{"id":129259,"date":"2020-03-25T10:45:39","date_gmt":"2020-03-25T09:45:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/?p=129259"},"modified":"2020-03-25T10:49:29","modified_gmt":"2020-03-25T09:49:29","slug":"the-public-affairs-working-from-home-challenge-think-about-reading","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/blog\/the-public-affairs-working-from-home-challenge-think-about-reading\/","title":{"rendered":"The Public Affairs working from home challenge: Think about reading"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>The Head of Public Affairs at the law firm <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bdbpitmans.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">BDB Pitmans<\/a>, Stuart Thomson, offers his suggestions on how to best use the additional time we have when working from home, to further our personal development.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The time that we now all have working from home can be used productively. We have the \u2018day job\u2019 to be getting on with, but we should think about personal development as well. And what better way than reading a book or two!<\/p>\n<p>Working from home can be quite challenging and there is a real danger of simply being sat staring at a screen all day. So, one way that you could choose to bring a bit of useful variety into your set-up is to put some time aside each day to read.<\/p>\n<p>While I am sure that you have a stack of fiction books to get through, there are some really useful non-fiction titles out there for your personal development as well. This applies across the whole of the communications profession but I\u2019ll stick to public affairs!<\/p>\n<p>So, here are a few thoughts that I\u2019ve had about some useful public affairs reading:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em>The systems and processes<\/em> \u2013 books on political processes can often be really quite dull and technical. However, take a look at Besly and Goldsmith\u2019s \u2018How Parliament Works\u2019 for a good guide to the Westminster parliament. The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.parliament.scot\/visitandlearn\/how-the-parliament-works.aspx\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Scottish Parliament<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.assembly.wales\/en\/abthome\/role-of-assembly-how-it-works\/Pages\/role-of-assembly-how-it-works.aspx\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Welsh Assembly<\/a> both have good online guides.<\/li>\n<li><em>Campaigns and strategies<\/em> \u2013 I can\u2019t rate the materials freely available on the <a href=\"https:\/\/gcs.civilservice.gov.uk\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Government Communications Service<\/a> highly enough. There is everything from evaluation to digital communications and the OASIS framework for campaign planning.<\/li>\n<li><em>How To Guides<\/em> \u2013 there aren\u2019t many \u2018how to\u2019 guides available covering public affairs. The most comprehensive ones are probably Lionel Zetter\u2019s \u2018The Art of Political Persuasion\u2019 and my own \u2018Public Affairs in Practice\u2019. Both cover everything from the basics of what public affairs is through to effective engagement and political processes. While \u2018Public Affairs in Practice\u2019 is mainly UK and Brussels based, Zetter has an international dimension. If you are interested in how public affairs is done in different countries around the world then my \u2018Public Affairs: A Global Perspective\u2019 would be a good starting point.<\/li>\n<li><em>Best practice<\/em> \u2013 it is always useful to take a look at the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cipr.co.uk\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">CIPR<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.prca.org.uk\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">PRCA<\/a> They both have great resources, guides and case studies as well. I\u2019d also suggest taking a look at the training options they have. Both are working on more online courses for obvious reasons, but they have some already available.<\/li>\n<li><em>Others<\/em> \u2013 there are also some more general communications books that really help with public affairs. I\u2019d point to <em>Measure What Matters<\/em>, which gets you thinking about KPIs, <em>Good Strategy \/ Bad Strategy<\/em>, with some constructive thoughts that I found useful when starting off with new campaigns, and <em>Words The Work<\/em>, which helped me to focus even more on every word I write.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>If it\u2019s helpful, I have added the books, as well as a few others, to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/shop\/redpolitics\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">an Amazon page<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>It would be great to hear ideas from others about what books they have found useful and maybe why as well. There are no end of really good books available but personal recommendations are always worth just that little bit more.<\/p>\n<p>You\u2019ll have to forgive me a little cross-selling as well but you may also find my regular (and free!) blog useful as well: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.stuartthomson.co.uk\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">www.stuartthomson.co.uk<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>I look forward to hearing what I should be adding to my book list. Happy reading!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Head of Public Affairs at the law firm BDB Pitmans, Stuart Thomson, offers his suggestions on how to best use the additional time we have when working from home, to further our personal development.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":432,"featured_media":129260,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7383,7271],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129259"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/432"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=129259"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129259\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":129281,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129259\/revisions\/129281"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/129260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=129259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=129259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=129259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}