The hardest alignment problem I worked on wasn't an infrastructure program. It was a charity. Early in my career, I moved through Queensland Rail, the Australian Government Department of Health and Ageing, Lifeline and Boeing. Three of those four could issue an instruction and expect it to land. The one that couldn't was the charity. Lifeline is a federated organisation, which means the national body sets direction and the member organisations decide what to do with it. I worked for its first marketing manager, at a point when the not-for-profit sector was only starting to accept that the role should exist. No precedent, and no authority. I was in the national office in Canberra. Half the job was convincing small stores and regional offices around the country that we were there to help and not to take over. The other half was standing in a public park in central Melbourne with a microphone, talking to a crowd of people pulled away from their desks at lunchtime so I could ask them for money. Those turned out to be the same job. Nobody in that park had to listen, and no store had to use what we sent them. You cannot compel either one. You can only be worth agreeing with. Queensland is running a lot of multi-partner programs right now. Consortia, two levels of government, councils either side of a boundary. Everyone agrees the community should hear one clear story. Then everyone goes back to their own approvals process. Infrastructure consortia are federations with a different name. The partner who goes quiet is rarely being difficult. They have a stakeholder the shared message does not serve, and they have solved that privately. Find that early, while it is still a drafting problem. A program doesn't sound like one project just because the lead partner says so. It sounds like one project when the smallest partner recognises the words as theirs. #CommunityEngagement #StakeholderEngagement #TransportInfrastructure