Stuff Happens… But you can sleep at night by making your association reputation resilient by Jacqui d’Eon
Reviewed by Kendra Shimmin
What is the cost of a lost reputation? Reputations for individuals, associations and corporations can be changed very quickly due to an increasing on-line presence and faster communications.
In this short, easy to read book, author Jacqui d’Eon takes us through the resilience cycle of how to prepare, manage and recover from disasters. Resilience seems to be the new buzz word, but the more we are exposed, the more resilience we need to recover. We don’t live in a perfect world, stuff happens!
In order to recover from a hit to your reputation, it is important to start by knowing what could happen. This book will encourage you to think like a pessimist to document your possible risks and create an inventory of possible disasters. Examples of possible risks are given in a template which will give you a great starting place to document anything that could happen; even the smallest associations will have numerous categories. Sadly, some of the potential disasters could be outside of your association’s control but it’s helpful to be aware of them.
With your list of possible disasters completed, the next step will take you through creating a heat map to assess the probability of the risk and the impact that will have on your association, and to your reputation. This exercise will then assist you in putting together a tactical team and to train that team to act in the event of a disaster.
When disaster strikes, the most important thing will be communication and that should be a large part of the planning process; this book gives some valuable advice on how to communicate and how much to communicate. Examples of major reputation hits in the news and how those well-known companies dealt with them is interesting. It shows the importance of core values and communications.
This book is aimed at associations, but I feel that any organization will benefit from this valuable and thought-provoking information.
