating the one minute message, how to create your ultimate elevator pitch. And then also Spire, uh, is the audience segmentation work they’ve done around, um, you know, the choices people make for giving their time and money and how to inspire people to support your cause.

So please get to the website, check that stuff out. And, um, Mr. Hattaway, Doug Hattaway, thank you for all your work for all these years and thank you for being such a great contributor to Let’s hear it. Let’s listen to Doug and Eric talk and then we’ll come back.

Eric: Welcome to, let’s Hear It. My guest today is Doug Hattaway, the founder and president of Hattaway Communications, and honestly, an icon in the world of nonprofit communications.

Doug has a long and storied career in political communications, and for over two decades, his firm has worked with nonprofits, foundations, universities, and businesses to make the world yes, a much better place. Doug. Thank you so much for coming on to let’s hear it.

Doug: So great to be here. Although now I feel like I have to measure up to something called an icon.

Eric: Ah, .

Doug: No pressure. [00:05:00]

Eric: No pressure. You cannot help but measure up, Doug. Uh, all you have to do is just be you Excellent that I could, that you can do. Yeah. I’ve been, I’ve been dying to have you on for the longest time and, and I’m just happy that we got around to doing this. So thank you again for, for being here.

I’m, I’m really looking forward to this conversation. Me too. Thanks so much. Well, okay, let’s start at the beginning. Uh, as far as I understand, you grew up in that great liberal bastion, Tallahassee, Florida. Is that correct?

Doug: Yes. I graduated, my family moved around, but I graduated from Leon High School, Tallahassee, Florida,

Eric: Leon High School,

Doug: after Co de Leon, the French

Eric: not Leon, from Curb Your Enthusiasm .

Doug: Different Leon.

Eric: Different Leon. Okay. What was it like to at least spend your formative years in a, a relatively conservative, let’s call it a conservative place?

Doug: Well, Leon County is home to the state capital in two major universities, Florida State and Florida a and m.

So it was actually growing up [00:06:00] in a bastion of blue in , an an island of blue in a sea of red. The panhandle of Florida is very much the deep south and so is Tallahassee. It was. You know, it was a capital of the Confederacy and also a lot of civil rights movement activity there. But my family is from that part of the country of southern Georgia, north Florida.

And one thing, you know, growing up in a place like that, particularly now that Florida is like both a joke and a narrative in politics, , there’s a bumper sticker for you. Right? Welcome to Florida. Yeah. What is, what is Florida man up to today? Right. But as usual, when you’re living in a place and actually know the actual people, the simplistic sort of narratives often go by the wayside.

So it was fun having. Access to the beaches of the Gulf of Mexico, not the Gulf of America . And being in a place [00:07:00] where, like in the high school, I went up to my lab partner in 10th grade, her dad was the governor. Oh, . And we were cutting apart frogs like in labs. She’s like, Ew, I don’t wanna cut apart a frog.

I’m like, well, tell your dad to change the curriculum requirements. or another friend, her, her father was the chief justice in the Florida Supreme Court. So we’d be hanging out at her house, you know, late on a Friday night as teenagers want to do while he’s hearing, you know, death penalty appeals, kid, you not.

So it was growing up around powerful people like that, but also people in, in the universities who were studying this and, well, I was coming up with that. Really interested in what, what are they studying at these universities and what are these powerful people doing? So I was. On my high school newspaper.

So literally with my press pass from my high school newspaper, I got to interview the governor, president Jimmy [00:08:00] Carter, when he was there, signing some legislation around, um, an influx of Cuban refugees back in the late 80, early eighties.

Eric: Um,

Doug: met a famous journalist called Sam Donaldson who covered the White House.

Fred. He interviewed some stars like Burt Reynolds. Right. Just because I was in that little town, which happened to be the capital of a big state, and I was a budding journalist, so it was a great place to sort of start out .

Eric: That’s amazing. Yeah. My lab partner in high school was, uh, Bobby Piscatelli, and I think his dad ran, ran numbers, but you know, that’s slightly different.

Right. Anyway, so then you did some journal. You, you studied journalism in college, right.

Doug: Yes. I went to journalism school at Northwestern University, which was university, which was purported to be a good school for journalism . And that was interesting because only a quarter of our classes were in journalism.

Their philosophy was journalism is a craft [00:09:00] of asking questions and checking facts and telling stories, preferably at a fifth grade reading level. ’cause we, we are being taught to write for newspapers primarily. There’s a little bit of broadcast and the rest they’re like, you need to understand this world you’re reporting on.

So we had to double major and I chose political science and then a minor in sociology. So I was interested in the, what we now call the social sciences. What people taking a meticulous look at how the systems work, how do people think? That sort of thing. So sort of the storytelling on the journalism side, you know, that kind of storytelling and the science, um, were both intriguing to me.

That kind of got me started on the path that I remain on today.

Eric: Yeah, I was gonna say, I don’t wanna jump forward too far, but it sounds like the, that Hattaway communications, it owes a lot to the, to the Florida State University.

Doug: Yeah, it’s funny. Florida State [00:10:00] is where I went. I went back home for graduate school.

Oh,

Eric: that’s where you went to graduate school? I was, yeah, undergrad

Doug: was Northwestern Journal. Northwestern,

Eric: yeah. Okay.

Doug: So journalism and PoliSci, sociology. But then several years later, I worked, I worked for a member of Congress right outta college and learned a ton we could talk about, but then I went back home to major in English because I felt my journalism stuff was very useful, but somewhat formulaic and not too quote creative.

So I just wanted to, I wanted to creative writing. So I went back to get a master’s in creative writing, to which everybody said, what are you gonna do with that? starting with , whatcha gonna do with, whatcha gonna do with that? I’m like, I don’t know. I just want to do it right. So it was a bit of a luxury. I was a teaching assistant and I learned another thing.

I used to this day, we had a great training program to teach a workshop, you know, for writing and did not realize that was gonna be a tool I would use throughout my life. [00:11:00] And, and there learning more tools and techniques for storytelling, character plot, that sort of stuff, which you didn’t really learn in journalism school.

And, and also, uh, a sideline in keeping with my interest in sort of the social science was what they called rhetoric, which was the study of persuasive communication. Rhetoric is essentially. Intentional persuasive communication. It gets a bad rap, but almost all communication is persuasive in some way. Um, so that was my, my second stint in academia and last

Eric: Well, uh, clearly all of this is coming together. I hope your mother eventually relented and decided that Yes, indeed. You, you did get an education that would set you up for a career in later in life, , and you spent a fair amount of time in politics. And I’d love to learn more about what your experiences were like.

I mean, you worked with, uh, some of the giants of, [00:12:00] of Democratic politics, Al Gore and Hillary Clinton, Tom Dashell among others. T talk about that period of your life and working at that level and what you took away from that.

Doug: It started out, my first job was for a member of congress from my home state of Florida, um, a Republican from the southwest part.

And it was interesting ’cause going into that office, there was one cons on the staff, one conservative Republican and one liberal Democrat. The rest of us were something, yeah, kind of. I was literally an independent at the time kind of ahead of the curve if I do say so . And there I learned about the nexus of politics, policy and communication and it’s how people communicate drives the whole thing.

So for example, something like I take away to this day seeing up close, like how members of Congress work. It’s a group of people, most of [00:13:00] whom have no time or inclination to read a bunch of stuff unless you’re like I, Hillary Clinton or Al Gore. I worked with some of the brainiacs, but almost all of the.

Um, communication that leads to outcomes is word of mouth. It’s what does my friend Bob on the small business committee say about that small business thing we’re supposed to vote on? Hey Bob, you know, and Bob will give you a minute, right? There’s, and then the, then the, okay, I’m gonna vote with Bob. You know what I mean?

So, a lot of the currency of communication in the realm of policymaking is literally people talking to each other. So the stuff we do as professional communicators, we need to, and that’s the case, right? The studies on quality communication continue to go back to person to person. Conversation is the highest quality of communication.

So let’s optimize for that, right? I’m writing a speech, I’m writing, [00:14:00] uh, a, whatever it is. I want somebody to be able to retain and repeat it in a real conversation with somebody else. So that, for example, is this one tidbit of an insight from working in that world that I continue to share with people today.

Eric: Um, you also, I mean if I, if I could just follow up on that a little bit. You, your work it feels to me is highly pragmatic and realistic, and it seems to me that you understand that decisions get made in political contexts. That we are not just going to put out a better story and the world will beat a path to our door.

Can you talk a little bit about that as well and, and how you saw how inside politics you could actually get things done? I mean, things weren’t as nearly as polarized back then, but they were not easygoing either.

Doug: It’s all about what I learned from a good politician. Which is you’re trying to get things done.

You don’t walk in with demands, you walk in with goals [00:15:00] and hear people out who might share the goal, and then how do we get there? Right? Conversation and collaboration, which by the way, through social science studies about how do you resolve political divides and and reduce social distance, they call it is exactly that.

Find common goals, talk to each other and try to achieve something. Is the path of least resistance to moving forward in a, on a controversial issue in a complex system like a, like a, the Congress. So for example, and then one of the tools, so one is listen, listen to your audience, right? Good communication starts with listening and then quote, meet them where they are, which is what is a common thing we talk about.

But the way I find that practically is frame up the issue in a way that they’re gonna respond to. So real quick, by way of example. My boss wanted to be part of protecting our beaches. He represented beaches and the state’s economy from the threat of [00:16:00] oil spills. So framing it as an economic imperative for the state of Florida.

Everybody in congressional delegation was well aware. Tourism was our number one issue. So we said, let’s protect our tourism economy and our beautiful beaches that we all love and ban oil drilling off the coast of Florida. And we did. We got everybody to sign on. Uh, Ronald Reagan was in the White House, George HW Bush, and offshore oil Pioneer was his vice president.

And we got them to sign a bill, um, banning the practice because George Bush wanted to be president and his path went through Florida. So that was a lesson on framing and timing.

Eric: Hmm.

Eric: That’s really interesting. I, I’m curious to see now that Florida has gone, I mean, do you think that Florida will get blue again someday?

Or is it now just sort of seeping deep, dark [00:17:00] red?

Doug: Yeah, well, when you look on back under the surface of the narratives, and one of the thing about how we talk about politics, red and blue as though that’s all there is, right? Sure. And then when you look under, well, what does that mean? It’s much more diverse and complicated.

Up until very recently, there were more people registered as Democrats than Republicans in Florida. Don’t get me started on the failures of my beloved Democratic party to invest in building infrastructure, to engage people in meaningful ways. So I think I often look to, well, what could my team do better?

Putting on that hat? Um, and also nothing stays the same. So Florida was a democratic state when I was . Growing up and coming up, it was a purple state. Now it’s on the red side. Yes, absolutely. But a lot of this is at the margins. The, in my view, the Republicans have done a lot with the political infrastructure, make it hard to vote and [00:18:00] make it harder for Democrats to reclaim or anybody else, by the way.

So that’s a road, a hoe, but sure. Anything’s possible. ,

Eric: I’m, I’m glad to hear it. And you would think that Florida, of all places would understand the effects of climate change and other Sure. Weather related events. They’re so, they’re so vulnerable, and yet the politics there don’t seem to advantage those kinds of, just the very kinds of policies that you were able to help pass when you were there by a Republican.

Doug: Right. Again, you look under the hood and the, the, and we see this, we’re doing research right now with local and state policy makers who identify as conservative for a national public health organization that most people would call kind of progressive or liberal. And when you talk to the folks on the ground, like in this case people representing Tampa, St.

Pete or whatever, they get it. We don’t have to talk about climate change. We have to talk about protecting our beach property. Right? Right. [00:19:00] You can tell me why you think it’s happening, but we need policies to get at that. So there’s definitely avenues to disrupt what I think is a very harmful false narrative.

You know, denying climate change, obviously, but there’s plenty of people with incentive to see the reality of the situation and work on it. Well,

Eric: that’s, that gets me to this, my last question that I’ll ask you before we go to the break, which is, it’s, it still seems to me that, and, and I think you, you were maybe the.

Smartest person I know about politics in this and communications in this way. So your insights will be really useful, which is so we believe that politics is broken and in many ways, I mean, what we’re seeing right now is, is strange and part of the last version of the simulation that we like, you pick up the newspaper, you think you’re reading the Onion, and yet across the country we have many, many thousands of political units and entities that still have to get things done.

Eric (2): Yep.

Eric: How do you [00:20:00] think about political decisions in this, in this weird, weird world, understanding that there are still folks on both sides of the aisle, however you wanted, define it. They’re trying to get some stuff done somewhere.

Doug: Yeah, there’s plenty of good people trying to get good stuff done. No doubt about it.

I was able to take a close look at that with congress. Working in partnership with an organization that, um, focuses on public service and how to support public servants, et cetera. And we did a study on trust in Congress and talking to people who observe and study Congress more than anybody. And they were pointing to all the stuff actually getting done behind, behind the scenes, et cetera, people to people working stuff out versus the high profile partisan battle, which gets all the attention and the clicks and the headlines and the media is implicated in this, right?

That’s what we, there’s plenty of reporters who cover [00:21:00] the nuts and bolts and, you know, things getting done, but that’s not what anybody’s talking about on the cable shows and blah, blah, blah. And the same thing goes on at the state level too. Plenty of people getting stuff done. But the, the high profile divisiveness of the national narrative, and that’s one of the tensions.

We were hearing, I was talking just recently about, we’re talking with local and state conservative policy makers and they’re like, we try to stay out of that national stuff as much as possible. And it can be hard, but rest assured when you get past all that narrative stuff, and that’s interesting thing, ’cause narrative is a tool we work with.

The psychological insight is that that’s how we understand the world and the realm of politics. It’s very easy. That’s a whole, like, let’s give people a narrative about the way things are and the way things ought to be and how we’re just the right people to make it all happen. And you, you ascribe to the one that fits your [00:22:00] identity.

So if you grew up a Republican, you subscribe to, that doesn’t matter who these people are on the ballot, or people will vote for a living wage, for example, considered a democratic issue while they vote for a Republican committee. So there’s, people are subscribing to that. Larger narrative that gives them a sense of a worldview and an identity while they’re also agree on policies that are actually not part of that.

So it’s, it’s a complicated picture, but there’s, I think there’s plenty to work with.

Eric: Well, you’re obviously working with it. We’re at right after the break, we’re gonna talk more about what you’re doing at Hattaway Communications. It would be right back with Doug Hattaway. You’re listening to, let’s Hear It, a podcast about foundation and nonprofit communications hosted by Eric Brown and Kirk Brown.

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Check them out wherever you get your podcasts. And now back to the show, and we’re back with. Doug Hattaway, the founder and president of Hattaway Communications. So you, you finished, so you worked in politics for a long time and then you hung out a shingle. You started your own shop. Can you talk, talk us through what you wanted to do with that based on all this experience and, and these tools that you had and what you were set out to achieve?

Sure.

Doug: Yeah. It’s funny ’cause it was early on after working for a politician for three years, that was the longest time I ever worked for anybody else, . And I said, I’m not gonna work for politicians the rest of my life. So early lesson and I went, you know, went to graduate school, um, again, creative writing, and then I decided I was a consultant.

Um, [00:24:00] and, but the, in the first assignment I got was from the World Bank, which was funding programs in a sustainable agriculture, something I’d never really heard of. , a friend who worked there said. Who was familiar with my work on Capitol Hill, we both, we work together. He’s like, we need you over here ’cause nobody knows what this is and we need you to help us tell the story.

So I got to go to Mexico and Colombian places where scientists were working on creating like plants that could survive droughts, for example. And I just used my journalism toolkit. I interviewed them, you know, found the story. And that was one of the things I learned from the professors. When your editor tells, said you on assignment, he doesn’t say, get the facts.

He says, get the story . And of course you get both. But, so just bringing that little journalism and toolkit. But these programs all had, uh, communications people, [00:25:00] a lot of them were technical writers. They weren’t, they weren’t trained in journalism, this store. So I. Again, I opened my old toolkit. I knew how to run a workshop from grad school and said, Hey, well here’s how you know, you might wanna think about writing about journal writing for journalists.

Like stop writing self-promotional headlines, and so on the news, right? So I really liked that and, and that sort of looked was one of the early, like my mission. I wanna sort of share knowledge and skills and tools for people working in organizations that are trying to make the world a better place to help them do that.

So that’s been part of my mission is like share learning and started and partly being based in Washington where there’s lots of big organizations and lots of needs down these lines. It was a good place to get started and, and, and I was still doing politics, so getting pulled into presidential campaigns and so forth and, and being frustrated about [00:26:00] just lack of.

I think a lot of time and money and resources being wasted on communications that don’t work, both in national politics and government untold hundreds of millions of dollars spent on advertising in particular, that does not work. Why? Because people don’t have the time or the wherewithal to bring in just insights that can help us, right?

Like in a politics, if your opponent is repeating a negative narrative about you, like Al Gore exaggerates, don’t repeat the negative even when you to refute it. So that’s a common mistake people make. Oh, there’s a, we’re gonna do the myths and facts, right? Right. And they repeat the myth, encounter it with a fact, and the studies show that your audience actually remembers the myth.

So people had already done that homework. We just need to learn from it. By way of example, um, even most recently, I got a call from. [00:27:00] A big organization that was getting hundreds of millions of dollars to do advertising, you know, for Joe Biden, the Democrats. And it wasn’t working , they were studying it out, the Yingying and it wasn’t working, asked us to take a look.

And like there’s a lot of low hanging fruit there that they could have saved a bunch of money if they’d looked at, you know, what is being learned about how to talk about politicians and politics, for example. Um, people who study political behavior tell us that voting is an expressive behavior, not a transactional one.

I turn out to vote to express something about myself and the world I wanna live in, not because I think I’m gonna get something from this politician. Mm-hmm . Now if you know Democrats, well, we’re trying to do things, trying to do policies and programs that are good for people. Absolutely. That’s what we do.

Um, and we try to sell ’em on that. Right, right. Vote for us, and you’ll get this right. That’s not how most people [00:28:00] are thinking about voting. Now, granted 90%, if I grew up a Democrat, I’m gonna vote for the Democrat if I grew up. So most people don’t even think about anyway. But when it gets down to getting people to make a choice, it’s starting with their aspirations of who they are as a person.

There’s very little, I expect to get anything out of you, if you know what I mean. Well established lots of time wasted on ads that, you know, weren’t gonna work. Um, so that’s sort of one, been one of my driving forces. Share insights and um, tools people can use to make communications work better.

Eric: Well, you are the king of tools if you ask me.

And you are, are regularly coming up with new and interesting ways to do the work. And you have two that have come out relatively recently and I’d love to hear more about them. One is called Spire and one is called Learn Can, can you just talk about those?

Doug: Yeah, absolutely. I’d love to. Spire is audience engagement research.

Um. In the form of what is called a [00:29:00] segmentation study. So we do a lot of custom research for organizations that are well resourced and can say under help us understand our audience. You know, who can we mobilize around our issue? And then there’s a lot of organizations that don’t have the resources to do something like that.

So we said, well, let’s do that. Let’s go out and do a study of the US adult population through the lens of why people get involved with good causes, how they want to be engaged by organizations and what they will actually do. So we did that, create a segmentation, meaning you look at all the data and how people, people are literally answering like a hundred questions about, again, starting with them.

Um, what are they interested? I like to learn, I like to have fun. I like to be with other people. Um, of course, issues they care about. I, I like animals, I like, you know, to be healthy, stuff like that. What kind of media do they consume? That sort of thing. Lots of questions about their personality, um, their goals for their [00:30:00] own life.

’cause that’s one of the key insights that drives all of our work. People are more likely to notice a message and take action and response to it if it reflects their own aspirations, their own goals for the kind of people they want to be, the kind of life they wanna live. It’s a simple place to start for any communications question you have.

Start with where’s the audience really at around your issue, not from a political opinion lens, which will get you started off and on the wrong foot, but on what does it mean in their life. Anyway, so we’ve done that and it identified, then there’s all this data analysis shown based on how people answer the question, and it creates different, we call ’em, uh, motivational profiles.

So there’s a group of people who are motivated to get involved in a good cause because they are altruists. We call them altruists because one of their drivers is, I want to help other people. And they are of six profiles, one of the top in terms [00:31:00] of donating money and volunteering for nonprofits. And, and I’m sure a lot of your listeners like, yeah, that’s me.

Right? Right. Sure. So you recognize that the next, a next profile that’s very different, but also donates time and money at very, at similarly high levels, we called strivers. They were not specifically getting involved to help another person. They wanted to learn and grow through the experience of doing it.

They’re striving right to achieve something, to be, they liked recognition for doing something. The Altru is not looking for recognition. So a very different profile, um, that you can also motivate for your cause. And you do that by, I think it’s a great one for like advocacy organizations. People wanna learn how to, how to advocate, and you can teach them skills.

You give ’em an opportunity to organize and lead good stuff, right? So it’s like that. And that gives you insights on how to tailor [00:32:00] messaging and experiences people want to have and so forth, which increases the reach of your content and your response rates and leads to more action. And I do wanna emphasize that this isn’t just about how to create content for digital media.

This is how do you literally engage human beings?

Eric: And then so that’s strive to aspire rather. Let, let Tell me more about Learn.

Doug: Learn is a, a digital learning platform we set up, ’cause we get asked to do workshops, uh, for the communications network. For example, we, where folks come and have the opportunity to learn about communication, science and use these tools.

And organizations hire us to do that all the time, but we wanted to make it that kind of content available to a lot of people aren’t, don’t have that opportunity. So, um, what we’re, we’ve started our first, we posted our first course, it’s called, [00:33:00] uh, the One Minute Message, which is about how to do like an elevator pitch, right?

How can you explain just about anything in just about a minute, informed by the science of aspiration, cognitive psychology, and narrative storytelling. So there’s a lot packed in there. Um, so you sign up and on your own pace, you just walk through a series of lessons to put together, informed by the science and story stuff to put together an elevator pitch on any topic you want.

Eric: I, I could have used that when I was on the hill as a, a young speech writer, writing one minute messages for my boss, right? Oh, right. They were literally one minute. They were one minute. This would’ve been perfect. Where were you? Yeah. Yeah. Back in 1996. Damnit. Let, let’s, I also wanna take a step back.

Needless to say, people are very frustrated right now. They’re, they’re afraid. We’re seeing, like I said, we opened the newspaper and it looks, you think it’s the onion and it’s actually true, right? And yet there’s so [00:34:00] much work to be done and there’s, whether it’s to kind of defend what we have won, whether it’s to, I don’t know, what, keep some other bad things from happening and hopefully to plan for the future.

How are you working with your clients and how are you helping them, a, keep their heads on straight and, and do that kind of, I guess it’s defense plus planning or something like that. How, how are you thinking about strategy now in the context of all of this mishigas?

Doug: Yeah, good question. And for some it’s crisis time.

Like, you know, one of the executive orders that was for that was. Put a freeze on all government grants going out to organizations. So I’ve been talking to big, uh, NGOs that work internationally and they implement government programs. And if this, they’re facing being bankrupt in a matter of weeks, and again, well that’s ’cause we don’t know what’s gonna happen.

It’s a freeze. [00:35:00] What does that mean? Right. Or some scientists doing cutting edge research in biotechnology to help with advanced detection of things like Parkinson’s. And they’re like, oh, our, our grant from the National Institute of Health is now up in the air. So there’s a lot of, like, it’s hard to do in sort of when you’re crisis mode like that, but the sort of thought process is always the same step back.

What are we trying to achieve? Right? Who must take what action to achieve it? Right? Who are the decision makers and actors that matter? And what do we need them to do and who will influence their decisions? You know, basic, you know, communications, people tend think this way sort of intuitively anyway, right?

But you need to take a fresh look at it. And of course, administrations change all the time in Washington, so that shouldn’t be beyond, you know, that’s normal activity, like who are allies. But I think [00:36:00] people have gotten more into more partisan or ideological camps over the past number of years and not looking at who might be allies that we’re not thinking of that sort of thing.

And um, back to working with organizations, working with conservative state legislatures, this is reality all the time. And again, getting the, the assumptions out of the way and looking at the human beings involved. You can often find allies that you didn’t expect. And there are tools that help us. So we’re using, um.

Uh, AI tools to help accelerate this process of identifying potential allies of aerial planning, what might happen, um, crafting messages that could appeal to potential allies that aren’t in your ideological camp. And the interesting part of, uh, generative AI is that it can, it helps us think beyond our [00:37:00] own cognitive frames, right?

We only know what we know, right? We see the world through our lens, and, and great communicators are kind of naturals at like putting themselves in somebody else’s shoes, right? That’s what empathy means. See it from their perspective, meet them where they are. That’s how we tend to think. But that’s, and that’s one of the helpful things that the generative ai, it’s looking at all this, all this content from all kinds of perspectives with a, you know, an objective eye.

Helping and it can quickly put ideas on the board like, oh yeah, I wouldn’t have thought of that. You know, so we’re using it for scenario planning, strategy, development, message, tailoring, all kinds of things.

Eric: Uh, will we be looking forward to the, the, how do I ai, how to use a, generate a AI tool pretty soon?

Doug: Um, we’re working with a communications network to curate sort of approach tools. So keep an eye on ComNet. Yes.

Eric: [00:38:00] As, as, as we all do. This is a ComNet heavy Yes. Listenership. I would say, well, just in the minute or two that we have left, what are you looking forward to? I mean, I know we spent so much time these days kind of hunkered down and, and maybe drinking to excess unless it’s dry January and, but, but there’s so much out there to be done.

What’s exciting for you right now?

Doug: I think it is the harnessing the potential of artificial intelligence to accelerate impact. That seems kind of, of course, everybody’s talking about ai. That’s, it’s kind of a hot topic, but I’ve had the opportunity over the past year and a half to work closely with experts who know how to work with that technology through the lens of strategy for advocacy and communications.

And like, I, I really think when you learn to make it work for you, and that’s what you need, how you need to think about it, the, [00:39:00] the computer paradigm like, oh, I, it’s, this thing is programmed and I ask it a question, it spits out an answer. That’s not the way to use this stuff for, to really get it to the level of strategic and creative uses.

That is the fun part of our jobs. You need to learn to relate with it, tell it what you need it to do, give it a job description, give it examples of the kind of things. You wanted to produce and then you iterate, right? You go back and forth and it literally learns from you what you need from it. So all of us actually have the opportunity to be an expert, like our world expert on how to make this incredible amount of computing power, do something that we are really good at, that accelerates expands our potential.

And because it expands our perspective, like I was talking about, it can accelerate our thinking about what might ha, what [00:40:00] are scenarios that might come up and how might I respond. It just helps you expand your horizons and move forward faster, and it can help with the rigor of the work and even inspire creativity.

Think of these as tools that empower you.

Eric: Well, we’ll definitely be looking to the communications network and you. For, for this. ’cause I, I know there’s a lot of folks who would be really interested in, in what you come up with and uh, and I just really appreciate your work. I’ve always been a huge fan of yours and continue to be amazingly impressed with everything you do.

Doug, how do I thank you so much for coming on the show.

Doug: Ah, I wish everybody could see my blushing , thanks to you for this, this is a great, a great show and a great service.

Eric: Well, thanks again, Doug Hattaway

Kirk: and we’re back.

Eric: Okay, so I wanna know why you’re disappointed.

Kirk: No, no. I wanna do the blah, blah, blah. No, no, no.

I wanna start with, I wanna start with impressive. Oh, good. And inspiring. So, by

Eric: the way, Kirk, this is the blah, blah. [00:41:00] It’s not the blah, blah, blah.

Kirk: Oh, sorry.

Eric: and I, and I think there’s a, you know, it, it, it matters that it’s the blah blah, the blah, blah, blah. Doesn’t sound nearly as interesting

Kirk: as the blah blah,

Eric: or entertaining as the blah blah

Kirk: start my life that I introduced the third in utterly unnecessary blah.

So this conversation actually made me think about Andy. When Andy was on the podcast, given that Doug and Andy both start with this writing background, Andy Goodman. Yes. Yes. Yeah. And and I, well, I kind of want ’cause ’cause when we get to my dissatisfying comment later, I want Doug back. I want Doug back on this podcast.

I wanna listen to Doug a lot more. Did I do

Eric: a bad job?

Kirk: No, you did a great job, but I didn’t ask

Eric: the right questions. You want back?

Kirk: No, no, no, no, no. You touched on all the good stuff and this and this encyclopedic knowledge that Doug and his, by the way. You know, pro communicator, his ability to stay it quickly, distill it down by chunks, bring you along, but it just really struck me, that story he told of his kind of origin story.

He starts in Florida. I loved your [00:42:00] exploration of that, but this thread around journalism and creative writing and, and the art of finding the story. You know, we have these folks that are just masters of the craft and they drop these nuggets in just the quickest passing note. That notion of finding the story to help actually move, um, issues forward.

That for me was actually one of my, one of my favorite parts. Like, like the, the progression through DC and, and the political stuff, and then making them transition to launching his own shop. We can talk about that, but, but for me, I just, we’ve had such interesting perspectives from people that come at this work, from that training in journalism and from that training at creative writing and story.

And I just, I, I love those parts of the conversation with Doug in, in his reflections on, on that aspect of his, um, of his work. The,

Eric: the other thing is that you can’t what under. Estimate or undervalue the power of political communications background. Yeah, and we, we live in a political time. God knows we are buried under politics [00:43:00] as we have this conversation and understanding how to communicate in a political context.

Is essential, and it is really important right now. Mm. And Doug has that and he, he has it a lot. And the fact that he worked so closely with some of the most, I don’t know, not just famous, but effective and, and interesting political folks in our generation is no mistake. And the fact that he is taking this and turning it into really valuable information and tools for people, you, I’m just grateful to him for doing that.

I, I see it as a, as a real service. But the fact that he understands politics and how to pers how to persuade, but also to connect. And he marries that with his storytelling ability, his journalism background.

Kirk: It’s just why he’s so effective. And from the very beginning, he’s talking about what, let’s write and communicate it at a fifth grade level.

You know, let’s, let’s, let’s harness this craft of journalism that he’s learned at Northwestern and then brought, draw that forward in ways that can actually move people in [00:44:00] significant ways. And then, you know, I loved. This conversation. It’s like all the basic building blocks for how we do this effective work, but talking about conversation and collaboration and reducing social distance beat after beat.

He’s pulling in the nuggets of the best of the science that we can get our hands on to drill down these lessons into these bite-sized chunks. And then yes, turning it into things like Spire and learn so that we don’t just have to get to Doug in his shop to come out, but of course we wanna hire him to do the work.

But you can also leverage this stuff using digital online tools. It’s that progression for him and his work, I thought was just, it’s very cool to hear him talk about that. Doug

Eric: takes all of this stuff that he has learned over the years and he turns it into a meaningful tool that other people can use.

And he is really is a master at that. And it’s again, how do I communications. A really influential and incredibly effective firm. Folks work with him and he delivers the kinds of things that they need. And a lot of, you know, communications consultants like myself, you go in, you do [00:45:00] your best, and you walk away and you’re like, eh, good luck to you.

And, and I think Doug is, is building a lasting set of tools for folks that, that anybody can use. And that’s, so I’ve, I’ve, I’m always amazed, and Kristen does this at Spitfire and there’s a number of firms that are able to kind of bring these ideas together into very useful, shareable tools That is, it’s such

Such a service to our field.

Kirk: What do you think about the depth and breadth of the work? Because, you know, it’s always been, for me, something that’s been important has been specialization at the field level. You know, trying to like hone in, in a particular domain. And, you know, for us it’s in the energy equation, the energy transition.

But you look at the work that, how do we, communications has done, I mean, he starts, his story starts with the World Bank, you know, working on sustainable ag and, and what a great gig that is, right? Being able to go around the world, go to Mexico, Columbia, you know, develop the story. And again, this is talking about, oh wow, this is where I, I figured out how to find that story.

And I, and I, that hit [00:46:00] me in such a poignant way. And this will get to the sad and the satisfying part, but I don’t wanna go there quite yet, but that, oh good. I can’t wait. But that notion about finding this story mm-hmm . That just hit me. I’m like, this is where we lose time and time again. Our capacity as a field, like we know where we’re trying to go, but finding the story that’s gonna help elevate us and get us there, that is such a persistently difficult thing for us to do.

So what do you think about these shops like Doug’s, where they get to work on this whole range of issues across all of this stuff, and then hearing what he’s talking about his, we’re going through this crisis in DC right now. Just all of the people he’s talking to that are going through the, the potential consequence of that from the largest nonprofit organizations to science and science-based organizations, academia, what have you, what do you think about the depth and breadth of the work that folks like that get to do?

You know, obviously they’re harnessing a certain similar set of things. It’s all that communications chops that we talk about, but applying that across such a, such a wide array of issues. What do you think about that?

Eric: Well, I think there’s room for both. Mm-hmm. I think there’s [00:47:00] room for specialists for sure, because

Uh, just because there’s a lot of things that a specialist can do that add particular value. And I also think that folks who work across fields have, they can see how things connect. And I think that’s important. So I, I don’t think there’s any one way to do this. Yeah. And you need to have talented people doing, taking both approaches or you tell, taking different approaches.

Uh, so therefore, and for me, I, you know, I mean, I work across all sorts of organizations and all sorts of fields and topics and stuff like that. And, you know, some things I know a little better than others, but I, I like to think that strategy and messaging. You, you listen carefully. You ask important questions and you challenge your colleagues to answer them.

You know, you’re, it’s a little bit like being a therapist, I have to say , where, you know, the, the, the patient always knows the answer. They just don’t know how to get it . And so that’s our job is to help them get it and to, yeah, just to continue to ask. The kinds of questions around what are you trying to achieve and who is it you’re trying to reach?

[00:48:00] Right? And then we’ll help you get to the, what do you say and how do you say it?

Kirk: Yeah. I loved how you broke that down. He was like, you know, here we are in this, in the midst of this incredible crisis, uh, new for, for all of us in our careers. And it’s like, he’s like, it still comes back to what are we trying to achieve?

Who must take what action? What do we need them to do? And who’s gonna influence them? You know? And that’s, that’s true regardless. I, I will say one thing that struck me, because you called Doug, rightfully so, the king of tools, you know, and just the capacity, right? To create these tools and resources, as Doug was talking about, the arch of his career and all the things he’s done.

And again, it keeps queing back to these just foundational concepts and the, the data and, and evidence that we developed to support perspectives around how to approach the work in certain ways. It reminded me though, too, that our field keeps growing and progressing, and we keep having new people come into our field.

We keep having people moving in jobs. Between jobs in our field and actually moving up the hierarchy in terms of like, well, I started at a certain level and then I get greater and greater seniority. And [00:49:00] all of those circumstances, all of those people, those different points of their careers, they need resources to help them stay organized, stay aligned, stay, you know, figure out what this is.

And it just, it just had, it struck me, I’m like, you know, this, this knowledge, this, this, um, practice that we are developing and honing all the time, it’s benef, it benefits all of us to keep coming back to that and honing and honing those skills. And so again, that genius that Doug has to create the tools that help make this accessible to so many different people.

It was just a striking thing. And again, I think about the creative writer, the, the kid from Florida who’s got the, you know, training in journalism outta Northwestern to go through that process and come up with that notion of like, I’m gonna create replicable . Tools so that people, many, many people can use this and get access to them in very efficient ways.

I love that creative genius and also the discipline it takes to bring that through. I think the tool creating side of this is, is actually almost like an unspoken, critically important thing, even though you’re calling him the king of tools, you know? Well,

Eric: the other thing is he is helping us learn together.

[00:50:00] Yeah. And boy, oh boy, are we gonna need to learn together? By the way, Kirk, I had an epiphany the other day. I was in a meeting.

Eric (2): Excellent.

Eric: And it occurred to me, and you people were, this has not been a wonderful week Yes. For democracy. Right. Uh, talking in the first week of February. Yeah. And you know, I have a feeling that the second week of February isn’t gonna be tons better.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. But at some point, you know, maybe the third week of June that might get be a, a slightly better week for democracy or, but the idea is that we, folks are really, really down right now.

Eric (2): Yeah.

Eric: But I started thinking about this. Today might be the good day to pull out a. Pencil and a piece of paper and start writing project 2029.

Kirk: Mm-hmm . Yeah. Which

Eric: is that we, we, the folks who believe in democracy and, and, uh, pluralistic society in which everyone has an important voice and , you know mm-hmm . Can, can contribute to a better world and a better future. What we have to start writing down the plan for what happens when we have that opportunity again, and how are we gonna move towards it [00:51:00] and be ready on day one to implement it?

And that means that we have to get started today. We have to get out of our own ways and stop, frankly, feeling sorry for ourselves. At the same time, acknowledging what’s happening. This is not to say that we, we hide. What it really is, is we have to channel a lot of this, wake up, this wake up call into what does the positive future look like?

And that gets me into where Doug, the, the thing that Doug said that absolutely blew the top of my head off. And that’s why I love having these conversations. You know, he, he said, he talked about how voting is expressive. It’s not, uh, what was it? Um, transactional. Yes, that’s right. So, so like, hello. That’s right.

People are expressing their hopes and dreams. Mm-hmm . Their feelings, their fears, their excitement, their misgivings, all of these things when they vote, it’s not like we’re going to deliver for you, uh, a dollars worth of, or return for your dollars worth of taxes or whatever it is. Yeah. That, and then [00:52:00] connecting to that level of expression is the thing we have to start doing today.

Eric (2): Yeah.

Eric: And so it’s, it’s both what are we gonna do and physically or what, uh, uh, transactionally or mechanically, once this terrible nightmare is over, but also how are we connecting to people that allow them to express their senses of self and their hope for the future in ways that make sense and that connect with a, a much, much better agenda.

That’s something that just, it came to me in a flash like, Ooh, we gotta start doing project 2029 today.

Kirk: And I’m so glad you’re there. This is exactly what I was thinking about when I was talking about this being sad and dissatisfying. And by the way, just, just echoing. Oh, good. Just echoing what you just said in terms of.

People are most interested in taking action on things that match their aspirations, right? This is what Doug is sharing with us in terms of his vast experience and, and, and what’s the most powerful way of communicating, especially in the policy political environment where [00:53:00] people don’t read, they don’t have time.

You, you draw on what you’ve heard, word of mouth, you know, the importance of conversation, the importance of collaboration. You know, all of these things that we’re discussing here have been true. They’re true today. They’ve been true for thousands of years. This is how we organize our minds. This is how we organize our thinking.

So the saddened, dissatisfying part of it, and this was said just in passing, you talked about Florida and you started exploring God, actually Flora had been blue and now it’s red. And, and of course, you know, David said, well, it’s always more nuanced than, than what we might say at the top level, but he just mentioned in.

Sorry, Doug. Sorry. That’s okay. Just wanted to make sure that people

Eric: didn’t think that I also had a conversation. Yeah. With David, right, David?

Kirk: So Doug’s saying, you know, it’s much more nuanced than that. And he talks about the failure of Democrats to build infrastructure, to engage people in meaningful ways.

And he said that just as a, in passing. And so I wanna see you and raise you on this notion in Project 29. ’cause I completely agree like this. We, we, we actually, you’re right, we need to be aware of what’s happening, what’s being broken. [00:54:00] But we also need to be aware that all of us want, and I I, I really think this is inclusive because there’s so many people being hurt by the kind of policy that’s gonna continue to roll out.

We need a way back to a, to a national conversation around politics that includes all of us, irrespective of politics, irrespective of of race. Economics, what have you, and this undercurrent of what’s been, what hasn’t been built to provide that infrastructure, to support that conversation’s so crucial.

And we keep talking about that and passing, and I was thinking it’s almost like using a, using a reference that’s gonna date us both. It’s almost like the Harlem Globe Trotters going out to do their basketball show, and we talk about the failure of the left to communicate almost like it’s the Washington Generals.

You know, it’s like, it’s like, it’s like you, you just, oh, it’s kind of, it’s almost funny to see, right? Oh, it’s kind of comical how, how poor that is. And yet we see today just the cruel, harsh reality of what that failure to engage turns into in a moment like this [00:55:00] and this, this soul searching about what does it really look like to have a national infrastructure for supporting meaningful engagement.

That drives towards shared goals, shared aspirations, where people genuinely understand that their story for their lives fits the kinds of policy tools that our field has put forward to try to help make things better for everybody. But there’s a crucial bridge there, which is your life, your experience, what you want for your family.

This isn’t something being told you, it’s something you’re actually asking for and you’re receiving. That is such fundamental and foundational work, and it’s, it’s crazy to me to think of our field where it is today. And I, again, I think of Doug, his expertise, all of the NGOs, the communications network, this entire field of people working in this direction, and yet we

Don’t look at each other and say, we have that infrastructure for change established. It’s not operating in a way that we think is create is mirroring back to us in, in a, in a [00:56:00] political sense. So I wanna make a pitch to you, Eric, like this has gotta be a theme of our podcast going forward, that these kinds of conversations, like surfacing what that infrastructure looks like, and then what that way back, what that process of building that looks like.

So, so it’s, it’s Project 29. I would, yes. And that, ’cause I, you’re exactly right. But it’s really, how do we finally fix this notion that in these crucial moments, we all look at each other and say, oh, once again, you know, it’s again dating us, it’s Charlie Brown with the football, you know, tried to kick it and, and missed it.

Like, to me there’s something so broken there. What is that? How do we find that and how we fix it?

Eric: Well, yes, you’re right. And that is going to be really difficult. And I would say that the truth and reconciliation . Process when this, when the, when the madness dies down. And I, I do believe it’ll die down at some point because I’m an optimist.

Uh, and because it has to, because the alternative is too difficult to con contemplate. But that truth and reconcile reconciliation process is gonna be really tricky because people are getting angrier [00:57:00] and angrier on both sides. And to come together to talk about hopes and dreams instead of what you did to me is going to be very difficult.

And you’re right, we have to figure out how are we supposed to do that? And how do you pre present again, how does Project 2029 not look like just a, a list of, of grievances and instead a statement of shared values, which is here, what, here’s the future, here’s the world that we believe. People wanna live in.

Here’s what we hope to achieve. Here’s what we wanna do for our families. Here’s what, here’s how we wanna wake up every morning and how we wanna engage with our neighbors. Here’s what we, how we wanna engage with people we don’t agree with necessarily, but we wanna do it in, in ways that allow us all to feel like, what got, we got something out of the deal so that we can work together?

’cause that’s what has to happen. And Doug talked a little bit about this, about how that kind of politics sort of, kind of happens at the local and regional levels a little more so than, than at the national level. And that people have to actually get things done. You gotta pave the roads, you gotta fill the potholes.

You have to do things. And in order to do that, you just have to be able to [00:58:00] make some decisions with people that you, who didn’t vote for, the person that you voted for. You just gotta get some of this stuff done. So I, I think all of those things have to come together. And you’re right, we need to start doing it today.

We have to talk about it every time we have, like how, how are we going to build a positive future in which everyone feels like they belong?

Kirk: And, and I’m gonna pitch that too, not just the level of the 30,000 foot, Hey, this is the aspirational, you know, direction that we all think could make sense. But how do we track that all the way back through to, you know, the, the, the blocking and tackling that happens on the ground day in, day out, which is another piece of the puzzle that somehow I don’t think our field has really well dialed in right now.

And, and you know, it’s even ’cause um, you know, uh, Doug talked about when he does his local work and he can work across the entire political spectrum, people reflect back, you know, yeah. This hyper-partisan, grievance based, anger filled, hate-filled conversation drives, clicks. It drives engagement, but it actually gets in the [00:59:00] way of work.

On the ground. And so those of us that are trying to do work, we still collaborate across there. There isn’t this partisan divide, like we still, we still actually find ways to make common cause to get things done. And so that, so, you know, um, Doug is seeing that in, in his workday and day out, I think. So for me, this project is not just about the sort of directional, aspirational language that’s important, but then it’s how do we actually deliver on that story, deliver on that work?

Again, going back to that comment in passing, how do we build and support the infrastructure to engage people in meaningful ways? So it’s not just the message, but it’s actually what is happening right. On the ground. And, and I think all of that, all of that requires work and, and, and it’s not work. You spin up 100 days out from the next election, you know, and, and, and it’s funny, these conversations in some respects may, and, and we always talk about conspiracy Kirk in the podcast, but I would say again that our information landscape is broken.

We don’t understand how broken it is. It’s broken. We need new [01:00:00] pathways to communicate, new pathways to connect. And guess what? They’re gonna look a lot like they looked 2000 years ago. . I mean, you know, and even, even hearing, um, even hearing Doug talk about the working with doing with them, you know, ai, generative ai to, to, you know, challenge thinking, to, to create strategy, create effective messaging.

It still comes back to this question for me as cool and as exciting as I think that is to what are we producing for who and how’s it getting distributed? You know, so what’s the conversation we’re producing and how’s it getting distributed? And I think that’s the bed, the work that has to be done, that’s kind of missing, at least as far as I see it.

Eric: Yeah, and it’s, I I would say that this is work that has to be funded. . Yes. It doesn’t necessarily fit into the remit of what folks are doing right now. They’ve got other stuff to do. So for funders who are listening to this, I think asking and answering that question is, what am I doing as a funder to ensure that we have.

The tools available to us to have these kinds of conversations and to build instead of break. And I also think that this is, again, this is a 50 state [01:01:00] and however many communities strategy as you can imagine. Absolutely, yes. ’cause we cannot keep fighting over the same eight states No. In the same hundred yards of, of territory that just keeps getting traded back and forth every time.

It’s, it’s not a recipe for long-term success. And we are seeing how, how disabling it is as we continue to just oscillate from one set of politics to another, to another and, and the how the divisions are deepening and that’s not where we wanna go.

Kirk: Yeah. I, our conception of what effective communications campaigns needs to be, I think has to evolve.

So this, this is the pitch I’d make to get to from sadden to satisfying to happy and fulfilled. I want more . I want more. Doug, I want Doug back in the podcast more. Doug, I want, I want Doug to, uh, work cowbell. I want Yes. And turn it to 11. I want Doug to co-create and help generate, I want Spitfire involved.

I want the, I [01:02:00] want you’ve called them once, the seven families, like, like the five families that, but like. All copy

Eric: the duty copy together.

Kirk: Our communications professionals are public opinion research professionals. The folks that are, they, they know the answer. Doug already knows how to do this. He’s been doing it for decades.

What Doug has never received, are the resources adequate to sustain this at the skill which we’re talking and the time is now. So we have this knowledge to, to, to your point earlier, we know what this looks like. We know how to do this. We have all the tools, we have all the knowledge. All we need to do is have the game plan and implement it.

And this is the, um, the challenge I would say in, in our moment is that we talk about this as like getting to project 2029. Let’s understand that project 2025 was a project 50 years in the making. You know, like, like if you run the arc of all this and how the machinations have worked, this is not something that just popped up because, um, we had some people make some very self-interested decisions months out from an election.

There’s been a steady process [01:03:00] to get us here. And, and, and to a certain extent, and this is back to the sad and satisfying part. Arguably, all of us who are dissatisfied with the current circumstance are complicit in some way in this outcome. And that, you know, back to your kind of, you know, reconciliation work.

That addressing in what ways we’re all complicit is actually I think where the work has to start. It’s not about us. It’s it’s not about them, it’s about us. It’s about how we approach this work in a more meaningful way. So, so, so that’s what I, and, and we look at Doug and the work, how do we Communications is doing, look at them standing, trying the best of their ability, standing in the vanguard of what, you know, good solutions-based, evidence-based, effective strategy and communications work.

Looks like we need more of it. So Doug, your team, thank you for everything you’re doing. Please keep doing more, keep popping up the resources, but I want you back on our podcast. I wanna continue this conversation. So that’s my cury comment for you today. All right, Mr. Brown. Is that we have, we have to have more of that, but don’t, I mean, tell me you disagree.

Tell me you disagree with that.

Eric: Kirky almost sounds like you’re welcoming them

Kirk: in[01:04:00]

It’s what we do around here. It’s what we do. Well, that was awesome. And by the way, Doug did run a podcast, uh, several years ago and they still have the episodes on their How do We Communications, um, website. So go check that out if you haven’t listened to it because um, they’ve got some great guests and great topics.

And, um, and I was, I, I’d be interested to, once we have Doug back to talk with him some more about his journey down that path and then, then his decision to move on from it. But, um, but Doug, thank you so much for being on the podcast. And Eric, that was a great conversation. I’m so glad, I’m so glad you have this Rolodex and folks will come forward and have these conversations because they are timely and they’re necessary and they’re very cool to listen to.

Eric: Well, we do the best we can .

Kirk: So that’s it. Well, thank you, Eric. Thank you everybody. We’ll see you next time in. . Doug Hattaway and the entire team at Hattaway Communications. Thank you for all your work. We can’t wait to see more. We’ll see you next time and let’s hear it. Okay, everybody. That’s it for this episode.

Please let us know if you have any thoughts about what you heard today or people [01:05:00] we should have on this show, and that definitely includes yourself. And we’d like to thank John Ali, the tuneful and inspiring composer of our theme music,

Eric: our sponsor,

Kirk: the Lumina Foundation, and please check out Lumina’s terrific podcast, today’s students tomorrow’s talent, and you can find that@luminafoundation.org.

We

Eric: certainly thank today’s guest, and of course, all of you,

Kirk: and most importantly, thank you, Mr. Brown.

Eric: Oh, no, no, no, no. Thank you, Mr. Brown.

Kirk: Okay, everybody, till next time.