Special Advisors

The liberal lefty English media have got themselves into a right tizz over Murdoch bashing.

The latest Leveson Inquiry “revelations” are conversations betweeen “government” and “Murdoch”, captured quite bizarrely (and allegedly with embellishment) by internal News International emails. Too much? The lawyer, Mark Lewis, representing several phone hack victims, even said this remarkable line last Tuesday afternoon, live in Skynews; “Jermey Hunt should be forced to resign just like Vince Cable was“.

Vince Cable. Resigned? Who knew? Shame on Kay Burley for not giving him hell.

The interesting sales point, for all those already yawning, is in the apparent role of Special Advisors.

The Minister’s such person quit due to apparent ‘overstepping of role’. It should be pretty clear just how close someone in ‘authority’ and their special advisor can be.

I was also reminded of the insistence of another unelected, abominable advisor, Alistair Campbell, to Blair. Namely if a minister is anywhere near the headlines for all the wrong reasons ten days in a row they are sacked.

Yet when solution selling, the “final” decision maker have special advisors of their own. And we are the lobbyists. As such, we could manoeuvre ourselves to a position of greater knowledge should we engage correctly with them.

How do we identify them?

Well, in the political case, they are easily determined by job title. We seldom feast on such luxury. But we can pinpoint them in other ways.

One way is to uncover who has the ear of the decision maker most often. How many times a day do they speak? Especially informally? What were the past few decisions made, and how did they run? How does progress get reported formally? Say at review forums or minuted Board meetings? You can even ask of ‘influencers’ what does the top person think about a seemingly innocuous issue to glean true lines of communication.