I recently had a discussion with someone about self-inflicted and non-self-inflicted reputational disasters. Most of the reputation crises I have worked on and written about were self-inflicted because the early warning signs were there in the first place and leadership had an opportunity to change course. Unfortunately, the early warning signs were ignored or deemed inconsequential. An article in strategy + business, the Booz & Company journal, discusses the concept of self-inflicted black swans (a surprise occurrence that causes a major impact) and provides excellent food for thought. Essentially, the author points out that there are ways to detect if the culture is ripe for these kinds of disasters and ways to protect against their occurrence. And it all gets down to the organizational culture or DNA. There are some very good suggestions such as clarifying who is really in charge of identifying risk exposure, aligning incentives so that people are rewarded for anticipating and disclosing risk and third, creating unfiltered pathways so that those at the top hear the "ground truth" and not just what they want to hear. The bonus for me after reading the article was learning about some stats that the authors uncovered. Since I am always looking for good stats to illustrate the downside of reputational disasters, self-inflicted or not, I want to share here:
The unintended consequences associated with a self-inflicted black swan can be devastating. They include negative publicity; huge, sudden costs; lost revenues; lawsuits and criminal judgments; and regulatory penalties. Analysis of the stock prices of companies that suffered such events in 2009 and 2010 in the oil, automobile, aircraft manufacturing, and financial-services industries shows that within two months after a visible self-inflicted crisis, an average of 18 percent of shareholder value was lost, relative to the S&P 500. Moreover, stock price performance continued to diminish over time: On average, shareholder value came down 33 percent within a year.
A loss of shareholder value of 33 percent over a year's time is catastrophic in my book. It is worth learning how to prevent these unexpected surprises from occurring and figuring out how to turn these black swans into white ones.