The text below is a chapter from the Oxford Research Group's booklet 'Everyone's Guide to Achieving Change - a step-by step approach to dialogue with decision-makers'.

Step Eight: Preparing to meet a decision-maker.

Make sure that you are well-prepared.

It is important to work out a strategy for the meeting in advance, and to make sure that you are well-prepared.

A way of doing this is to work through the following list of 9 questions, jot down your answers, then look at the comments and suggestions which follow.  Referring back to these answers after the meeting can help make improvements for any future contact.

1. What do you hope to achieve in the first meeting?

It is easy to forget that one important objective is to build some kind of relationship with the decision-maker which will enable you to increase your influence in the future. At the very least you want to keep the door open for a further meeting. 

2. Where will you hold the meeting?

People definitely feel safer in their own offices, but a less bsusinees-like atmosphere can be created on more neutral territory.

3. How many of you should attend?

If more than three go, you run the risk that they will feel swamped and that the dialogue lacks any thread or development. Fewer than two runs the risk that there is no help available if you cannot think of an answer or miss an obvious point.

4. What should you say first?

Normally people expect some fairly bland chat before getting down to specific: anything else is perceived as hostile. Following this, it is a good idea to make a brief initial statement, outlining the specific area you want to talk about.  This can focus the discussion in the area you have chosen.

5. What issues or topics do you want to ask questions about?

What you are trying to establish is the subject matter of the conversation and the line of approach you want to take through it. Once you have this clear it will be much easier to formulate some specific questions.  You will need to spend some time devising the kind of questions which will get the conversation going in the right direction, leaving more precise questions which require more careful thought until later.  It wuld be wise to prepare at least ten questions: the conversation may flow like wine, but it may become a stilted question and answer session which can become very antagonistic. If your view is dismissed, while the decision-maker asserts his own, you could try this: it is clear we are only able to discuss your viewpoint at this meeting. That's quite a sensible way to go about it, as long as we arrange another meeting when you can hear ours.'

In preparing your questions, you should also consider the following: will your questions allow ambiguous or uninformative answers? Is it clear what will constitute an answer to them? is he really in a position to answer them so far as you can tell? ('You should be asking old so-and-so that one' is a real conversation stopper.)  Are you getting into secret or confidential areas?

6. What responses to your questions do you expect, and what will be your reaction to those responses?

There are likely to be two main types of responses from the decision-maker:-

a) rationalisations of what he is doing, and

b) re-statements of the well known lines of argument.

Prepare ways in which you can meet such responses.  Humour is a good way to move the conversation on towards more substance.

7. What is the single main point you want to make?

In a half hour meting it is wise to consider that you will only succeed in getting one main point across. Having that point clearly in your mind will help you to avoid red herrings, getting caught in swapping numbers ('no, no, we've only got 16,000 warheads') and being thrown on the defensive.  It might be quite an indirect main point (for example, that your group is worth taking seriously) or that it is part of his job to talk to informed lay-people about his work. There will come a moment in your meeting or correspondence with a decision-maker when it is ideal to present a powerful, positive vision of the futue - a future world without nuclear weapons for example.  The very notion may be unimaginable to your decision-maker - and the only thing which will hook his or her intereest is that you are presenting this future as the endpoint of a series of pragmatic steps to get from here to there.

8. How will you record what is said?

If you are not conducting this meeting alone, if you have undertaken this dialogue project as a small group of concerned citizens, this will help when it comes to maintaining and recording whaty may be a difficult and complex discussion.

This is hard work, and there is certainly no one best way of sharing it.  There will be enough to think about when you are talking to your decision-maker without worrying about the behaviour of your colleagues, so it is helful to plan in advance how to work together.  Two obvious models are as follows (assuming two or three are present):

a) One conducts the conversation, one records it and the third come into the discussion only if it gets bogged down or seems to be drifting too far from the main pint.  He or she is only available if the main talker asks for help on any particular point of confirmation or information.

b) Each person deals with one or more aspects of the issue which you want to cover, and each therefore takes turns at speaking, supporting and recording.  

You'll have to make sure that he doesn't object to notes being taken.  If he does, one of you should play little part in the conversation and concetrate on remembering key points (and jot them down as fast as you can as soon as you are out of the room).

If he doesn't object, you should take as full a record as you can - something which seems unimportant at the time may turn out to be very interesting indeed or useful later.  In fact, sending a resume of your notes after the meeting can be a good way of deepening the dialogue.

9. How will you end the meeting?

If time is running out or conversation is drawing to a close, it's better to lose a few minutes in order to wind it up yourselves rather than get pushed out in mid-sentence.  If he closes it, you should make a brief final statement.  It is always a good idea to try and leave one issue unresolved, one topic which has been touched on but not discussed; it can be the reason for, and a starting point of, another meeting.