Business leaders who want to succeed need to embrace their human side

Sometimes company bosses need to scrap the expensive advice

Company bosses must sometimes go back to basics (Reuters)

One of the questions I’m often forced to ponder in the course of my work is why some companies succeed and others do not.

I don’t mean financially, although that helps, but in the reputational sense. They appear to have an easy rapport with the public, with their shareholders, with the business media, with politicians and with regulators. When things sometimes go wrong, as they inevitably do, they can easily be forgiven. For others, by contrast, an error is widely regarded as another negative, sometimes fatally so.

For the first group, they can turn even the very worst into good, not cynically and exploitatively, but naturally. For the latter, it may prove to be the final blow, for the senior management or the brand, or both – the executives destined never to recover their personal reputations.

What’s the most traumatic event to befall an organisation? One that ranks highly or the highest, is a death or deaths or serious injury as a result of something they did not do or due to a design fault they did not correct. For the bosses, a tragedy occurring on their watch is a nightmare. How they respond can determine whether they still have a future or if their careers are over.

I’ve now been through several of these product safety occurrences, with different companies, products, markets and countries. Each time, I sit and listen as a tale of disaster unfolds. Often the boss will raise doubts and inject arguments clearly prepared for them by a lawyer.

Sometimes, in relation to their subsequent portrayal by the press and on social media, possibly to make them feel better, they will allege the existence of a conspiracy, out to pounce on any mistake.

Frequently, their legal adviser will have instructed them to say little, to not do anything that may suggest an acceptance of liability.

But there is other advice that is just as crucial. I studied law at university. I know how lawyers think and behave, how they’re taught to avoid saying anything categoric, how they must qualify everything.

On my first national newspaper, The Sunday Times, one of the editorial chiefs called me into his office. “You did law, didn’t you?” he said. I nodded. “What’s this,” he asked, pointing to a table.

“It’s a table,” I said. “Well, bloody well say so. Don’t say ‘it’s got a flat top and four legs and therefore it could be a table’. It’s a table.”

Increasingly, I’m recommending to business leaders, masters of the universe, powerful people who have been hugely successful in their chosen spheres, but are now mired in adversity, a simple truth: be human. Show the world you’re a human being, that you have feelings too, that you care and you do empathise.

If it looks as though someone died or suffered terrible harm because they used one of your products or one of your staff made a calamitous mistake, whatever the reason – and don’t hold out for 100 per cent proof – see them if they’re still alive, visit the relatives. Shake their hand, reach out to them.

The lawyer may say don’t. But it’s not about admitting culpability or blame, and there and then capitulating on a damages bill, as the legal eagles would have you believe. The charge has been made, however incorrectly, that your firm, your product, your name, was somehow involved. Step up, and show them and the world you share their pain. Sorting out the finer points of a lawsuit is for another day. For now, this is about displaying that behind that faceless exterior, a heart beats.

It’s the most natural reaction to succumb to the lawyer’s entreaties, and to retreat behind the grand edifice. You can cite all manner of reasons for doing so – that it’s got nothing to do with you, that your involvement is not certain, that it sets an awful precedent for future crises, that you’ve nothing to be ashamed of.

All of which may be true. But none of them deal with the reality, an increasing one in today’s world of snap, digital, viral judgment, that businesses must act as if they were human.

And not just where there’s been a death or injury. In their treatment of anything that may see them being questioned, their every move dissected and judged, companies must reveal a sure, warm, personal touch.

That means not falling back on spin that points to a greater success (“we sell X million units every year and this was the only one to go wrong”), to stellar numbers and profits (similarly of no consequence to those who have suffered, something did go wrong and right now, that is all that matters).

None of this is simple, and each case is different. There are always variants, a particular set of circumstances, another twist or detail. Neither should it form part of a textbook creed, a subject to be absorbed at business school. No amount of written-down, ordered, robotic procedure can suffice.

It’s about doing what is right, and doing it well – and holding a mirror up to yourself. It’s incredible how many supposedly sophisticated, well-versed in selling themselves individuals and corporations fail to do this. They cannot see what others see, how they’re seen. Think on that, chairman and chief executive, and do unto others as you would want done unto you.

Chris Blackhurst is a former editor of The Independent, and executive director of C|T|F Partners, the campaigns and strategic communications advisory firm