The Liability and Peril of Public Opinion and Discourse

The power of the people has exploded and is at an astronomical high in Nigeria. Many people now know they have a voice and can whip up their communities and spheres of influence to achieve the objectives they want and are now pushing their agendas or pet peeves. You hear things like “I will write about you on social media”. Social platforms now drive public discourse, only the discerning understands the potential power that this puts in the hands of individuals.

The COZA story readily comes to mind. The wave of public opinion forced its leader to step down. In a viral video, one of our senators was seen slapping a woman and in another video, shown apologizing to the public about it and begging for their forgiveness. Many people have made all kinds of allegations and conclusions. We must be careful. As there have been instances in which the court of public opinion conflicts with the court of law. While the justice system has been known to fail, it is important to remember that it is the best system of discerning the guilty from the innocent, while also ensuring that an individual's constitutional rights have not been infringed upon.

For people whose brands are based on their image and talent, managing public opinion and discourse is vital. Recently, a young business woman with immense talent on Instagram posted why people must leave the road to avoid being splashed on while she drives. The backlash was instant. The danger for businesses run on the basis of their owners brand is loss of patronage, especially in today’s world where everything on social media remains there. You cannot kill the story and people buy based on ideology and likeability. If your customers google you and find something unpalatable about your values and principles you lose business, examples abound.

From a  business perspective, public opinion matters to big business today perhaps more than it ever has. In such a heightened environment, the question is how can business leaders know whether they’re responding appropriately to public pressure, or being too reactive? How do we decide when to hold the line and when to shift it?

Pino G. Audia of the Harvard Business Review said, “businesses that go against prevailing views may see their reputation take a hit. The challenge for executives is to overcome the tendency to focus too narrowly on the competitive environment, so they can tune to other external forces weighing on that environment.’’

To overcome these challenges he suggests the following:

Enhance your sensitivity to the world at large.

Debates and events regarding social issues that may at first sight appear to be peripheral to the nature of your business may take on much greater significance than one might expect. Being able to identify in a timely manner significant public reactions often requires monitoring hotly debated issues on traditional media as well as trending topics on social media.

You don’t have to be the first to respond to shifts in public opinion, but you can’t be the last.

The first company to take actions that reflect shifts in public views rarely finds that doing so provides a competitive advantage, but being the last company to make a popular change—or, even worse, being the company that goes against public opinion—can be incredibly costly.

Watch out for conflicts between public opinion and your company’s values.

Deeply ingrained company values, norms, or beliefs can make an organization reluctant to acknowledge societal change. Research suggests that decision makers who’ve publicly committed to certain values are more likely to disregard people who disagree, even when those dissenters are key stakeholders.

Organizational values that clash with public opinion are particularly risky because they can strain your company culture—your best bet is to recognize such conflicts early and acknowledge them openly with all your key stakeholders, particularly your employees. Simply acknowledging shifts in public sentiment can be a powerful catalyst for change. As mentioned above, the propensity to conform is a universal human tendency, so explaining why a company is at risk of becoming a social outlier can help promote the need for change.

For causes and individuals, being able to manage public discourse is a powerful tool for achieving your values and mandate. Donald Trump is a master at this.  The New York Times says “Trump’s ability to hijack platforms and turn unrelated discussions into fights about him has scrambled the brains of his political opponents. The traditional approaches — fact-checking, for instance — are defensive; they require lending some portion of your platform (and attention) to the hijacker. The press has figured this out the hard way during the Trump administration. Batting down falsehoods and conspiracy theories requires meeting the president on his terms and playing into the oppositional role Mr. Trump has cast for the media”. He has played and mastered the game so well that everybody dances now to his tune and what he wants heard is what gets played.

Jenny Odell, the author of “How to Do Nothing,” a recent book on resisting the attention economy, calls it “a third space.” This positioning, she explains, means neither submitting to a demand for attention nor blindly refusing it, but negating the terms of the demand. And “true resistance,” Odell writes, is “the ability not just to “withdraw attention but to invest it somewhere else, to enlarge and proliferate it.”

To survive and not become a liability to public opinion – organisations, individuals and those with a cause must have the ability to position themselves, and drafting the terms of agreement to be based on what they want the public to hear or talk about like Trump does and the US football team has just done, by refusing to join issues with Trump on his term from his tweets intended to ignite a familiar discussion about patriotism and civility — with him at the center of the show. Rather than engage on those terms, the women chose to make their moment about their story, as athletes and as human beings.

The influence that gives the ability to curb the liability of public opinion - control the conversation, ignore distractions and set the terms of engagement and conversation would bring undeniable power.

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Marie-Therese Phido, CEO, Elevato, Strategy, Innovation & Marketing Expert and Business Coach