You’re Meeting a Minister. What Not To Do.

The UK has a New Government which means new Ministers and new opportunities to influence. 

I’ve spent a lot of my career presenting to politicians in all continents. 

I like to think I’m pretty good at it.

My basic rules of running a political influence meeting come down to what I learned on the other side of such discussions in the UK Parliament working for the Opposition front bench and as a Ministerial Adviser.

And a lot of that came from watching things go wrong. They say you learn more from mistakes. I was always surprised at the frequency of bad meeting and presentations that I saw. But I learned a lot from watching them.

(I also felt that business advocacy was quite weak and could learn a lot from the best NGO’s when campaigning and advocating (though maybe for another post).

I recently dug out some notes I made of the worst examples at the time I was working with the Ministerial team in DEFRA (Environment, Food, Rural Affairs).

I made the notes at the time to amuse the Private Offices I worked with – they had to sit through all the meetings straight faced.

Maybe we can learn from the poorly prepared, ill disciplined, eccentric, self-indulgent, smelly, insulting, unfocussed advocates that I sat in too many meetings with.

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1)   Know what you want from that meeting. You’ve got time with one of the busiest people in Britain who may be able to change things that you find important. It is easy to spend your time complaining. Don’t. Outline the issue. Ask for specific and realistic action. Ask for the next meeting. Justify what you are asking for.

2)   If you go as a team, allocate message areas and roles to each attendee. Agree a leader. If this is not done, then very often it turns into a round table of people repeating what the previous person has said – only more vociferously. 

3)   Stay on a positive path. I lost count of how many times these meetings turned into whinge fests. That’s not lobbying; it’s therapy.

4)   Agree an agenda with the officials. I was surprised by how many representatives walked in to an hard won meeting and then undertook a stream of consciousness without discernible outcome or action. If you do want to trip up the Minister, do it at AOB 

5)   If you refer to articles and papers, bring a copy with you. The people on the other side of the table are rarely psychic and referring knowingly to an article written three years ago by someone very big in your world may not have the impact you hoped for when it draws blank looks. 

6)   Tie in your aims with those of the people you are seeking to influence. What is the point of demanding an action that is fundamentally opposed by those you are meeting? If you are a good lobbyist, you should have prepared that ground long before the meeting. But even if you have not, try and tie in your views with something the government / shadow Minister may be trying to achieve elsewhere. 

7)   Do not lecture and demean.

a.    Be inclusive of government / party / politician actions. Funnily enough, if you are dismissive, demeaning or insulting of the people in the room and their beliefs, you might be surprised to find that they are not inclined to help.

b.    Be constructive.

c.    Maintain a positive attitude throughout. If you sneer at your audience and get worked up by the paucity of their belief system or best efforts (even when they are trying to help you) then you may just find that they are less inclined to be positive back or meet you again. 

8)   Do not attack the Opposition; or your competition; or eve worse other people in your organisation. The Minister is already well able to attack the Opposition and it comes across as amateur ingratiation. Your sectors internal politics are of little interest to Ministers. You’ve requested the meeting to discuss serious issues, haven’t you? This is not an opportunity to play politics with a politician. And it doesn’t even work. It just looks petty and unprofessional. 

9)   Ministers and politicians do not sit in their office waiting for the phone to ring. Their diaries are full. They’ve squeezed your meeting in. Respect that fact and use every minute you have available to you to add value.

Arrive on time. I saw too many morning meetings where the attendees had obviously agreed to meet at the meeting and then had arrived in dribs and drabs with some of them late (one I can remember arrived half way through because he wanted to make sure he travelled off peak). 

a.    It is deeply unprofessional

b.    You have wasted the time of a person you may not see again in months / ever

c.    The Minister may now feel inclined to treat you with an equal level of respect in and after the meeting

d.    You will have to cover areas more than once as you bring your late arrivals up to speed – wasting more time. 

e.    If you can afford it, book an hotel for the night before a morning meeting. 

10)  Prepare. Arrange briefing meetings days before and a pre meet just before the actual meeting. Agree roles and coverage areas. Meet well before the meeting and try to ensure you enter the building together. Most of all ensure that everyone gets to the important meeting on time and well drilled. 

11) Be sensible / ruthless about who is at the meeting and why. All of your attendees represent your organisation.

a.    If an eccentric executive member gets to a meeting and decides that this is the moment where they can finally let rip with their philosophy to someone in a position of power, then you have lost the meeting, discredited your argument and allowed your internal management priorities to trump purpose and outcome.

b.    I saw this happen a few times. The other members of the delegation had to choose whether to let their eccentric continue or shut them up mid flow. Either way it became an internal issues management meeting rather than a Ministerial advocacy meeting.

c.    A skilled civil servant will be able to use the most eccentric member of the delegation to discredit the entire group should they feel so inclined.  

12) Going back and telling everyone that “I told them” is not a valid outcome. You have an hour with a busy and influential person. Value it and use it. Don’t spend the time attacking and moaning so that you can tell your members how stuck it to them. Everyone in the meeting will switch off and the officials will become defensive. Follow up meetings become unlikely. 

Is the meeting about driving policy outcome or therapy?

13) Do some homework on who will be at the meeting. LinkedIn is pretty good for this! 

14)  Quickly work out your allies and enemies in the room. There is a very high chance that different divisions will be invited and will have different views and motivations. You can normally tell by the closed or open nature of the questioning.

15) Don’t take the people you are meeting for fools. Do not hide your backers. Some are open about it and some are not, but I always rather enjoyed meeting Astroturf groups who tried to hide their funders. Even if we did not know at the meeting (and if we did, questions could be fun), we would find out.  

16) Not a golden rule but try to keep lawyers away from early lobby meetings. They can concentrate on detail far too quickly - we all go to our comfort zone after all - when these meetings should be dealing with narrative, relationship and environment setting. Bring in experts, but generally legal discussion should be just that. 

17)  Shower. Yes really. You may feel worthy saving water or using a Brompton to get across town, but if you walk into a room honking, that’s what people will concentrate on, not what you have to say 

18) Dress appropriately. Officials and Ministers are conservative dressers. Think about that when you are deciding what to wear for the meeting. When you are trying to push a credible position, look credible in the eyes of the people you are meeting.