Communicators’ Corner

Per Wikipedia, “The unexamined life is not worth living” is a famous phrase supposedly uttered by Socrates at his trial for impiety and corrupting youth, for which he was subsequently sentenced to death. Regardless of Socrates’ fate related to these words, it’s a great dictum to follow. And it’s particularly important for communicators to note for our own integrity.

As professional truth-tellers, our job is to ensure that our stakeholders recognize and appreciate our employer’s reputation. So what do we do when we’re attempting to protect or restore a reputation that is being attacked by its own corporate culture?

Tony Jaques, Owner and Owner and Director of Issue Outcomes Pty Ltd, offers some compelling thoughts in his recent post: How moral blindness breeds plummeting corporate reputation

“Qantas. PwC. Rio Tinto. Optus. Telstra. Medibank. Facebook/Meta. Twitter/X. Any of the big banks.

The sound you can hear across the big end of town is the shredding of reputations in the wake of corporate crises, often triggered by moral blindness.

Releasing the latest Roy Morgan Trust Index, CEO Michelle Levine said Australians have never been more distrusting of business since their risk monitor began in 2017, and distrust of corporations had soared dramatically after COVID.

“Once the crisis had passed,” she said, “they found the new freedoms they had enjoyed under the cover of COVID hard to relinquish, and a kind of Moral Blindness became endemic.”

Referring to the unprecedented decline in trust of Qantas, she asserted there was moral blindness everywhere, from appalling call center delays, canceled flights, and snail’s-pace fare refunds, to former CEO Alan Joyce refusing to pay back any of the $2 billion in “corporate welfare”, despite the company surging back to billion-dollar profitability.

Of course, Qantas was not the only company to be accused of making unfair profits during a cost-of-living crisis. Australian supermarket giants Coles and Woolworths, for example, came under attack after announcing bumper annual profits of over $1 billion each at a time of food insecurity.

While business experts explained that such profits were not extraordinary given the size of these companies, Amy Booth and Danny Carney from a Tasmanian consumer protest group seemed to be reflecting a wider opinion when they declared that people “…understand they’re being screwed by the two big supermarkets.”

“They know it’s unfair that they make billions in profits while people steal or starve themselves to survive.”

Unsurprisingly, Coles and Woolworths made reassuring statements acknowledging that many people were doing it tough, and both pledged they were looking for ways to help reduce consumer costs.

However, the challenge for issue and crisis managers is not to try to reconcile polarised views about the competing demands of consumers and shareholders. It’s to recognize that, irrespective of the facts, the opinion and experience of consumers, investors, the media, and other stakeholders is what determines trust and reputation. Brand is what you say about yourself, while reputation is what other people say about you. And corporate reputation overall is plummeting.

Two key reasons are a perceived decline in management behavior and a rise in moral blindness from a supposed growing corporate culture of money over community responsibility. Moreover, it doesn’t even matter if that’s not true.

Corporate culture is how organisations behave when people aren’t looking. But more and more people are now looking, and too often they are mightily (un)impressed by what they see. Whether it’s Royal Commissions into the banking and casino industries; the latest news media exposé; or the rapidly increasing pace of legal action by various corporate cops against a growing list of business wrongdoers. Little wonder that reputation is increasingly at risk.

While experts argue about the exact numbers, most agree that reputation generally accounts for 50-60% of the share value of corporations, and much higher in many cases, depending on the industry. That is a massive amount of value at stake.

Take the case of BP in the UK which was already under pressure because of a massive boost to profits and executive bonuses on the back of rising petrol prices because of war in Ukraine. Then last month the CEO was sacked because of “workplace flings” and BP’s share value fell by $3.6 billion.

Managers and communicators need to fully understand that reputation is a core business asset – driven by what you do, not by what you say or what you promise – and there is very little chance it will improve while bad behavior continues.”

Thank you for sharing this insight, Tony!

So what does a communicator do?

Whether undertaking day-to-day communication, response or recovery communication, the communicator has a unique role: We represent our organization to the public, and we represent the public to our organization. We’re pretty good at the first one, but often lacking in the second. There’s little reason to expect an organization to see itself as the public does: It’s up to communicators to point it out. Doing so may be a career altering moment, but it is the dividing line between communication and obfuscation. At the end of your career, do you want to be remembered for your integrity, or your lack thereof?

How can you know you’re the best person for your position?

Are we fully invested in Incident Command’s core tenet that every response position should be filled with the individual best suited to it? If so, we have to be certain we are actually filling the box on the organization chart that we should.

It’s easy to decide this for other people; there’s nothing we like more than being an armchair quarterback. We each posses the innate ability to immediately discern another person’s thoughts, intents and motives, often from a single news article or social media post. And we live in a culture that expects immediate and accurate analysis of every observed incident or response action.

We find it all too easy to join the crescendo of criticism, sharing our humble opinion with everyone else’s in a whirlwind of judgement and blame. It’s amazing that anybody is willing to serve in a public position of leadership when public pillorying seems to be the prescribed predicament.

How do we build a culture of constructive criticism? Here are a few suggestions:

Investigate…and wait

We all know the importance of accuracy in what response information we share, but we easily forget to wait for it when it’s someone else’s response. We join the crowd of instant experts, losing our professional perspective as we join the rush to judgement.

The truth is clear; the truth isn’t clear in the immediate present of a major response. It takes time to figure out what really happened, and we’re all used to hunkering down to wait out the storm of blame that swirls over us as we respond. So why do we jump into instant analysis when it’s someone else’s response? Let’s practice what we preach: Wait for the investigation to be complete and facts are finally determined. Share them and apply them in your own planning. We need a professional inertia against early judgement, or each of us may lose our own credibility.

Don’t judge too soon!

Self-Assess

At a time when leadership qualifications are under scrutiny due to perceived management failures in a crisis, it’s good to remember that we are each far better served to examine our own capabilities rather than someone else’s. It is proverbially easy to focus on other people’s shortcomings instead of taking a hard look at our own.

Before we judge someone else’s actions, let’s ask ourselves what we would have done in their shoes. Of course we can’t do this very accurately since our elevated sense of our own capabilities so easily intervenes against good judgement. And we need facts (see above). We need to develop the ability to honestly and critically ask ourselves if we would have done any better ourselves, basing our response on experience and truth.

Practice some humility! You may not have done any better!

Remember the fog of war

We simply have to accept that major incidents and response activities always suffer from the fog of war. Too much is happening all at once, facts are shifting, plans are changing instantly, people and things are moving unexpectedly, resources are appearing and disappearing, and the list goes on. Initial response decisions are difficult because so much is at stake and so little is known. Responses and reputations may suffer from bad decisions, but they will also suffer from slow ones. We need to remember that, even if decisions made in the fog of war don’t stand up to post-fog scrutiny, they were the best decision at the time based on what was known.

Remember and respect the fog of war when judging others’ actions.

Self doubt

Even as we plan for success in our efforts, preparing assiduously and practicing to perfection and piling experience on top of our training, we inevitably have to deal with self-doubt. Am I really the best person for my role? Am I ready? Can I succeed? Will I make decisions that cost reputations? Will I make decisions that cost lives?

How do we decide? How do we balance between confidence and doubt in our capabilities? Especially when the stakes are so high? It’s time to invoke the MQI Doctrine: Every person in as response should serve in the position they are the best equipped for by training, experience and position. Incident Command positions should each be filled by the person best able to fulfill the responsibilities of the position. When every position in a response organization is filled by the best person, the Incident Command adage ‘the best people making the best decisions for the best outcome’ is finally fulfilled.

How does this help with self-doubt? It switches your focus from what you think you can’t do to what you think you can do. There’s nothing wrong with aspiring to a position based on your capabilities, and there’s nothing wrong with expecting to succeed instead of fearing failure. And since IC positions are filled by assent from leadership, your capability is determined by more than yourself: You serve by consensus, not fiat. So if you’re doubting your capability, remember the tenet of IC is fulfilled by MQI: You’re the best for your position unless someone better comes along. Hold tightly to the tasks and loosely to the position. If you’re best suited to the role, you’re the best person for it. So do it!

Apply MQI, and trust it!

Grace

Nobody’s perfect. We all make mistakes, every day. Before we judge others, let’s remember that our own lives are a melange of success and failure, our decisions and actions a mix of selflessness and selfishness. We do the best we can and we quickly remind our detractors that ‘no one is perfect’. What we usually mean is that we aren’t perfect, but that they should be. Grace as unmerited favor is grudgingly practiced by imperfect people, yet we all depend on it. Every day.

How are you at grace? It’s easy to tell: How do you handle traffic? How much do you support a losing coach? How about a colleague late to a meeting? Parking meters? Line-cutters? Undercooked food?

Practice grace!