The Key to a Good Reputation: Investing in Integrity. Always; Constantly.

A wise man once said: 'One can survive anything, nowadays, except death; and live down everything, except a good reputation.'

More than two hundred years later, these words pronounced by Oscar Wilde stay as relevant as they were then, only today the ones suffering the impetuous and irrepressible threat of a bad reputation are not high-class citizens, but corporations.?

All things banal and fake stand out—for the wrong reasons—and when presented as deep and sincere they become a direct insult to the human intelligence. Due to natural evolution, and thanks to our millenary exposure to political and religious propaganda, our ability as humans to perceive falsity has considerably improved. Fortunately! Most humans today are aware that they are been brainwashed by others—or tried to—and so many are starting to notice the latest ramification of brainwashing, which is greenwashing.

More 'sustainable', 'ecological', 'healthy', 'bio', 'socially responsible'…?And the list of green adjectives goes on and on.

But how much of what is behind these labels is true and honest?

Sustainability: the imperative trend

A corporation's leader today is intelligent enough to know sustainability is not a choice, not anymore: The company needs to be AND to look sustainable.

The not-so-conscious leader will invest a lot of time, money and other resources in covering all non-sustainable practices, products' ingredients or policies so as to prevent them from coming out to the public eye.

A conscious leader, on the other hand, will invest a lot of time, money and other resources in identifying all things non-sustainable—or very-little-sustainable—and take immediate action to remove them or replace them, or create a change management plan when a major transformation needs to occur.

Conscious leaders are proactive, more innovative, and they take more (calculated) risks for the good of all. And they know the value of integrity. They are honest and they take full responsibility for what the company does, or has done, when things don’t go the right way.

And yet, there are still many leaders who believe they cannot afford to invest in integrity and transparency. But what they cannot really afford is to be caught up in falsity: in lying, distorting reality, hiding relevant data, and/or trying to manipulate consumers, governments, the industry or international organizations.

Principles and honest intentions aside (the love for this planet and all creatures within being the most necessary one), rarely will a company survive a reputational crisis: a situation where there is a gap between what they the company is saying and what it is actually doing.

A company will not have a reputational crisis if it tells the truth—and if it has been telling the truth. It can have a critical situation, of course: something unexpected and undesired happening within the company, or because of the acts performed by the company.

But since we are all humans and companies are mainly made up of humans—until they are mainly made up of machines—we can expect companies to make mistakes. And to some extent, it is ok, we all become wiser and stronger by learning from our own mistakes and those of others.

Some mistakes can be prevented, others are impossible.

The courage to be truthful and upright

It takes so much courage to be truthful and upright... One can be critizied, censured, lynched or ostracized.

And yet there is so much beauty and so much power underneath it: underneath staying by the truth, by what is a fact, and by trying to do what is right—at least what one sincerely believes is right; what everybody else thinks is secondary, as we cannot constantly live up to the ever-growing expectations and demands of others, even if those others are that priviledged species called 'consumers.'

There is so much beauty and so much power in being truthful... But why? Because truth sets us free: free from the entanglement and the consequences derived from past and future lies. ?

A little message to consumers and activists

No-one in this world should be expected to be perfect and impeccable at every single thing they do: not a natural person nor a legal one. I don’t know any human being who is perfect, starting with the fact that perfection is a subjective and relative concept, and continuing with the fact that it is unattainable. And yet we expect companies to be perfect, immediately.

Where is all this urgency, arrogance, righteousness, and cynicism coming from? Why are there so many consumers and activists demanding more and more Corporate Social Responsibility and higher ESG standards when there is not even an Individual Social Responsibility scale in place to score themselves?

How much time and money are you, as a consumer or citizen, investing in the protection, care and development of your community, the planet or humanity as a whole?

How much??

So, more humility, please. And more compassion. We are all doing our best here, even the not-so-conscious leaders.

A little message to companies

Hire more (some?) ethical advisors, and not so many reputational crisis experts. If you have someone inside making sure that you don’t go unsustainable, most likely you will not go unsustainable; and then you won’t have to put so much effort into embellishing what your contributions to this world are, or into hiding something that, eventually, will come out; or bragging about things that your employees are not confirming from the inside. ?

You cannot afford to fall into the abyss of falsity, my dear company; that gap that exists between what is true and what is not: whether it is about your intentions or your actions. Lose truth once, and you will lose everybody's trust forever.

What is definitely true is this: nowadays no-one can afford—nor survive—a bad reputation.?

[This article is just my perspective on a specific subject on a specific day. I hope that you enjoyed it and that it added value to your life in any way possible]

#sustainabilty #consciousleadership #esg #integrity #ethicaladvisors