Too often organisations are not alive to the damage that can be inflicted on them by political comments, especially during a General Election. Heightened media interest and more space to fill means that organisations can all too easily find themselves in the spotlight. But actions can be taken to avoid being politically blind-sided.
Comment can come at any time. An election campaign is generally more frenetic and even the best prepared politician can move away from their core messages. The example of Ed Miliband’s alleged ‘anti-business’ comments are a case in point. Whether he meant to go as far as he did in criticising some business leaders or tax arrangements can be questioned. What cannot is that some businesses are coming out fighting and it has been used as an opportunity to reinforce the belief that Labour does not understand the needs of business. It is doubtful that anyone will come out of this well.
But there are some steps that organisations can take:
- Be open – reading Ken Auletta’s book, Googled, provided a good example of an organisation that can fail to think widely. Citing comments on the development of Gmail, he says “Google relied so much on science, on data and mathematical algorithms that it was insensitive to legitimate privacy concerns – and, later, to fears they would dominate the search market.†Diversity in thinking and views is no bad thing and can provide a greater awareness of possible lines of attack.
- Political contacts – many organisations consider that they have only achieved anything in political relations if they have been to Number 10. Actually, a good political relations programme needs to be built on solid foundations. Your constituency MP always a good place to start. Strength, depth and a broad base will always offer some protection from potential attack or provide potential respondents in your defence, if needed.
- A developed reputation – criticisms about financial services companies will always have resonance at the current time because many are still rebuilding their reputations post the financial crash. The continued drip-drip of stories that appear to show that they have not learned the lessons of the past simply put off the day until those reputations are more robust.
- Monitoring – across the media, social media, parliament, think tanks, speeches etc. the more that you are looking at where debates are going and the direction of travel for political discussions, the better prepared you can be. But this works if actions or behaviours change as a result of this information. A ‘business as usual’ approach will be criticised even more if you can see the line of attack coming.
- Learn the lessons of others – it’s all too easy to breathe a sigh of relief when others are on the receiving end but think about these and consider the lessons. Much of this, it could argued, is part of good risk management and crisis preparation, but sometimes the focus is more inward looking, what are our processes, rather than taking a wider, more outward looking, perspective. There is a lot to be said from using the media appearances, select committee sessions, and media comments of others as the basis for learnings.
There is no excuse for being politically blind-sided as long as you take some actions.