# A week of direct dialogue between plant management and the shop floor

> After a record year and then a sharp downturn, the production teams of a major house were worried about their future. Over one week, plant management met every workshop, group after group, using the same frame: the road travelled, the questions, live answers, then what to keep, improve, stop or start. Every question received a written answer.

*Real case, anonymised: the company name is invented.*

- Company (invented name) : Maison Aubrelle
- Sector : Luxury goods, a house within a major group
- Size : Several hundred production staff
- Format : A week of half-day sessions
- Audience : Production teams from several sites (manufacturing, packaging, logistics, maintenance), welcomed in successive groups, facing plant management.
- URL : https://www.getflowdesign.com/en/cas-clients/dialogue-direction-production

## Context

- After an exceptional year, business fell back sharply. Profit-sharing shrank and talk of job cuts was circulating elsewhere in the industry.
- Worries about jobs and about the future of some brands were surfacing through every channel except the right one.
- Plant management wanted to speak directly to the shop floor, without a hierarchical filter, and leave with their ideas.

## The challenge

Open a real dialogue in a tense climate: let every question be asked, including the hardest ones, answer frankly, and not stop at the worries. The teams also had to leave with proof that they had been heard.

## Design ideas

- **Start with the road travelled** : Each session opens on what the teams have achieved over the past years, sorted into broad themes: safety, craft, environment, team spirit. The dialogue starts from shared pride, not from the crisis.
- **Every question on the table** : Participants write their questions to management, with no prior screening. They are grouped by heading and management answers them live, in front of everyone.
- **Keep, improve, stop, start** : Once the answers are given, the room moves on to proposals on a four-column grid. The director responds at the end of the session to what he has heard.
- **One frame, a growing memory** : The frame is the same for every group. Notes taken live are consolidated from one session to the next: you can see which questions keep coming back and how much they really weigh across the workshops.

## Run of show

### In each session

- **Welcome** : The day’s group facing plant management, with the ground rule set: anything can be asked.
- **The road travelled** : Achievements of recent years, sorted by broad theme.
- **The questions** : Everyone writes their own. They are grouped by heading.
- **The answers** : Management answers live, heading by heading.
- **Commit** : Keep, improve, stop, start: the room’s proposals.
- **Responses** : The director picks up the proposals and says what he will do with them.

### After the week

- **Consolidation** : Notes from every session brought together in four documents: achievements, questions, answers, proposals.
- **Written answers** : One consolidated question and one official answer per theme, handed over to be shared with everyone.

## Deliverables

- Four consolidated documents: achievements, questions, answers, proposals.
- A table of official answers, theme by theme, with figures on the economics of the house, handed to the teams a few days after the last session.
- Monthly follow-up meetings, and ideas put under study, including working-time arrangements and job swaps between departments.

## Key takeaways

- In a tense climate, opening on the road travelled changes the quality of the questions that follow. People talk differently about the future once they have remembered what they built.
- A written answer to every question is worth more than a good speech. It is what proves, afterwards, that management listened.
- Repeating the same frame group after group shows what really matters. The need for communication between sites came out stronger than management expected.

Related expertise : [Collective intelligence](https://www.getflowdesign.com/en/intelligence-collective), [Seminar facilitation](https://www.getflowdesign.com/en/facilitation-de-seminaire), [Seminar design](https://www.getflowdesign.com/en/design-de-seminaire)

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Source: Flow Design, https://www.getflowdesign.com
Contact: victoire@getflowdesign.com, marie-violaine@getflowdesign.com, +33 6 72 15 94 77. Request a quote: https://www.getflowdesign.com/en/nous-contacter. Draft a run of show online: https://www.getflowdesign.com/en/concevoir-mon-seminaire.