From PR to PA: a natural fit.

Money, a great deal of it, is being wasted in Washington, D.C. and other capitals around the world.

It's no surprise to cynics about government. However, it's companies, not just politicians, who are throwing money away in unfocused government relations programs or leaving millions on the table because they are not involved in government relations at all. My appreciation of this sad state of affairs began to grow in 1989, when a business manager at Vista Chemical Company asked me, "How would you go about protecting a tariff on one of our product?"

And with those words, my job changed for the foreseeable future, and my view of corporate involvement in government relations changed forever.

Five years ago, I couldn't spell lobbyist, and now I are a registered one. Partially by following good advice and partially by dumb luck, I took my company, Vista Chemical, from no government relations to being a small but active player in Washington, D.C. Over that period, working the federal government as a "sales territory," we found we could make or save our company many millions of dollars.

Pubic relations and public affairs: They work together

At the same time, I learned about the much broader field of public affairs - how many successful organizations have combined their government relations, public relations, marketing communication, employee communication, corporate philanthropy and community relations programs. The reasons are these various divisions complement each other so well, with similar personnel and skills and constant coordination needed to make sure the company speaks with one voice.

Smaller companies can find such a combination economical. Maybe a full-time employee is not justified in any one of these individual areas. However, there may be enough work spread over a number of various areas to make an internal position economical.

And because of the keen interest of senior management in government affairs, a communicator who acquires knowledge and experience in this area is almost certain to raise his or her visibility with management, and increase the value of the function to the corporation.

But how to start? The first and most important step is to make sure your company understands exactly what needs to be done in government relations. It would be best to start with a very narrow, focused project for which short-term (less than a year) easily definable goals and objectives can be written on one piece of paper.

Many efforts in government relations start out because someone's ox gets gored and management wants someone to fix it. A law is passed or a regulation is written that affects the way a business does business. The affected company's officials, with righteous indignation, want the matter set right. The funny thing is that fixing the situation after the government has written the law or regulation is very tough - much tougher than monitoring the situation from the first and becoming involved in the decision-making so that the government considers your interests. And being proactive is cheaper, too.

Washington, .D.C. office not needed

When you first get to know Washington, you'll find that many larger companies have full-time offices in the capital with many staff members of different disciplines. These can easily be effective, if managed well. However, don't think you need one to have an impact. First, work the narrow issue from home. You'll be in good company. Ben Long, a Washington headhunter who owns Travaille, Inc., says the trend is away from Washington offices. Many companies, involved in downsizing, are starting inside the Washington, D.C. Beltway.

You probably will need to get help in Washington. Someone who knows the town. Someone who knows your particular issue and the officials involved. Someone with connections. Consultants, law firms and public relations firms all offer this kind of expertise - or claim to do so. Ask people who have been in similar situations. Ask who they would recommend.

Find a small consultant who specializes in your issue

Once word got out that Vista had a trade problem, we were contacted by a number of really big Washington law firms who maintained 20 or 30 attorneys just to deal with trade issues. I'm sure these companies do good work. But you don't have to hire them, or their overhead, to get something done in Washington.

I eventually talked to Tom Sommers of Sommers and Associates, a small public relations firm in Houston. He and his wife used to work for Hill and Knowlton in the Chicago area.

They knew a lobbyist who ran a small firm in Washington, and who specialized in trade matters. After a lengthy phone discussion and a trip to Houston to meet our management, Jon Kent of Kent & O'Conner went to work for us. He had worked in a congressional office years before and stayed on to earn his living, helping people get things done in D.C.

Kent didn't promise he could fix the situation, but he seemed to know the agencies such as the U.S. Trade Representative, the Department of Commerce and the International Trade Commission with which we would have to deal. And he knew the congressional staff people who could help us as well.

Very few people who go to work in Washington ever go home again. They hang around there and try to sell their expertise to the rest of us who can't tell a kitchen cabinet from a cabinet officer. They tend to specialize, like Kent, in one or two areas. So if you are trying to manage the costs, ask and look a lot. You can find one who is right for you and won't cost you an arm and a leg.

Manage the consultant on a project, not a retainer, basis

We asked Kent to take our work on a project, not a retainer, basis. Some people will tell you that this type of arrangement will end up costing more, but I doubt it. It gives you much better control to see the exact number of hours worked each month so you can gauge your progress toward your goal.

If something else comes up and you want to use the same consultant, start another project file. You still don't need retainers. When you're done, the cost goes away.

Use trade associations to study macro issues, make contact

The next place we went for help was our trade association, the Chemical Manufacturers Association. That group had a committee keeping track of trade issues full-time. My CEO wrote a letter asking that I be given a seat on the committee. The trade association's interests were too broad to allow them to help Vista with our small issue.

However, it ended up being a great place to keep track of the issue from a macro standpoint. They also would have guest speakers from the concerned agencies each month, so I got to know people who were dealing with my issue. Then when action was needed on Vista's behalf, Kent and I could dive in on our own.

Other tips:

* Get a book on the agency with which you are dealing and how it works.

* Get a guide to how Congress works.

* Get a directory of Congress, its staff and the agencies, with individuals listed. Many large trade associations publish their own, or you can subscribe to one, such as the Federal and Congressional Yellow Books, published by Monitor Leadership Directories, New York City and Washington, D.C.

Any issue you can imagine is covered in some newsletter

* Subscribe to a newsletter on your particular issue. All the people who want to stay in Washington but who don't lobby, well, they write newsletters. Some are pretty esoteric, but will cover your issue perfectly. Folks at the Library of Congress can help you find one.

* See if there is a civilian advisory panel, reporting to the agency, on which you can serve. For trade, the U.S. Department of Commerce has the ISACs (Industry Sector Advisory Committees). Once again, a letter from my CEO to a congressman got me an appointment to ISAC-3, covering the chemical industry trade issues. These panels are set up by the government because they really do want our advice.

Learn how the law and regulations affect your problem

* Learn what the law and all pertinent regulations say about your particular problem. Learn how the process you're trying to affect works. Look for evidence, stories, articles on how it has worked in the past. Then you can estimate your chances of accomplishing your goal. Don't trust someone to know it for you. Read, reread and read again until you are sure you think you know how it all works. Then call someone in the particular agency and see if you are right.

In short, working in government relations means going back to "school" to cram a whole new world into your brain.

All of this, of course, will take time. It took me nine months of study and finding my way around before I found my first opportunity to affect the system.

We found that a little-known law called the Generalization System of Preferences (GSP) had accidentally weakened the tariff protection for our product. GSP is a law in the U.S., with similar provisions in the European Union, Japan and other developed countries.

The more narrow the goal, the better your chance of success

What kind of results can you expect to accomplish in government relations? The more narrow the hoped-for result, the better your prospects. If you can talk to people in an agency and get them to change their interpretation of how a very small portion of a law or regulation should work, that may be the easiest and most effective result for which you can hope. You may be able to offer advice on the writing of a regulation. You may be able to offer draft language.

If the issue is one that will affect only your company, you have a pretty good chance of success. That means it's noncontroversial, and people in Washington, D.C. love to help people on noncontroversial issues. If the issue affects other companies, you'll need their support. If it affects a broad category of people (read voters) it better help them and not have serious opposition from another category.

In Andrew Lloyd Webber's play "Evita," Juan Peron says "Politics is practicing the art of the possible." You'll have to see what's possible.

Will you need congressional support?

It certainly won't hurt. In our dealings with trade issues, we sometimes found ourselves needing a quick appointment with a high-level bureaucrat.

If that bureaucrat received a call from a legislator representing the community in which one of our plants was located, we sometimes found the bureaucrat's calendar much emptier than when we called ourselves.

Or a quote in the Congressional Record by our congressman might have a very salutary effect on the thinking of a policy-maker.

Legislators are there, at least in part, to help their constituents. They'll do this type of thing for you, again, if it doesn't cause controversy for them.

RELATED ARTICLE: Members of Congress can be very helpful if you take the time to build a relationship with them first. Some guidelines:

* Build your relationship with your senators and representatives before you need them. It will be a great help if they know about you and your company before you show up to ask for help.

* Take your CEO or plant manager in for a visit when they are in Washington. Or when Congress is not in session, make plans to visit the district office. It gives them a chance to see your operation, meet your employees (read voters) and to talk about their business (getting reelected).

* Pick your member of Congress carefully. Read the guide you bought about Congress and see which committees and subcommittees your legislators are on. Pick one who is on a committee that deals with the subject in which you are interested, if possible. Obviously people with multi-state locations have a bigger choice. However, if you are the big employer in one district, you'll have that member's attention.

YOU CAN BE EFFECTIVE PINPOINTING ONE OR TWO SOLONS

* You don't have to talk to all 535 members of Congress - only one who will help you.

* Before you go to the member, ask yourself what the person's priorities are. What other bills is each member working on? Are there conflicts?

* Get to know the staff person helping the member of Congress with this particular issue. We ask a tremendous amount from members. At breakfast they have to know about abortion. Later in the morning about defense, at lunch about tax reform, in the afternoon about health reform and at night about one of several hundred other issues before their particular house. They get around this by having staff members who specialize in certain areas, such as trade, defense or whatever. In six years of trade issues I saw one congressman three times. I saw his trade staffer maybe 20 times.

POLITICAL ACTION COMMITTEE NOT NEEDED FOR ONE PROJECT; ONLY LONG-TERM PROGRAMS

* Will you need a Political Action Committee (PAC)? Probably not - at least to start. You won't need to contribute money when you start building relationships. However, as time goes on and the member of Congress gives you reason to expect that he or she will be there for your company, you're also building the expectation that when that legislator needs you, you'll be there for them.

* Keep your managers and supervisors (or all employees) informed about the work you are doing. An informal newsletter about government issues affecting the company would help you build interest and support for the work, and you'll be creating an educated group of employees who can write letters on the company's behalf when you need to show the number of people who think your issue is important.

* The Public Affairs Council, headquartered in Washington, D.C., offers very good publications and workshops on PACs and grassroots programs that will add to your arsenal as your program gets up and running.

* Be persistent. Sometimes folks in government will do things for people who they think aren't going to go away.

By the way, after a year of testifying before the International Trade Committee, meeting with numerous officials and filing hundreds of pages of documents, we got our product off the GSP list. And that saved my company millions.

Mike Reynolds, ABC, is manager, public affairs, Vista Chemical Co., Houston, Texas.