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Issue management — meaning an internal system used to identify, track, and act on the issues within your policy portfolio across global markets — enables you and your team to keep informed and aligned on the latest developments. Follow these five steps to build out an effective global issue management process — and to discover how digital tools such as Quorum European Union and Quorum International can help. 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Issue management — meaning an internal system used to identify, track, and act on the issues within your policy portfolio across global markets — enables you and your team to keep informed and aligned on the latest developments. Follow these five steps to build out an effective global issue management process — and to discover how digital tools such as Quorum European Union and Quorum International can help. 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Blog

Five Steps to Managing Issues Effectively Across Global Markets

Siobhan Pitcher
Aug 26, 2021
Five Steps to Managing Issues Effectively Across Global Markets

Staying one step ahead of issues is a key element of your public affairs strategy. Issue management — meaning an internal system used to identify, track, and act on the issues within your policy portfolio across global markets — enables you and your team to keep informed and aligned on the latest developments.

Follow these five steps to build out an effective global issue management process — and to discover how digital tools such as Quorum European Union and Quorum International can help.

  1. Organise Your Internal Stakeholders
  2. Identify Your Issues
  3. Set Up Your Tracking System
  4. Implement Your Tracking System
  5. Report to Directors and C-Suite

1. Organise Your Internal Stakeholders

First, map out the internal stakeholders involved with tracking issues. This might include consultants, Directors of Markets, the Head of Global Affairs, up to the C-Suite. Doing so provides clarity on roles and responsibilities to ensure a smooth cascade of information when an issue arises.

You can easily visualise your internal contacts in Quorum and assign responsibilities covering legislation, organisations, officials, staff, contacts and more. By clearly demarcating each colleague’s duties within the platform, you establish seamless coordination of all necessary actions and tasks for each priority topic — regardless of time zone or geographical location.

2. Identify Your Issues

Next, consider your priority issue topics as a team. To identify focus areas, the following questions might be useful:

  • Which topics are consistently present across markets?
  • Which topics would have the greatest impact on your bottom line?
  • Which topics are prone to frequent policy activity?

Make sure to define key terminology and naming conventions so that your activities and reports will be consistent later on. Taking a streamlined approach at this stage will help you work smarter in the long run.

3. Set Up Your Tracking System

Having identified your key people and issues, put your tracking system in place. This should act as a single source of truth on issues for your entire team to refer to.

There are two Quorum functionalities which can support you here: Issue profiles and Sheets.

  • Issue profile: an in-depth repository of knowledge. 
    • Keeps everything in one place, e.g. records of interactions with officials, meeting notes, lists of key stakeholders, important files, and much more.
  • Master tracking Sheet: provides a helicopter view of an issue. 
    • Automatically synchronises with your issue profile and pulls out high-level information for a snapshot of moving parts.
    • See an example we’ve created below:
Issue Region Owner Last Updated Priority
Green Deal EU Siobhan 24/08/2021 High
Net-Zero Emissions UK Claire 19/07/2021 Medium
Single-Use Plastics Australia Theresa 22/08/2021 High

 

4. Implement Your Tracking System

Now, set the cadence for updating your tracking system: weekly, monthly or quarterly? The intelligence that you gather will inform your strategy development and execution. Use the insights to know when to observe and when to intervene.

With Quorum, pre-set and customisable fields let you track the evolution of an issue: for example, you can assign a risk level, rate the quality of interactions with stakeholders, log meeting notes and tag your colleagues to follow up. This helps build institutional memory, which supports onboarding of new team members, while guarding against information loss if a colleague leaves.

5. Report to Directors and C-Suite

Lastly, report back on hot topics to management. Keep it to the essentials in a simple, accessible and bite-sized format.

Remember your Quorum master tracking Sheet? You can share this smart overview of issue topics with anyone — even non-Quorum users — via a password-protected link. No need to spend hours collating data; the spreadsheet spells out key insights for you and your C-Suite at the click of a button.

Best Practice: Take Issue Management to the Next Level

With your process in place, consider these handy tips to make the most of issue management with Quorum.

  • Never miss a mention. Stay ahead of issues by setting up real-time alerts from Quorum: get notified whenever your keywords appear in an official’s social media post or in documents from the EU institutions.
  • Get word out fast. When an issue flares up, use Quorum’s Outbox function to send personalised communications en masse to key stakeholders and EU officials.
  • Report efficiently on your wins. With auto-updating Dashboards, you have a tangible view of how your actions are moving the needle — so your reporting processes can get simpler while your strategies get more advanced.

Learn more about Quorum

To see how Quorum can help you work smarter and move faster on issue management