2nd opinion: Get the message?

For the first time in my life, I feel sorry for the people who send junk mail. For the past few weeks, every time we have received an envelope addressed to The Householder, it has dropped onto the doormat with several identical friends.

My guess is that the person who posted it through the letterbox has decided that it is easier to dump a handful on us than have to visit every house down the long lane.

I picture the copywriters, advertising executives and product suppliers all fondly believing that their wonderful offer has reached many homes, while in reality it merely graces our recycling pile and our neighbours live on in ignorance of the amazing gadgets they're missing.

Effective communication is about more than words and leaflets. Too often we in the housing sector produce worthy reports, publications and mailings but fail to follow through to ensure that the message has actually been received and understood.

The content of what we produce has improved enormously over the two decades that I've been involved, but there has been no equivalent progress in ensuring that what we say has been properly disseminated.

For a start, to make sure our message gets across, we need to be clear and consistent about our objectives. All too often we parade partnership and sector-wide interests as being our main driver rather than admitting that the real priority for all of us is our share of the approved development programme or Supporting People pot. If what we actually care most about is whether we are outperforming our rivals, all the language of partnership won't disguise it.

The other element of getting the message across is making sure that it is targeted at the right people, at the right time. The best time to influence Tony Blair is not when he's in Downing Street in his 50s. It was when his political views were being formed 25 to 30 years ago.

So we have to get good at spotting rising political talent in its early days and working with it – this is perhaps the most effective route of all of getting being sure what we want to say gets heard. Study after study shows how little views change once they have been fully formed. To secure the long-term future of the social housing, we need to get good at spotting the leaders of tomorrow and helping in their formation and education today.

It's also important to ensure that the communication is two way. As a trainee vicar walking the streets of inner-city Birmingham in the early 1980s I discovered that the majority Muslim population of the parish would always listen to me speak about my faith, with just the same attention that I gave to listening to them in turn.

We had some excellent conversations, which have influenced me ever since, but only because the listening was both ways.

We could all do well to remember that next time that we embark on a tightly structured "consultation".

Between my writing this and you reading it, our West Midlands National Housing Federation Executive will have held its parliamentary launch for a publication we have called Growth and Regeneration.

I think it's a pretty good document: it's concise, accurate and well presented. It conveys a sense of what this part of England is like and of how vital housing is across a very diverse region.

But, as I have been describing, that is only half the job done. If it is to really mean something, I and my colleagues must now set to work with our promotion hats on.