Okay, we confess – we took the bait about Jenny and her white-board flame job of her boss, Spencer. Turns out it was all a hoax.

But we were in good company. Word is that Leno’s people were scrambling around yesterday, trying to find Jenny in order to get her on his show. Ditto for Good Morning, America. In fact, Gawker called it “The Quitting Tale that Suckered the Whole Internet.” Including them!

It reminds me of the day that the New York Mets listed Sidd Finch on their 1985 spring training roster, but at least Sports Illustrated and George Plimpton had the decency to pull off that prank on April Fools Day.

All kidding aside, our points about reputation and social media still stand. In an era when news can spread instantly from a variety of sources, executives can’t be too careful, corporations have to keep their crisis protocols / plans fresh and their crisis teams, internal and external, have to be ready to respond on a dime. You never know when a real Jenny will turn up on the Internet with her white board.

bsilver Employee Engagement, General Corporate Hoax, reputation, Sidd Finch

We all know that a corporate reputation can get hammered at light speed six ways from Sunday, thanks to the explosive, viral nature of social media. But I’ll bet none of us saw this one coming.

An executive assistant quits her job using a dry erase board, digital photos and a wicked sense of irony and humor. In doing so, she calls out her boss for lots of bad behavior – including wasting most of his work week playing FarmVille.

Details are sketchy so far, but given that the story of Jenny the HPOA appeared this morning on TechCrunch, it’s only a matter of time before we know all about Jenny, her former boss Spenser and the name of the brokerage firm where Spenser works.

Reputational danger, Will Robinson! Danger!

Elsewhere on this blog, my colleague Carreen Winters has catalogued a variety of situations that can trigger the need for a company’s crisis response. Now she can add “angry executive assistant armed with a whiteboard” to the list.

bsilver Employee Engagement, General Corporate Corporate Reputation, Crisis Response, employee communications

At what point does the reputational fallout from Mark Hurd’s resignation rain down on Hewlett-Packard’s PR advisors?

The New York Times reported today that APCO, a well-respected PR firm, advised HP’s board to get ahead of potential leaks associated with the investigation into allegations of sexual harassment by then-CEO Hurd.

The board took the advice, disclosing the unsupported allegations. Hurd resigned later that week – not due to the sexual allegations, but because he admitted to falsifying travel expense reports.

But I digress. Let’s look at APCO’s role here. APCO seemed to follow the crisis playbook – be proactive, be open and provide full disclosure. So far, so good. But if they made a mistake – and you could make a strong argument that they didn’t – perhaps it was to counsel their client to move quickly without all the facts in hand.

Now APCO’s reputation is getting bruised by a variety of media outlets, including the Times, which concluded its story today by reporting that APCO “does not have a particularly strong reputation for crisis management or technology expertise” despite advising corporate icons such as Microsoft, Intel and yes, HP, on such matters.

Ouch!

bsilver General Corporate APCO, HP, Intel, Microsoft, reputation

Over the past 20 years, I’ve done countless crisis audits and managed more crisis issues than I care to count, and I’m still fascinated how clients define a crisis. Traditional scenarios – manufacturing issues, product recalls, and physical events such as explosions, fires and crashes – have been in sharp focus during our summer of automobile recalls and oil spills.

Terrorism and natural disasters joined the list following 9-11 and Hurricane Katrina, and occasionally I hear about investigative journalism or Attorney General activism. One client even listed CEO kidnapping as his biggest fear.

But events of this past week should give us all pause and remind us that a crisis is anything that threatens a company’s reputation or undermines the trust and confidence of your stakeholders.

At Hewlett-Packard, allegations of sexual harassment forced the resignation of CEO Mark Hurd despite solid company performance during his tenure. Now some news reports suggest the claim was baseless, citing a “breach of trust” related to improper expense reporting to conceal the Hurd’s relationship with a company contractor. (In some circles, that would be called fraud, or theft – but that, along with Larry Ellison’s comments about the HP Board, may be another post for another day). And at Sara Lee, Brenda Barnes voluntarily stepped down after a medical leave of absence.

CEO illness, litigation, investigative journalism, and sometimes corporate or executive malfeasance – all of these things can generate a crisis. And all of them warrant a response, regardless of whether a company and its leaders decide on the response or whether it is decided for them.

My advice to clients: As you think about your own organization’s crisis protocols, are you prepared for the kinds of Crisis 2.0 issues that are making headlines? Is your crisis response team prepared to deal with the multitude of issues that could trigger a breach of confidence, and are they prepared to do it in the lightning speed now necessary due to social media?

If the answer is no, it’s time to refresh, reboot or otherwise re-align your crisis plan. Someone’s job may depend on it.

cwinters Crisis Communications, Executive Visibility CEO communications, Crisis Communications, HP

Our CEO sent me this great piece about the 5 Commandments for Brands in the post-crash economy that was posted by Fast Company.

At its heart, the piece suggests that brands must help consumers achieve balance – defined as a move toward simplicity – and must be trustworthy. In fact, much of the piece reads like a primer for how to approach CSR.

One of the things I love about this piece is its simplicity – one of the core values it recommends for brands, by the way. And for me it crystallized a concept about CSR that has been on my mind.

I recently had a discussion with a colleague who is an expert in consumer marketing, and to her, CSR is all about branding, with a heavy emphasis on cause.

For me (and many of my co-contributors to this blog), CSR is all about reputation…about engaging employees and building a culture, about growing your business (and its value) and about earning the trust of key stakeholders in government, community, industry and the consumer marketplace.

It could be that when you are a hammer, everything looks like a nail. But I think that what this really means is that we are both right.

At MWW Group, we’ve always advocated a total stakeholder approach. As CSR continues to drive further convergence of corporate reputation and brand, this approach will be more important than ever.

cwinters CSR Balance, CSR, Fast Company, reputation

Trust and the workplace are not mutually exclusive words. Or at least they shouldn’t be. The fact that leaders are starting to pay attention to it tells me that we are approaching an upturn.

I did an interview recently with PR Week about renewed enthusiasm for employee communications in order to build cultures and Trust. Our client Deloitte recently issued a survey about trust in the workplace that is causing some chatter.

What’s that? You’ve never heard of trust in the workplace as an economic indicator? You probably never will…like most people in my business, I preferred my literature and journalism courses to economics.

But here’s my logic (or non-logic, depending on your POV)…

For the past 18 months, we’ve heard a lot about the death of trust…how consumers and investors had lost faith in big companies, big governments, big everything. And as business declined and unemployment hit 10 percent, a general disinterest in employee trust and satisfaction in this issue of employee trust and engagement settled into the leadership ranks at organizations across all sectors. A general “be happy you have a job” attitude became the new normal.

Of course, if you read this blog regularly, you know I’ve been advocating that reputation begins at home, and those who make the right choices now will win the war for talent later. And many great leaders and great companies have done just that throughout the downturn.

Lately, I’ve been hearing about new programs, new commitments and new approaches to employee engagement suggesting that leaders are beginning to pay attention to the notion of building trust internally, and retaining their talent.

To me, that is an encouraging sign.

cwinters General Corporate Deloitte, Trust in the Workplace

I read this piece in HBR last week about the role of the CEO in creating and advancing culture. And I agree wholeheartedly with much of what Robbins says about the CEO’s involvement being the single biggest driver of culture, particularly for entrepreneurial organizations.

But I don’t agree at ALL with his premise that once formed, cultures can’t be changed.

I do a lot of work with companies in turnaround mode….where loss of culture or change of culture is often a key factor in the decline of a business….and where changing culture positively enables the success and in some cases, the very future of the organization.

If you read about the textbook turnarounds – Continental Airlines, Nissan, ODSI – all credit culture change as critical drivers of their success.

I often say that the CEO is like the Jedi Master of Reputation. The same is true for culture.

cwinters Employee Engagement, Executive Visibility, General Corporate CEO communications, Company Culture, Continental Airlines, Nissan, ODSI, Turnaround