Article
Rewiring Reputational Resilience
Charles Lewington
CEO
In January 2020, Kristalina Georgieva, Managing Director of the IMF, Peterson Institute for International Economics stated that if she had to identify a theme at the outset of the new decade it would be increasing uncertainty.[1]
In April 2020, social media management platform Hootsuite reported unprecedented growth in the number of people searching for the word “unprecedented”.
The world we live in is changing exponentially; disruptive technologies, political risk, moving markets and changing climates are impacting the world’s health and wealth, environment and economics.
Business leaders are under increased scrutiny from internal as well as external stakeholders. The role of the employee in maintaining corporate reputations is growing. As Kevin Martin of the FT puts it, “Critical stakeholders realise that the new corporate currency is both a risk-mitigation tool — to prevent the organisation from being the next alarming headline — and an execution tool for future success”.[2]
This ever-changing environment commands a fresh approach to the management of political, social and economic risks. Organisations that do not address gaps in their resilience risk operational failure, cultural irrelevance or reputational damage.
At Hanover we define resilience as the ability of a business to anticipate, prepare for, and adapt to changing conditions and to withstand, respond to, and recover rapidly from disruptions. We’ve made it our business to study the anatomy of a resilient reputation and believe that resilient businesses are those which successfully balance both inside and outside forces. We define outside forces as the collection of events that take place outside your business and which to a higher/ lower degree have an impact on your business, and inside forces as the things that that ground a resilient business and make it agile to transform in difficult times.
Our new Rewire diagnostic tool helps progressive business leaders identify priority areas for building reputational resilience within their organisations. By providing a laser-like focus on key challenges, the tool enables us to offer tailored communications solutions which deliver real impact.
[1] H. Ahir, N. Bloom, D. Furceri, ‘60 Years of Uncertainty’, p1
[2] K. Martin, ‘A ‘corporate currency’ as a path to sustainable success’, [24.05.21]