ARTICULATED

What communications person hasn’t been forced to water down what the organization really needs to say because of a corporate lawyer? In crisis communications situations, when lawyers really clamp down, it goes from annoying to downright dangerous.

A few years ago, a friend of mine’s company was in crisis. What the company desperately needed to say to its customers and the public was, simply, “We were wrong. We are sorry. We are fixing it.” But my advice got trumped by what legal counsel wanted to say, and it certainly didn’t include an apology. I urged the company’s leaders that, while the legal advice they were hearing might in fact insulate against future litigation risk, none of that would matter if all their customers bolted because the company sounded as though it were shirking obvious responsibility.

That’s the first time I ever knew for certain that the corporate lawyers placed on earth to temper my enthusiasm were dead wrong.

So I loved reading this great blog post today from respected author Shel Holz, a leading advocate for corporate transparency. He explains that companies that proactively own their mistakes and apologize accordingly not only maintain their reputations, but they actually achieve better legal results! What’s more, data shows such companies achieve higher year-end closing stock prices than those companies that handle crises with the typical legal ducking and dodging.