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In a feature entitled “Clash of the Titans: Regional Mall REITS Fight for Limited Outlet Development Opportunities”,  it says large regional mall players, including Simon, Taubman, Macerich Co., CBL & Associates Properties and others, have all made overtures to enter the outlet space. But with limited opportunities for development and an existing group of experienced landlords already competing there, these battles—competing press releases, wars of words and unconventional partnerships—are likely to continue to play out repeatedly throughout the country, writes Elaine Misonzhnik, the magazine’s senior associate editor.

Patrick Fox, president of The Saint Consulting Group, is also quoted in this story. Click here for full details.

By Owen Eagan, The Saint Consulting Group

In our last segment on the Communications Strategy Map (Strategic Communications Part 41: Using a Communications Strategy Map http://bit.ly/ITibf7), we discussed the need for your goals to include benchmarks to measure your results.  To illustrate the process of developing a communications strategy we used the example of building a company’s brand through thought leadership, which we identified as our objective.

Next, we determined that our purpose would be targeting specific audiences with relevant content.  For our strategy, we suggested utilizing one of a company’s subject matter experts to host educational events through multi-media channels for current and prospective clients.  We then said that the methods or tactics could include a webinar on a topical issue that the company’s clients and prospective clients have been trying to navigate.

This leads us to establishing our goals.  In setting your goals, it is helpful to use a framework borrowed from other business disciplines such as organizational behavior called the SMART Goals model.  SMART is an acronym which stands for specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound.

Specific means making sure your goals have clarity.  This involves not only articulating them well but ensuring that they are communicated to your team.  Measurable refers to identifying appropriate metrics.  These metrics could be those that you identify based on either your own previous experience or industry standards.  Achievable ensures that your goals are challenging but realistic.  This means examining whether you have the necessary resources and capabilities (e.g., staff, infrastructure, suppliers, budget, etc.).  Relevant requires your goals to be consistent with your other goals and overall objective.  This ensures alignment among the elements of your strategy.  And time-bound entails developing a timeline to keep your goals on track.  This is critical for meeting your benchmarks and should involve pulse meetings with your team.

Returning to our example, your goals could include different aspects of the development and execution of the webinar from early-stage planning such as message development to post-event activities such as customer surveys.  When used in tandem with the Communications Strategy Map, the SMART Goals model, presented in Exhibit 1 below, will help you meet your objective no matter which strategy you choose to employ.

 Exhibit 1

Owen Eagan is a Senior Consultant for Saint Consulting, an international management consulting firm specializing in land use politics.  He is also an adjunct faculty member at Emerson College, the nation’s only four-year institution dedicated exclusively to communication and the performing arts. Email Eagan@tscg.biz

By Owen Eagan, The Saint Consulting Group

So, do you have a communications strategy?  Are you sure?  I only ask because even the best strategists have to ask themselves this question from time to time.  For example, if you said yes because one of your strategies is to build thought leadership through social media, you would be wrong.  Building thought leadership would be your objective and the use of social media would be one of your tactics.

However, the good news is that you already have an objective and every strategy begins with an objective.  In fact, the process for developing your communications strategy is similar to the one used for your business strategy.  That is, after you’ve identified your objective you simply need to identify your purpose, strategy, tactics and goals.  Developing your business strategy is more complicated than that but there are parallels.

First, your objective can be defined as what you are trying to achieve.  Using the business strategy analogy, your objective is comparable to your company’s vision, or what James Collins and Jerry Porras call your BHAG (pronounced bee-hag) – your Big, Hairy Audacious Goal.  For instance, Google’s vision is “To build a perfect search engine.”

Your purpose involves what you need to do in order achieve your objective.  Again, if you were developing your company’s strategy, your purpose would be comparable to your company’s mission or core purpose.  To illustrate, Google’s mission is “To organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”

Next, you’ll need to develop your strategy.  As Jack Welch says, “Strategy means making clear-cut choices about how to compete.”  So critical is your strategy that Joel Ross and Michael Kami state, “Without a strategy an organization is like a ship without a rudder.”  Subsequently, your tactics are the methods you will use to implement your strategy.  And, lastly, your goals need to include benchmarks for measuring your results.

Using our earlier example, let’s assume our objective is building our company’s brand through thought leadership.  Next, our purpose would be targeting specific audiences with relevant content.  So, now that we’ve defined our objective and purpose, we need to decide how we’re going to compete.

One strategy could consist of utilizing one of your company’s subject matter experts to host educational events through multi-media channels for current and prospective clients.  Once we’ve identified a strategy, we can choose the methods we want to use to reach our goals.  These methods or tactics could include a webinar on a topical issue that our clients and prospective clients have been trying to navigate.

These are exercises that we go through internally to help crystalize our thinking on strategy issues.  In fact, the example above was one that was offered by Seth Cargiuolo, our Chief Knowledge Officer, as part of his invaluable feedback to a framework I developed to help make these decisions (see www.carge77.com for more about Seth).

This framework is called the Communications Strategy Map and is presented below in Exhibit 1.  It is our hope that this model will help you develop your communications strategy and execute it effectively.

Exhibit 1

 © 2011 The Saint Consulting Group

Owen Eagan is a Senior Consultant for Saint Consulting, an international management consulting firm specializing in land use politics.  He is also an adjunct faculty member at Emerson College, the nation’s only four-year institution dedicated exclusively to communication and the performing arts. Email Eagan@tscg.biz

By Owen Eagan, The Saint Consulting Group

So if your project doesn’t find a warm reception among the public, how do you begin the conversation?  First, the way not to do it is by asserting that your project will only benefit the community and parading out your experts to prove it.  There’s a time and place to do this such as in a quasi-judicial public hearing but it’s not while negotiating with neighbors.

The MIT-Harvard Public Disputes Program offers a great model called the Mutual Gains Approach to use as part of this process.  The first step involves acknowledging the concerns of the other side, even if you disagree.  Your public statements should reflect this and emphasize that the goal is to make the best decisions in the interest of the community.

Second, you should encourage joint fact finding.  For example, if your project involves the development of an energy production facility or the excavation or transportation of mineral resources, you could establish a community advisory group to address health and safety issues through initiatives such as joint monitoring.  Next, you should offer contingent commitments to minimize impacts if they occur.  This could include alternative site management plans or additional mitigation measures.  Also, you should be prepared to accept responsibility if mistakes are made, explaining how you’re going to fix the problem without conceding liability.

Throughout this process, you should always act in a trustworthy fashion.  This entails establishing a policy of transparency and sharing information with various publics.  Lastly, you should focus on building long-term relationships.  This would necessitate maintaining an ongoing dialogue with the community and demonstrating a level of community involvement such as through corporate social responsibility (CSR).  Ideally, you should develop a CSR program that will benefit both the community and your value chain (see Strategic Communications Part 4: Corporate Social Responsibility http://bit.ly/iRkUY8).

Taking this approach will help you find common ground upon which to build support for your project.  It will also help you maintain your reputation as a good corporate citizen.

Owen Eagan is a Senior Consultant for Saint Consulting, an international management consulting firm specializing in land use politics.  He is also an adjunct faculty member at Emerson College, the nation’s only four-year institution dedicated exclusively to communication and the performing arts. Email Eagan@tscg.biz

By Christopher M. Hopkins, The Saint Consulting Group

The alarming statements by a high-level federal regulator described below confirm a fear that many in the mining and energy industries have long harbored — that some federal regulatory staff have an agenda against mining and drilling projects, indeed against almost any project that harvests natural resources.

Our firm encountered a similar situation when checking on a client’s project with a federal agency staff person who was handling the mining application. We did not tell the staffer why we were asking about it, and the staffer did not inquire why we were asking. What we were told was that the project would be approved “over my dead body.” That was news to our client, who was being told a completely different story by the agency.

The EPA official in the story below resigned on Sunday, but is there a larger problem? Is this the attitude of countless staff people in federal and state permitting agencies? Do they bring their own political agenda to their job when it should be left at the door?

— Chris Hopkins is Senior Vice President for Aggregates and Mining at The Saint Consulting Group, email: hopkins@tscg.biz.

The Forbes article (with link and video):

EPA Official Not Only Touted ‘Crucifying’ Oil Companies, He Tried It

Confirming what many in the industry long suspected, a video surfaced Wednesday in which Al Armendariz, an official at the Environmental Protection Agency, promotes the idea of crucifying oil companies. Armendariz heads up the EPA’s Region 6 office, which is based in Dallas and responsible for oversight of Texas and surrounding states. The former professor at Southern Methodist University was appointed by President Obama in November 2009.

In a talk to colleagues about methods EPA enforcement, Armendariz can be seen saying, “The Romans used to conquer little villages in the Mediterranean. They’d go into a little Turkish town somewhere, they’d find the first five guys they saw and they would crucify them. And then you know that town was really easy to manage for the next few years.”

And not only has Armendariz talked about crucifying oil companies, he’s tried to do it. In 2010 his office targeted Range Resources, a Fort Worth-based driller that was among the first to discover the potential of the Marcellus Shale gas field of Pennsylvania — the biggest gas field in America and one of the biggest in the world. Armendariz’s office declared in an emergency order that Range’s drilling activity had contaminated groundwater in Parker County, Texas. Armendariz’s office insisted that Range’s hydraulic fracking activity had caused the pollution and ordered Range to remediate the water. The EPA’s case against Range was catnip for the environmental fracktivists who insist with religious zealotry that fracking is evil. Range insisted from the beginning that there was no substance to the allegations.

The Armendriz video (which appears to have been taken off YouTube late late night) was shot around the same time he was preparing the action against Range. Here’s the highlights of what he said. 

The Romans used to conquer little villages in the Mediterranean. They’d go into a little Turkish town somewhere, they’d find the first five guys they saw and they would crucify them. And then you know that town was really easy to manage for the next few years. 

And so you make examples out of people who are in this case not compliant with the law. Find people who are not compliant with the law, and you hit them as hard as you can and you make examples out of them, and there is a deterrent effect there. And, companies that are smart see that, they don’t want to play that game, and they decide at that point that it’s time to clean up.

 And, that won’t happen unless you have somebody out there making examples of people. So you go out, you look at an industry, you find people violating the law, you go aggressively after them. And we do have some pretty effective enforcement tools. Compliance can get very high, very, very quickly.

That’s what these companies respond to is both their public image but also financial pressure. So you put some financial pressure on a company, you get other people in that industry to clean up very quickly.

 The former professor at Southern Methodist University is a diehard environmentalist, having grown up in El Paso near a copper smelter that reportedly belched arsenic-laced clouds into the air.  Texas Monthly called him one of the 25 most powerful Texans, while the Houston Chronicle said he’s “the most feared environmentalist in the state.”

Nevermind that he couldn’t prove jack against Range. For a year and a half EPA bickered over the issue, both with Range and with the Texas Railroad Commission, which regulates oil and gas drilling and did its own scientific study of Range’s wells and found no evidence that they polluted anything. In recent months a federal judge slapped the EPA, decreeing that the agency was required to actually do some scientific investigation of wells before penalizing the companies that drilled them. Finally in March the EPA withdrew its emergency order and a federal court dismissed the EPA’s case.

David Porter, a commissioner on the Texas Railroad Commission, wasn’t impressed. “Today the EPA finally made a decision based on science and fact versus playing politics with the Texas economy. The EPA’s withdrawal of the emergency order against Range Resources.

Voters in the county, which includes Cincinnati, were asked about the concept in two different ways in the survey, and both won majority support, with few differences in the outcomes among key voting sub-groups, such as political party, suggesting the idea may have enough support across-the-board to be viable.

In one of the two ways the concept was tested, 57% of voters said that they would vote for a one-quarter cent sales tax to repair and renovate arts and entertainment facilities in Hamilton County, such as Union Terminal, the Cincinnati Zoo and Music Hall, which were arbitrarily selected as examples.  Only 37% of voters said they would vote against it and 6% were unsure.

Click here for the full story.Arts Sales Tax Levy Survey Results

Systemic bribery program resulted in expedited permits and rapid market expansion in Mexico.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc, the world’s largest retailer, hushed up a vast bribery campaign that top executives of its Mexican subsidiary carried out to build stores across that country instead of broadening the probe, the New York Times reported on Saturday.

The newspaper reported that Wal-Mart failed to notify law enforcement officials even after its own investigators found evidence of millions of dollars in bribes. The newspaper said the company shut down its internal probe despite a report by its lead investigator that Mexican and U.S. laws likely were violated.

The bombshell allegations have been picked up by Reuters, Bloomberg, Associated Press, Huffington Post and other news outlets.

The Times said that in September 2005, a senior Wal-Mart lawyer received an e-mail from a former executive at the company’s largest foreign unit, Wal-Mart de Mexico, describing how the subsidiary had paid bribes to obtain permits to build stores in the country.

The newspaper detailed the company’s 2005 investigation by examining hundreds of internal company documents, as well as more than 15 hours of interviews with the former executive, whose e-mail sparked the investigation and who recounted years of payoffs to government officials.

The Times said it looked at thousands of government documents related to store permit requests throughout Mexico and found many instances of permits being granted within weeks or days of Wal-Mart de Mexico’s payments to two outside lawyers who gave cash to the officials.

Confronted with evidence of widespread corruption in Mexico, top Wal-Mart executives focused more on damage control than on rooting out wrongdoing, the Times said.

Wal-Mart sent investigators to Mexico City and found a paper trail of hundreds of suspect payments totaling more than $24 million, but the company’s leaders then shut down the investigation and notified neither U.S. nor Mexican law enforcement officials, the Times reported.

According to the Times, current Wal-Mart Chief Executive Mike Duke and former CEO Lee Scott, who now sits on the company’s board, were among senior executives allegedly aware of the situation.

Wal-Mart said in a statement on Saturday it was “deeply concerned” about the allegations in the Times report and began an investigation into its compliance with the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) last fall. The company also said it had disclosed the probe to the U.S. Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission. The Times said this disclosure came after Wal-Mart learned of the Times investigation.

“Many of the alleged activities in The New York Times article are more than six years old. If these allegations are true, it is not a reflection of who we are or what we stand for,” said David Tovar, vice president of corporate communications at Wal-Mart.

The company said it had taken steps in Mexico to boost internal controls for stronger FCPA compliance. It declined to make any executives available for comment, and said the investigation was continuing.

Reuters, reporting on the New York Times story, quoted Richard Cassin, a U.S. FCPA lawyer, as saying Wal-Mart faces an uphill battle to convince the Justice Department and SEC that its problems are confined to Mexico.

“A corporate attitude toward the corruption there that allowed a cover-up to happen could signal wider compliance problems,” said Cassin, who writes an industry blog, FCPA Blog.

The Times said Wal-Mart’s own lead investigator, a former F.B.I. special agent, said there was reasonable suspicion to believe Mexican and U.S. laws had been violated and had recommended an expanded investigation.

The Times said that in a meeting where the investigation was discussed, then Chief Executive Lee Scott rebuked internal investigators for being too aggressive.

Days later, the paper said its records showed Wal-Mart’s top lawyer arranged to ship the internal investigators’ files on the case to Mexico City.

Primary responsibility for the investigation was then given to the general counsel of Walmex, who was alleged to have authorized bribes, the Times said. The general counsel then exonerated his fellow Walmex executives, the report said.

Click here for the New York Times story: Vast Mexico Bribery Case Hushed Up by Wal-Mart after Top-Level Struggle

Click here for the Reuters account: Wal-Mart Silenced Mexican Bribe Inquiry – NY Times

Click here for the Slatest account: Wal-Mart Hid Wide-Scale Bribery in Mexico

Click here for Bloomberg account – Wal-Mart ‘Hushed’ Mexican Bribery Allegation, NYT Reports

At a recent public hearing in Ortonville, MN, Strata Corporation found itself facing 18 out of 20 speakers voicing their opposition to a proposed quarry. Strata could have discovered that with proper preparation this level of discourse could have been avoided.

Now, Strata in short order must provide the commissioners and residents with written answers to the questions raised before the Board takes up the issue again next month. There are steps companies like Strata could take to reduce the negative impact of the public inquiry and ease the tensions of the local community.

Some companies prefer to just have one large public meeting for the residents to air their grievances. But an alternative would be to put in an effort to get out in front of the situation. A company’s motivation for waiting until the hearing could be that they do not have the time to meet individually with neighbors and residents of the community, or that the company may not want to take on the expense of conducting individual outreach. The result of waiting is likely to cost much more, and the risks of this strategy are many.

The risks of waiting are that it gives the opposition time to control the dialogue with dubious and exaggerated claims of the negative impacts your quarry will have on the community. Once you let others define your project and residents start to believe the rhetoric, it becomes incredibly difficult to educate and change the minds of the residents and turn them into supporters.

Much of this could be avoided by working in the community early on, meeting with residents one on one or in small groups, laying out the details of your project and highlighting the benefits. When you have other operating quarries in an area, you can bring neighbors of those quarries to meet with local residents and testify to your being a good corporate neighbor and to the benefits your quarry bring their community.

With early action and good homework you may be able to avoid a crowd that is 90 percent against you.

Click here to find out what happened – http://www.wctrib.com/event/article/id/92553/publisher_ID/22/

Christopher Hopklns is senior vice president for aggregates and mining for The Saint Consulting Group. Email hopkins@tscg.biz

When it comes to scoping for projects needing state or federal permits, the regulatory regime typically requires that a scoping process include study of the impacts on the site and the area surrounding it. But environmentalists want to change that. Instead, they want the scope of the environmental impact statement (EIS) to be so broad as to include all of the potential impacts that may come from the creation of the facility. What they are demanding is a “life – cycle approach”.

So, if it is natural gas power plant under consideration, they want to study not only the site of the power plant but the areas where the natural gas is likely coming from. If it is an export terminal, they want to know where the grains, potash or coal may be coming from and what the impacts are from the mine or farm to the export terminal.

A recent letter from the EPA to the Army Corps of Engineers regarding the EPA’s belief that a “thorough and broadly-scoped cumulative impacts analysis” be conducted on a proposed Oregon coal export terminal is an early victory for environmentalists looking impose a new permitting regime. At a minimum, it is a nose under the tent and one that can have a detrimental impact to the United States economic recovery and long term trading prospects. So what should developers be doing to mitigate this move from the current regime to the life-cycle approach. It is easy.

1. Be open and transparent

2. Don’t be afraid to do EXTRA studies

3. Get out in front by doing studies early even if it means doing them again when the official scoping starts

4. Get out front on health impacts not just the economic impacts

Without the information when the process of public involvement begins, firms will get flat footed because environmentalists will spend short money on studies because they know the credibility it builds in their efforts to stop projects. This is a real area of concern for many clients and the industries we serve as a whole. There are a hundred other things firms can do stop environmentalists from forcing onerous conditions and scoping requirements upon them. If you would like to chat about them please feel free to reach out at vincent@tscg.biz

Jay Vincent is senior vice president for business development for The Saint Consulting Group and business leader for the energy practice.