Over twenty-five years, I have sat in a great many meetings between organizations and government — on both sides of the table. The single most common mistake is also the most avoidable: arriving with an ask, but without an understanding of the other side’s problem.
Organizations tend to prepare for a government meeting the way they would prepare for a sales pitch. They rehearse their position, marshal their evidence, and walk in ready to make the case for what they need. The instinct is understandable. It is also, more often than not, the reason the meeting does not go anywhere.
A minister, a political staffer, or a senior public servant does not measure a meeting by how compelling your case is. They measure it by whether you have made their job easier or harder. Every official is carrying a set of pressures, constraints, and priorities that have nothing to do with you. The organizations that succeed are the ones that take the time to understand those pressures before the meeting — and frame their request as something that helps, rather than something that simply adds to the pile.
This is not about flattery or telling people what they want to hear. It is about doing the work to understand the environment the decision-maker is operating in: the competing demands on their time and budget, the political risks they are managing, the commitments they have already made. An organization that walks in demonstrating that understanding earns a different kind of attention than one that walks in with a wish list.
There is a practical discipline to this. Before any meeting we help a client prepare, we ask the same questions. What does this person need that we can help with? What is the one thing they will remember after we leave the room? What are we asking them to do, specifically — and is it something they can actually deliver? If those questions cannot be answered, the meeting is not ready to happen.
The best government meetings do not feel like meetings at all. They feel like two parties working on the same problem from different angles. Getting there takes preparation that begins long before anyone sits down.