One step remains before you can make a transparent and well informed decision about going public; risk assessment and analysis. Of course, you have at this point already made legal and ethical considerations. But you also have to take consequences and risks in a broader perspective into account. Outside of the area or field for the matter at hand.
Current and closely related global affairs and certain events in your own operations needs to be taken into account in the perspective of what you are about to go public with. Without being deterred – all exposure means possible external scrutinization. Be prepared to engage with critics and questioners. Then, you’ll have a golden opportunity to meet and answer questions important to your audience. For this case, if not before, it is important that you and your management level have made an active decision that positive effects outweigh possible negative scrutinizing.
I have been in the position of “the boring cop” some times. It’s not fun. It’s really, really boring to be the Boring Cop. To be the Joykill that stops the music when everyone’s on the dancefloor. But at least a couple of times, I have been sincerely thanked afterwards.
Say that you are about to publish that your operations have gone 100 percent fossil free during the last year. An amazing piece of news, isn’t it?
But what if this has been possible due to new machinery in the plants, machinery that took some serious tuning-in before being fully employed in the day-to-day operations. And what if you actually had some work-related injuries related to this?
And what if a national news channel launched a series of news-pieces about the increase of work-related injuries the week before your piece was planned for publication?
It might come out “clean”. But it might come out tainted. It might be connected to an unsafe work-environment, instead of singing it’s own, clear message. And why risk it?
In this case, the best you can do is hold on for a moment, assess the situation and make new decisions, based on the new surroundings. I’m not saying not to go public with it. I say – have a plan for engaging in a possible new surrounding.
This also relates to the topic of risk communication, which I’m covering in another blog-post.
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