How to use monitors to manage political risk

Following the twists and turns of political issues is a tough task. 

There is no one moment when politics happens and then stops. But the way that we usually deal with political risks, a big report or project on the topic, does happen and then stops. We may take months writing the definitive account of the future of Australian climate legislation, and then the next day the Prime Minister is replaced.

If we’re monitoring a political issue that is ongoing, it makes sense to structure our workflows and to use tools that support that kind of continuous analysis. It’s why the Two Lanterns places Monitors at the center of its platform (and more on that decision here).

Here, we’ll walk you through how to use the monitors to maximize their usefulness and to start turning reading the news into analysis quickly.

Monitors dashboard - one glance to see all the issues you’re tracking

1. What are you monitoring?

The first step of a monitor is deciding what you’re monitoring.

Though you can choose anything for the topic, we recommend that you choose a discrete and measurable question. Instead of “Turkish politics,” make a monitor for “Erdogan nationalizes our assets in Turkey.” This helps to keep everyone on the monitor aligned with what they’re supposed to be tracking. 

Here, let’s look at whether the filibuster will be eliminated in the US Senate.

2. Add in the supporting information

Once you have the question chosen, add in additional information to make it clear to everyone on the monitor what you’re tracking.

Short Description: Quick way of describing it (this will show up on the dashboard).

Long Description: All the details that your team might need to know when consulting the monitor. This should also include the time horizon you’re working with. We recommend a clear date endpoint, even if it’s far away, so that people on the monitor don’t include an issue that won’t be realized until you’re no longer interested in the question.

Geography and Sectors: What countries and industrial areas are affected by this monitor. Most useful when you have a lot of monitors and want to filter them.

Upper bound: What is the worst that this risk could realistically get to in the time horizon? A trade dispute between the UK and EU could theoretically lead to nuclear war, but this isn’t very helpful to set a limit that far into the realm of the hypothetical. Set this at the most worried you would be on this question.

Lower bound: What’s the best that this could realistically get to. Again, we want to make sure that we have a realistic boundary.

Basic information on our monitor on the filibuster

3. Choose your drivers

Now that you’ve set up all the initial information so that everyone knows what you’re looking to monitor, it’s time to start building up the drivers.

Drivers are a monitor’s constituent parts and reflect what matters in shaping the outcome of the question. Crucially, this is not just a list of everyone involved, or key factors, or buckets that fit an arbitrary schema. They are flexible to include what you think matters for this question.

Here, we think that there are six factors that shape the outcome of the filibuster: the Democratic Party, the media, moderate senators, the urgency of the Democratic Party’s agenda, Sen. Kyrsten Synema, and Sen. Joe Manchin. Even though Synema, Manchin, and moderate senators are all Democrats, we felt that breaking them out into separate drivers reflect how we analyze the question.

Each driver has two aspects: a weighting and a level. The weighting shows how important that driver is compared to all others. The level shows what whether it is increasing or decreasing the risk, and to what extent.

We recommend that every driver range from -10 to +10 and that you have 10 “units” of driver weighting. This allows the monitor to range from -100 (the risk’s lower bound) to +100 (the risk’s upper bound). Each driver should also have a lower and upper bound so that everyone working on the monitor knows how to measure the weight and level.

The driver’s impact on the monitors is the weight multiplied by the level. This lets us reflect that if Joe Manchin, which we’re saying here is the most important person on the filibuster, changes his mind a little, that it will have an outsized impact on the overall monitor.

How to best choose the drivers for you monitors is discussed in depth in the Political Risk Academy. But the main point is that you should be able to read a piece of news and think “This makes [Monitor] more/less likely because it changes what is happening with [Driver].”

The drivers of whether the filibuster is ended. As the weights show (the W: column), Sen. Joe Manchin is the most important actor and the wider Democratic Party is the most in favor of eliminating the filibuster (the L: column representative the level of their position).

4. Add events

Sometimes you want to know not only what’s happening with a question, but what’s coming down the line. Two Lanterns monitors give you the ability to include events related to this question.

When you create an event, you’ll be asked to give it a date. You can add a link to a source for more information about that event and analysis or your own on why that event matters.

These events help you not only track when you think the issue will hit an inflection point, but can also help you plan out what your team should be working on and when, so that you’re not scrambling when someone mentions that a summit or vote is about to take place.

5. Manage access

Perhaps the most important part of these monitors is that they can be collaborative.

If a team of ten people is tracking a dozen issues, the likely workflow to cover the topics is either to divvy them up among the team or to have everyone try to stay on top of all of them.

Delegating out issues to individuals risks all sorts of cognitive bias creeping into the analysis (for more on how to combat this bias, sign up for the Political Risk Academy). Having everyone cover every topic leads to a constant flurry of emails, chats, and meetings to stay aligned - highly unproductive and duplicative.

With monitors, your whole team has a place to put relevant information and analysis that easier to find than an inbox and more organized than longer-lasting than chat windows.

You can even invite outside experts to be contributors to a monitor. Want to track data privacy regulations in Europe but don’t have anyone on your team who speaks Hungarian? Find a Hungarian expert (or get in touch with us to help you find one) and let them add to the monitor.

Monitors have have access granted to whole organizations, individual users you’d like to have full access to the monitor, and contributors with more limited access. Click on “Edit Monitor” in the monitor screen and then “Manage Permissions” to get to the access dashboard.

6. Add updates see how the monitor changes

The purpose of monitors is that they help us track an issue over time. Updates are the way we do that.

For the fate of the filibuster, some of the recent news items that changed our analysis included an Instagram post from Sen. Synema, the proliferation of voting bills across the country, and a Joe Manchin op-ed. So all those go into the monitor as updates.

Each Update allows you the ability to include a link to the original story and longer analysis.

Updates also let you change the level and weight of the Driver to which it is attached. Here, Synema’s Instagram post made us think she’s slightly less likely to kill the filibuster and the wave of voting laws made us think the rest of the Democratic Party is going to increase their prioritization of the filibuster and thereby grow in importance on the question.

You can email in your updates to updates@twolanterns.co and they’ll be in your pending updates section. It can help save time and turn reading the news into rigorous analysis.

As Updates are added to the Monitor, the scores of the Drivers will change, which will change the score of the overall Monitor. You can see on the monitor what the current overall score is and the score of the latest change. 

A line chart at the bottom of the monitor shows you how the monitor has changed over time and the monitors dashboard shows you the scores of all the monitors you’re tracking.

With that done, you are ready to start monitoring an issue and get a jump on anticipating risks and seeing opportunities.

See what stories shape your monitor with one look and click through to read more.