Stitch this: Getting policy on the CEO's agenda

Some thoughts I had this morning on making policy opportunity and risk a priority, humbly jotted down here in my *personal* capacity, my views are not those of my employer and so on. Let's have virtual coffee and chat about them.

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I heard a fascinating answer by Prashanth Chandrasekar, CEO of Stack Overflow on the Decoder Podcast today when he was asked about the threat to s. 230.

"...this is about the fundamentals of Python. How nefarious can that get."

Pretty (effing) nefarious, declared Nilay Patel (the expletive totally mine).

No shade on Prashanth, or his policy and or legal lead. He was measured, likeable and he spoke to my heart when he was explaining the Stack Overflow community engagement concept. As #techpolicy profs though, his bemusement should worry us. And because I am who I am, my first thought is of what we can do differently.

It's true that too many tech companies disregard public policy or underestimate its usefulness. It's often relegated to a lesser function under an overworked, stretched (as well as very talented) legal department.

Public policy also gets a bad name (who else avoids the term "lobbyist"?) so it's often seen as a nefarious function, too out of sync with the inspirational ethical company. (I wish we were that exciting but I can assure you, in my most nefarious I probably have a drink at lunchtime now and then).

There's also a fundamental misunderstanding about when policy is needed. Because we are seen internally when things get rough and we have to explain something or panic, it's assumed that that's when we are needed. However, your policy people are like your sysadmin. If they're panicking, something has gone terribly wrong.

Policy is also there to keep their ear to the ground and let you know when the business is *rightly* challenged. They can serve as a weather vane and an adviser to your developers as they are thinking of the next big thing. Yes, I know that we have a reputation as the "no"function but I assure you, that's changing fast. We are enablers and the proof is in the enabling regulation that we have seen passed in tech.

Policy has fundamentally changed in the last few years to incorporate community, business analysis, partnerships etc (I worked under a pioneer in this space Chris Lehane who brought the best features of political campaigning into how Airbnb did policy). This is all in service of explaining difficult concepts and working with civil society before misunderstandings get you in trouble. It's opening doors for more innovation.

Too many companies leave the policy conversation for when the going gets tough. Tech leaders dismiss valid questions as "negativity" and do not future proof the product. I am reminded of a couple of food distribution startups (feed your neighbour with your leftovers) that years ago would not even deign to entertain the notion of food safety regulation. Well...

The smart companies get the policy folks in the room early. Instead of "no" people they can be the "here is how we can get there" people. Examples abound but my favourite is Belinda Johnson who helped build Airbnb by getting legal and policy to enable instead of block innovation.

If your CEO does not appear to know of a *major issue* threatening tech (not to mention internet freedoms and neutrality - and possibly his own company - that's scary right there.

There must be something that we - as #techpolicy professionals need to do differently.

Shall we chat about some ideas? In TikTok parlance, I'll go first.

Educating *internally* as well as *externally*. To do so we are required to use the right language and the right arguments. We are trained to tailor to the audience - internal comms should be no different - but I'm not sure as a function we've aced this. Are we even in the right room? It's probably your Chief Legal Officer giving 5 mins at the Board once a month. But that's not enough - we need contact points at all levels and we need to be using the right arguments.

Not everyone cares about what we care. But there are overarching principles like the ethical core of the company, community, product and business direction. We need to be speaking to those things.

We also need *some* tech education. Yes, the jargon is important. We are guilty of the jargon gate-keeping ourselves (looking at you "the Hill", "trilogues" and "comitology"). It's only natural that yes, we do have to at least get the basics of product so that we can have a coherent conversations with the business. How can we know what's important and how can we convince our technical colleagues that it is indeed important if all they hear from us are political process details, completely disregarding the operation aspects? (I do Product Policy, so you know, I am and should be passionate about this).

We succeed when each team has at least some understanding of major policy themes, opportunities and threats. When we participate in internal fora and when we have contact points with counterparts at multiple levels. The CEO hearing about section 230 from my boss is not as powerful as when he/she hears it from their other leads too or when a question comes up during the all hands. Are we inspiring that question? Are we hacking internally, are we campaigning internally as hard as we need to?

I think we are getting better. I see newer companies taking the opportunities of public policy seriously (I would point out to the work Nicky Jackson Colaco of Roblox - one of the most meaningfully and transparently engaged gaming companies from what I've seen. I don't think their work and participation in public fora would be possible if the policy team had not excelled in getting the business on board. I'm assuming here but it strikes me as a pretty safe assumption). There are also a lot more public policy professionals eager to work outside the old school confines of process lobbying (which is an art on its own), more tools, more opportunity out there and communities that are a lot more eager to shape the world in which companies they respect operate in.

But there's more, I know there's more and I'm passionate about tech policy improving so comment with or send me some of your ideas. Who knows, we might work together in future and get to put them into practice.

Go on. Stitch this, as the kids say.

#publicpolicy #publicaffairs #platforms #section230 #stackoverflow #techpolicy #publicaffairs #regulation