Reputation Gurus

I read an article today about John Clare, DSGI’s departing CEO, who said something that really struck me.  When the reporter asked him if he had any failures, he said, “I haven’t made any mistakes.  You recognize mistakes quickly and you get out of them quickly and then they’re not mistakes then they are just learning experiences.”

After I chuckled (out loud, which is a no-no on a proper English train platform), I thought, “Hmmm … He’s got a good PR person behind him, but he also has a head for smart reputation management.”

Actually, I know he has a good PR person working with him, because it’s my friend and former client Kai Boschmann, who leads all of DSGI’s corporate communications.  But Mr. Clare clearly has a good sense of how to use mistakes as a way to make the business better — and as a way to talk about failures without saying that he (or the company) failed.

There’s a lesson here.  Everyone makes mistakes, but it ’s the smart executives and companies that learn from them quickly and move on.  The trick, of course, is recognizing when that mistake is made — and looking past the situation to learn from the error.  And, it’s the even smarter executive who can talk about those learning experiences to the media and other influencers without sounding defensive.  Every spokesperson can take a page out of Mr. Clare’s handbook.