How I turned a critical public into useful consultants

When Peter Johnson was an executive in the private sector, he viewed conflict with company outsiders as, at best, an annoyance. But when Johnson became the administrator of Bonneville Power Administration in Portland, Oregon, he realized that outsiders had the power to bring the organization down. To survive, BPA had to listen to the people affected by the agency's decisions-BPA's harshest critics. BPA had long been respected, but by the time Johnson arrived in 1981, the agency was reviled. People were put off by BPA's father-knows-best approach to decision making, whereby the agency first made decisions and then explained them. So Johnson took what many thought was an unimaginable risk. Despite the warnings of attorneys and his own deep apprehensions, he opened up BPA's decision making to the public. The first attempts to involve BPA's critics were full of fireworks, but thanks to BPA's rock-solid commitment to public involvement, success soon followed. Experiences early on proved to Johnson that involving the public in BPA's decision making was a practical alternative to litigation. Moreover, BPA's stakeholders--once the agency's adversaries--became BPA's partners in making better decisions, and the agency gained authority and legitimacy.