What Is Policy?
I had been asking myself – and everyone else – this question a hundred times this week. ‘What is Policy?’
True to my millennial breeding, I turn to Google.
Policy.
Noun: policy; plural noun: policies
- a course or principle of action adopted or proposed by an organisation or individual.
Your standard stiff dictionary definition – but I didn’t want a textbook definition, or politician’s definition either.
I wanted to know what YOU thought Policy meant. I wanted to know what everyone else thought it meant, and WHY it might be important.
This was one of my first tasks. On my first day at APO, I stepped out of a brand meeting in which we were discussing the many facets of what Policy is, does and can be.
For me, the meeting opened up a pandora’s box of what policy actually is – action.
Did anyone pick up on the contradiction that the word ‘policy’ is a noun defined by a verb – action?
The act of policy encompasses a lot of what we take for granted in our day to day lives.
It is the prevention, the response, the intervention, the technology, the improvement, the catalyst, the continuation, the past, the present, the future – policy is the entire network of what regulates our lives.
It’s a lot.
Continue reading “Guest blog: What is Policy? – by Grace Coleman”