Reputation Management
Historians tell us Imperial Rome's legions trained as though their drills were bloodless battles and their battles bloodless drills. They trained so comprehensively for battle that when Caesar’s troops engaged enemies on the battlefield, they were so well prepared that each of them executed their duties efficiently and effectively despite the chaos of battle.
Today's organizations certainly enjoy easier assignments, but while confronting their own degree of chaos may be a given, a lack of preparedness need not be.
Forward thinking communications teams prepare ahead of time for any critical incidents and issues that might threaten to disrupt their operations and damage their reputations with key business audiences. Ideally, each member of their team knows what to do, when, and how. Moreover, they prepare themselves to be able to adjust their strategies and responses at critical decision points as events play out.
I have extensive experience in critical incident communications planning, issues management, incident response, and executive communications for major cybersecurity companies. These activities included:
To learn more about how I might be able to support your communications efforts, please send me a note.
Today's organizations certainly enjoy easier assignments, but while confronting their own degree of chaos may be a given, a lack of preparedness need not be.
Forward thinking communications teams prepare ahead of time for any critical incidents and issues that might threaten to disrupt their operations and damage their reputations with key business audiences. Ideally, each member of their team knows what to do, when, and how. Moreover, they prepare themselves to be able to adjust their strategies and responses at critical decision points as events play out.
I have extensive experience in critical incident communications planning, issues management, incident response, and executive communications for major cybersecurity companies. These activities included:
- Reputation issues management: Frameworks to pre-determine preferred company response strategies, and appropriate messaging and communications to enable quick and effective responses to specific external or internal events. This work included the development of issues management frameworks preparing organizations to respond to particular types of internal and external developments with corporate, technology, security, safety, geopolitical, employee culture, and societal implications for corporate reputation.
- Reputation risk assessments: Quarterly company reputation risk assessments to identify potential negative storylines and prepare strategies and audience messaging (employees, customers, partners, investors, press, and social media) to minimize any resulting industry discussions.
- Strategic messaging: Drafted and edited a wide variety of communications for customer, partner, media, and employee audiences, including holding statements, internal and external FAQs, blog posts, press releases, employee communications, and media statements to contain potential corporate reputation damage.
- Crisis communications: Experience guiding senior executives and stakeholders through a decision tree of crisis communications options, often assuming there may be few positive outcomes based on these incidents.
- Stakeholder assessment and response: Worked with internal stakeholders (Executives, CISO Office, Support, IT, Engineering, Legal, Sales, Communications, etc.) to develop and execute customized responses for external and internal audiences, based on situational risk assessments. Managed communications teams' responses to events and adversary claims as though they could develop into serious critical incidents.
- Ongoing reactive strategic counsel: Provided ongoing strategic counsel throughout the crisis stages of detection, analysis, containment, eradication, recovery, after-action review, and program enhancements.
- Proactive communications planning: Developed proactive crisis communications plans, based on established best practices and specific organizational structures and processes.
- Plans, processes, and playbooks: These plans not only included crisis response plans, designating processes, roles, responsibilities and workflows, but also playbooks with proposed messaging for a variety of specific incident scenarios, such as IP theft, ransomware attacks, service disruptions, and PII data breaches.
- Proactive crisis practice: Worked within cross-functional teams to practice crisis communications scenarios, as a part of overall organizational incident response tabletop exercises.
- Executive communications and coaching: Worked closely with senior executives in capacities including, but not limited to, crisis management, issues management, spokesperson media training, and thought leadership messaging development.
To learn more about how I might be able to support your communications efforts, please send me a note.