Reputation Gurus

Monday’s Financial Times reviewed a new book called “Damage Control: Why Everything You Know about Crisis Management is Wrong.” The article says the authors believe companies should “rarely if ever … admit guilt and … meet each accusation with a counterattack.”

I haven’t read the book yet, but the review makes its premise seem so ridiculous that I can barely contain myself. No company should ever roll over on its reputation, but to counterattack blindly is foolish and risky. The article suggests that traditional crisis management makes apologies for the company and ignores the fact that critics don’t care about truth — only winning.

The problem is that it oversimplifies business realities; coverage of the book indicates that:

1. Crisis managers only issue apologies. In fact, crises are most effectively managed by making sure people quickly understand the context of a story. If a company is responsible for wrongdoing, acknowledging that is important.
2. Combative crisis management is needed because today’s anti-business environment only wants to punish executives. In fact, the same market that scrutinizes business activities allows every company to defend itself.
3. Embracing a “political” communications model for crisis management is the right approach. In other words, companies should adopt the cheap, coarse approach to communications that compromises today’s political discourse to defend themselves.

Co-written by a former White House communicator, the book oversimplifies and generalizes. I’m sure the authors have deep experience as crisis counselors. But I strongly suspect they offer more measured counsel to their clients than they do to their readers. At least I hope so — for the sake of those clients.