Integrity - Surviving a Crisis

It is a commonplace of communications that for an organization and its senior management to survive a crisis, at least with its reputation relatively intact, it should act with integrity. But what does integrity mean in these circumstances?

There are a multitude of complex compliance models of integrity such as the one appended here and used by the pharmaceutical company Novartis at "Citizenship@Novartis" to guide its corporate responsiblity program.

Impressive, yes, but impractical as a guide to behaviour when an organization and a CEO's back are to the wall and decisions about what to say and when to say it have to be made in a moment.

Michael Jensen, founder and co-chairman of the Social Science Research Network and a professor emeritus at Harvard Business School, thinks of integrity ("what it takes for a person to be whole and complete") as honouring your word:

We can honour our word in one of two ways: first, by keeping our word, and on time as promised; or second, as soon as we know we can't keep our word, we inform all parties involved and clean up any mess that we've caused in their lives. When we do this, we are honouring our word despite having not kept it, and we have maintained our integrity.

(Note the reference is from an article in the Fall 2009 issue of the Rotman School of Management magazine which is not available online.)

Not bad advice for an organization or CEO troubled by a crisis of reputation: Inform everyone affected about what's going on: Recognize the mess you've caused; Clean it up.

Comments

[Lindsay Broadhead]

Thanks for this post Boyd. Not only sound advice for corporations, but also for we as consultants. I'm often troubled by the reputation and preceived practices of consultants as 'agents of spin' or 'manipulators of the system', when, in reality, it is often the consultant who recommends open and transparent communications and, often, against the advice of others. I feel that we need to keep hammering this idea home.

[Andrea Obston]

Thanks for this. I teach a class on crisis communications at Quinnipiac University and include one session on ethics. This will be a valuable addition.

[Boyd Neil]

Thanks both for your comments . . . Lindsay I agree with your point that transparency is often something we as consultants recommend, but which equally often is advice that goes unheeded. Andrea, I think it is marvelous that a university offers a course in crisis communications.

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