You see, this Dave is an acronym, Declaring, Acknowledging, Envisioning, Evaluation; not perfect but important.
It is one of the threads of a long conversation ADA hosted with Katherine Teh, a global leader in social licence and how to manage it.
Representatives from SSAA Victoria and the Victorian Hound Hunters were also present.
As hunters, social licence is something we didn’t ask for, but we need to keep on earning trust with society, particularly as its values evolve and change.
In a companion piece to this article later in the mag, Rick Brown discusses the hijacking of social licence from its original intent.
History is important for context, but the reality is that social licence is something that opponents of hunting are chipping away at.
The clearest example of the mayhem that ensues when it is lost is the greyhound industry, which after repeated scandals involving the cruel practice of live baiting reached the point of being banned in NSW, before that was eventually reversed.
The industry had long been haunted by the spectre of live baiting but had failed to adequately deal with it, and at times, barely acknowledged its existence.
Katherine encouraged hunting leaders to imagine a better future, with power and acceptance.
“You have to imagine that positive future in the context of society’s expectations and values today.
“Then you have to think about the behaviours you bring into the present to enact that future.”
The title of her address to ADA was deliberately thought provoking; Creating a game hunting season: be relevant or die.
This was not a prediction, it was motivation, for hunting organisations to secure their own future by addressing the very things that might threaten it.
Would the greyhound or live export industries have faced the same condemnation if they were already policing themselves?
Or if they were engaging with their opponents to listen, understand, and address their concerns?
It makes sense that even views you vehemently disagree with should be listened to and understood.
Katherine said it was not easy, in fact it was hard, but rather than shouting at each other, collaboration could achieve outcomes and secure the future you imagine.
Back to DAVE.
The typical public relations orthodoxy, which is called DAD usually involves the best corporate heads coming together to analyse their situation, DECIDE the official position, ANNOUNCE it and then DEFEND it to the often-bitter end.
Katherine said this approach risked aggravating audiences and increasing outrage because of a lack of engagement.
Our friend DAVE declares the dilemmas, acknowledges relevant issues, envisions a future and establishes transparent evaluation systems that drive delivery of the vision.
One of the keys to maintaining social licence is to remove the vortex.
Your vision and actions will probably never win over the extreme opponents, but they are not the masters of your destiny, it is the bulk of people in the middle who are undecided.
Katherine said on the greyhound issue the industry solution was to promote the importance of greyhounds to the working classes and win the politicians over with a loss of voters.
Her solution was to address the animal welfare issues as well to reduce the social licence risk to the industry and the cost of the regulatory burden.
The industry spent big dollars fighting the politics and was left in NSW with licence to operate but a heavy regulatory burden.
Addressing issues is not just about maintaining your social licence to operate, you can actually grow it when your stakeholders, especially your critics, understand the contentious issues that you face, believe in the definition and the solution.
A critical point Katherine made is that there’s a difference between a right to operate and a social licence, and you can’t rely on the fact you operate within a legal framework.
As we saw with greyhounds and live exports, that legal framework can be changed, suspended or ultimately removed if a social licence to operate isn’t maintained.
“Who has control of the risk? if I think Dracula is in charge of the blood bank, I won’t think the blood bank is safe.”
She said people intuitively sensed risk and you needed to deal with it.
“Years of research shows people have an intuition into whether there is a risk or not, and it might have nothing to do with whether there is, I can feel like there’s a risk even if there isn’t,” she said.
“That is really important to know, because that means if someone feels like there’s a risk, unless you deal with the feeling it will be seen and reacted to like a risk.
“It is a really important thing because it drives public policy. Public policy is shaped on feeling, not the technical issues, it is the emotional side that changes the politic.”
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