Warning: that town hall script template backfired hard in Denver

I used the same canned Q&A script my last two firms swore by, and when an employee asked about the layoff timing, my stock answer sounded so fake people started laughing out loud. The CEO had to step in and ad-lib the real reasoning, which completely blew up the carefully planned messaging we'd spent 3 days building. Anybody else ditched prepared talking points after a live audience caught the mismatch, or do you have a better way to prep execs for tough questions?

1 comments

1 Comment

wren_thomas165d ago

...and honestly, I feel for you because that exact thing happened to me last spring. We had this whole polished framework for addressing the Q3 numbers and the first question out of the gate was about the reorg rumors. My talking point sounded so rehearsed I could see people's eyes glaze over, and then someone just flat-out said "that's not an answer." The CEO jumped in and gave the raw version, which wasn't even bad, but it made all our prep feel like we were hiding something. Now I make the execs practice answering off the cuff, and we only keep three bullet points, not full sentences. It's messier but people actually seem to trust it more.