For years, leaders have been encouraged to tell better stories. New research from Dr Jacki Johnson now suggests - for some organisations - that may be the most dangerous advice they could act on.
Jacki is an author, board director and a former insurance executive and chief executive, including six years leading IAG New Zealand through the Christchurch earthquake recovery. She has chaired the United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative and co-founded the Australian Sustainable Finance Initiative. She then pursued a doctorate on a question she needed to answer: how do listed companies actually create value for all stakeholders?
The answer does not lie in messaging; it's found in governance.
In fact, in her research across the ASX200, of the four archetypes she identified, the group carrying the most risk was one you might least expect: the \"strategic storytellers.\" Those with a strong narrative, but whose communications capability runs ahead of governance.
What makes this risk so hard to spot is that it easily happens through drift, not design. Strategy gets set in the boardroom, the narrative takes shape somewhere else, and that narrative is repeatedly shared \"by\" executives who never held the pen that wrote it. Each handover makes sense, yet the distance between them is where risk compounds. In Jacki's words, these organisations are \"one month away from a question being raised by some stakeholder [asking]: 'How real is this?'\"
This episode of the Your Digital Reputation podcast highlights the importance of alignment between governance and communications, and shows how the \"digital mirror\" - that reflects a company's cracks to the outside world, long before anything formally shatters - is well worth paying attention to. Tune in now to hear Jacki and host Roger Christie provide a fresh perspective on the risks and rewards to consider online.
Jacki's book, When the Mirror Shatters: Moving from Broken Promises to Creating Stakeholder Value, is now available.
TIMESTAMPS:
00:05:23 - Jacki's own \"mirror shattering\" moment
00:08:09 - The royal commission, and what she had missed
00:11:09 - Twelve practices that separate the high stakeholder value companies
00:17:06 - Why employees are the first to know
00:22:41 - From boardroom strategy to published narrative, and who holds the pen
00:31:17 - The chairman's lounge problem
00:39:07 - The four archetypes, and what value creators do differently
00:45:00 - Why storytelling is not the problem
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