Read My Lips

Today companies are operating within a complex environment – navigating deep cultural divisions, challenging externalities and complicated media dynamics where everyone is an activist, witness or journalist. 

Whether you’re navigating an issue that directly impacts your business or responding to external developments, this environment demands rigor and authenticity when it comes to decision making, communication and engagement. 

How do you prepare, when to take a stand, what does it take to weather the storm? Can there be any way for a corporation to win in this environment? What does winning even mean? You must be credible, authentic, and follow through. The goal isn’t to spin or craft the perfect statement – you must achieve LEGITIMACY.

• It involves real preparation and real work and coordination among the various parts of your business – integrated across investor relations, marketing/brand positioning, corporate social responsibility, government relations, internal communications and the media.
  

• Most of this needs to be built into how you operate. Audiences will judge you based on what you say, not do. 
  

• You need to do it all the time: it is about looking at everything you put out into the world and subjecting it to the lens of a political campaign.

Companies must have a systematic C-suite led strategy for engagement.

If the current divisive issues environment isn’t complicated enough, it's getting more complicated every day.

It’s also important to focus on what’s around the corner:

• The presidential election that doesn’t just not end on Election Day but may not end in the weeks and months following it.
  

• Supreme Court decisions like affirmative action, which is coming any day now, could have a massive impact on your business, even though the case itself is about higher education and their admission practices. In the end, it could have the ramifications that could impact the operations of your business.
  

• We talk about AI and what it will do to our business. How about the fact that it's already having an impact? What about an image or a video, a deep fake video of your CEO saying something they would never say that begins to move the market? How do you react? How do you put that genie back in the bottle?

  
  

• This is all coming quickly, so now is the time to prepare.

Speaking of the Supreme Court decision on affirmative action, which, as stated above, may have ramifications beyond the world of higher education—should companies plan to proactively respond? 

The trick may be in the definition of proactive, especially when it comes to internal communications reaffirming DEI commitments that many companies have made and been acting upon. Companies may choose to do that even without active pressure from employees. 

But a lot depends on the expansiveness of the ruling and how public opinion shifts in reaction, so it’s hard to tell right now before the decision has dropped. A lot could change very quickly. 

Three recent news stories give an informative picture of corporate thinking going into this moment: 

1. SCOTUS Affirmative Action Decision's Impact on Corporate America, Axios:  ​​"No matter what the decision is, we're going to feel the same way about how important DEI is to us as a firm, so communicating that to internal stakeholders is the priority, and that can be done in advance of the decision."

   
   

2. U.S. Companies Brace for Supreme Court Ruling on Affirmative Action, The Wall Street Journal: “There is no more profound impact awaiting the HR and recruiting space than this decision, certainly in the last 15 to 20 years.”

   
   

3. Companies That Embraced Social Issues Have Second Thoughts, The Wall Street Journal: “We don’t think it’s our job to opine on everything. But at the same time, it’s not our job to stay on the sidelines, either.” 

If your organization is considering speaking out about the forthcoming affirmative action decision, find our guidance here.