Stories From the Book

Preparing for Q and A
From Mike Davies and Keven Bygate

By 1999, three years after we initiated all the changes, everybody in the organization, from senior management on down, had a different job. Pulling that off without disrupting our customers was quite a trick.

The basic communication about the new team-based organization was carried out by 20 managers, all of whom had helped develop the idea. Eventually, they talked to every worker and trade union. To help the 20 managers, we did a great deal of work, both on the presentation and the preparation for the Q and A. We thought a great deal about how the changes might affect people. Within the uncertainties and the timetables, there were limits to what we knew, but we pushed the limits. We wanted to be able to answer as many questions as possible of the 'what does this mean to me' variety. Without that sort of Q and A, we felt it would be very difficult for our people to buy into the direction we were heading and to understand why the team based strategy was right.

In preparing for the Q and A, we used role-plays. The 20 presenters would be themselves and the rest of the management would play the workforce. We would ask every tough question we could think of. We would try to tear the presentation to bits. So some chap would make his pitch and a hand would shoot up and say, 'If I've only got experience of fork lift truck driving and none of this other stuff, does that mean I'm going to be made redundant? Are you going to throw me out?' And before you could do much with that, another person would say, 'how are we going to decide who the new team leaders are? How will we know that the process is going to be fair? We have a union because so much was once not done in a fair way. Won't the union have to have a big role?' About the time your head was spinning, another would ask, with a suspicious look on his face, ' I've heard this is nothing but a way to disguise cost cutting.' The first time you tried to deal with all this you usually ended up looking like a fool, confusing everyone including yourself, or causing a riot in the 'workforce'.

We created a question and answer back-up document for the presenters. It had some 200 questions that came up in the role-plays. Each had an answer. For example, one of the questions was 'what will happen to the existing management structure, in particular the plant supervisor's role'. Now you could have talked ten minutes trying to begin answering that question, the response in the book took less than 30 seconds. The idea was always to be as clear, simple, and accurate as possible.

Our 20 'communicators' practiced and practiced. They learned the responses, tried them out, did more role plays until they felt comfortable with nearly anything that might come at them. Handling 200 issues well may sound like too much, but we did it. Remember that this was not like answering questions about bee keeping first, then fixing a tire, then who knows what topic. Everything was about us and where we were headed. The clearer that is in your head, the easier it is to remember the issues and answers, and the easier it is respond in a way that communicates well.

In some cases it was just a matter of learning information you did not know. In many cases the problem was how best to respond with the information you had. Questions can be statements, not questions. They can be driven by a lot of feeling, not thought. You need to respond to the feeling in the right way. With practice, you can learn to do it. And our people did. And most of them were very effective, even though they were not communications specialists. They didn't get beat up. They walked away feeling successful, which they were.

Self-confidence was often the key issue. I think you can often tell in thirty seconds whether the person presenting information really believes in it, really understands what is going on. This makes the message more receptive. For us it was critical that the workers and unions found it receptive.

I can't believe that what we did is not applicable nearly everywhere. I think too many people wing it.