3 The good communicator

The US chief executive, faced with the need to cut his workforce by 25 per cent, took the decision to spend a full 50 per cent of his time communicating with his staff. One technique he uses is ‘brown bag lunches’. He sits down with a small cross-section of staff over a sandwich lunch to find out what is on their minds. It is their chance to talk, not his. The result is that the most draconian cost-cutting programme ever carried out by BP in America went more smoothly than anyone could have imagined, such was the trust between him and his staff. And he personally was held in high esteem by them all. They might not have liked what was happening but they knew the reasons why.