Have you ever wondered what your favourite company or a public figure should have done when their reputation and image was in tatters or measures, they should have taken in order to regain their good image and public trust after having suffered reputational damage?
Well, the truth is that every company, organisation, public figures all go through a rough patch, which could dent their reputation at some point. Now, Francis Herd and Professor Nicola Steyn have joined hands in providing companies, executives, and public figures on how to survive a reputational disaster in their well-researched book titled, When Crisis Strikes.
The book provides the ten practical rules or guidelines which companies, executives and even public figures can follow in order to survive reputational damage and most importantly, how they can regain their reputation and good image after having faced a crisis. The scribes use the practical examples of local and multinational companies and executives who either failed or successfully managed to reclaim their reputation and good image after having faced a bad reputational crisis.
Now, as I was perusing through the book, the names of Khusela Diko and Bandile Masuku kept coming to my mind. Diko, President Cyril Ramaphosa’s spokesperson and Masuku, who is the MEC of Health in Gauteng have since become the faces of corruption on the government’s tenders of Personal Protective Equipment in the fight against Covid-19 pandemic.
The duo, who have since been put on special leaves, have suffered serious reputational damage in the face of the public. I strongly recommend this book to both of them in their bid to recover their image in the public face. The lessons in this book might help them recover from this disaster, especially rule 4, Apologise If You Messed Up, might be what they need to do.
This is a book which will help many people, especially those in the public eye and suffering from reputational damage to find ways to recover from that. What Francis and Nicola did in this book is exceptional and will not only save many companies and people’s reputation, but will also save the livelihood of so many other people because companies and executives will know better how to avoid a crisis that can lead to the shutdown of a company.
This is an insightful book and a must-read for every leading figure and companies across the globe. Even though the text is richly academic, the book is an easy read with simplistic language and contributes to the communication and reputational management literature.