When the CEO fails at public relations
You have to have sympathy for the PR folks who worked for Enron, Exxon, FEMA and the countless other organizations that endured public relations crises and came out for the worse. In times of crisis, it is not the PR person who needs to be on point and handling the public and media with savvy. The top dog can make or break the organization’s reputation, often at great cost not only to shareholders and other constituents but the public directly affected by the company.
Something as simple as a misstatement that comes across as lacking empathy for crisis victims can kill PR value for years on end, as well as the careers of senior leaders. It is the public relations person’s job to counsel senior leadership on this point.
Jim Lukaszewski goes so far as to say that public relations is a staff function that needs to earn a seat at the table of senior leaders. This comes by providing succinct yet valuable, strategic advice that serves the CEO and, by extension, the organization and its publics.
The CEO does not have to accept PR advice. Legal, fiscal or other considerations may weigh more heavily—often they do not, as numerous high-profile cases have demonstrated when the legal high road is taken at the expense of both public relations and, sadly, legal outcomes. Smart public relations folks will know when PR value is lower than, say, keeping the CEO out of handcuffs. But at the end of the day, putting oneself at the vantage point of a CEO is where PR is can be more valuable than, for instance, appeasing a group of nattering nabobs of negativism that appear to make careers out of attacking corporations.
Conversely, when public relations principles are disregarded by organizational leaders as a matter of either culture or policy, everybody suffers. Chronic mishandling of basic public relations—internal and external–will inevitably lead to CEO dismissal, whether or not the leader is encouraged “to find other opportunities elsewhere.” More and more leaders are reaching this fate, some admittedly unfairly, and many others because of public relations ineptitude.
