Is your organization ready for a skeleton in the closet? That is a question every CEO needs to consider.
What happens when there’s a ticking time bomb in an organization just waiting to detonate? That often happens when a long-buried and controversial issue in an executive’s past resurfaces. Such a crisis can cost an organization significant equity and reputational damage.
This danger is real, as digitalization of once-outdated public records is making old information from the past more readily available in online searches.
Combine that with the microscopic attention being paid to business leaders and founders, politicians, celebrities, and what once would remain a legal notice published long ago in a local newspaper now appears on the first page of a person’s Google results if the newspaper’s archive is digitized. Or, when past romantic and professional contacts suddenly go public with critical, sometimes reputationally fatal disclosures that may be biased or subjective, but still make career-destroying headlines.
All of this can raise the likelihood of reputational damage for an individual or organization. If you have something like this in your background, best to prepare a strategy for addressing it should it resurface in the future.
Related reading: When What They Say is True