Once you have the topics, set aside 45 minutes on your CEO’s calendar and audio record a meeting in which you ask them to articulate the point they’d like to make on each topic. Then ask them for their preferred way of illustrating that point. Is there a story they can tell, an example they can share or perhaps a data point that lends engaging and credible support to their point? Then cherry-pick the best material and lightly add crucial company messaging that may have been overlooked. Keep the written content for each topic to no more than fifty words. What you’re providing is not a fully written script to memorise; instead, think of your new streamlined prep document as GPS directions for how they are to navigate through each topic. The goal is for them to faithfully stick to the game plan but have enough conversational leeway to have it feel as though it is their content.

The one topic that must be considered in every media prep is the ‘doomsday question’. Every company has some Achilles Heel subject that they don’t want to talk about, but that they will almost certainly be pressed on. For this, overload on the content, with not just one way of establishing your point, but two other synonymous ways of making the same point that are phrased differently to avoid sounding like you’re clinging to just one response. You may very well be asked about this issue repeatedly, so the more versions of the same point, the better. When all the content is set, format it on to one page, like the big, laminated card that NFL head coaches have that contains every play they could possibly call. Give that to your CEO a couple of days before the interview and arrange to spend 30 minutes in role-play rehearsal so they can get familiar with how the answers flow. The following day, in the car heading to the interview, role play again in the back seat to get your CEO warmed up. After the interview, sit down together and watch the recording to provide constructive feedback on how well they executed on the game plan.

If your CEO remains resistant to dedicating time to even this streamlined approach, tell them the story of what happened to Barack Obama when he shortchanged his prep and rehearsal time in advance of his first presidential debate with Mitt Romney in 2012. Obama assured his concerned senior strategist David Axelrod that he was a game-day player, that he would show up at game time. He didn’t. That night, Obama underperformed, and by most analysts’ assessments, got trounced, casting new doubt about his chances for reelection. If a gifted communicator like Barack Obama can’t get away with skipping the prep, what makes any of us think we can? As the chief of staff, it is your job to sell this new form of prep and get by-in from your chief executive. In the twenty-plus years I have been coaching CEOs to handle Q&A, it is by far the most efficient and effective method out there.