Category: Chairman’s Desk

This article appeared in Lexpert on October 12, 2016.

Today, a PR disaster can sink a company faster than a lawsuit. That requires cross-disciplinary teamwork

 

WHEN AN ORGANIZATION FACES a crisis, it nearly always faces two kinds of jeopardy: legal and reputational. In the crisis-management field, these two jeopardies have long been dealt with consecutively. The legal issues would take precedence, and once those were sorted, we’d move on to fix the reputational problems.

Times have changed. Today, with the prevalence of Google and social media, reputation is not something that exists only on a newspaper’s front page for a few days. A quick online search can dredge up hundreds of articles detailing every minor aspect of an organization’s activities for years. Because of this unending flow of information, we now live in a world where both jeopardies must be dealt with contemporaneously. We now have to think about jeopardy in a different way. Instead of silos of risk, where one comes before the other, we must think of a crisis situation as an enterprise-wide threat.

One of the best ways of thinking about competing jeopardies is the way we think about competing rights. You don’t need to be a constitutional lawyer to understand that tensions exist between competing rights. The right to free speech occasionally comes into conflict with the right to security of a person being maligned. The right against unreasonable search and seizure often abuts the need for national security.

We have come to expect that, when it comes to rights, we balance them, or we reconcile them. We assess proportionality of effect. In Western democracies, top courts often repeat the maxim that no right is absolute — that they must be balanced and reconciled.

Similarly, the pressure clients face in times of crisis requires us to weigh and balance their competing priorities. This new approach to risk is not to convince lawyers to put aside legal risk. Rather, consider this example: our firm often advises international companies hoping to invest in Canada or the United Kingdom. And, as in most countries, these multinationals are subject to rules and procedures governing foreign ownership. Many parties will weigh in: courts, regulators, politicians, investors, customers and competitors. The transactions can take months to complete.

In the past, the financial team would put together the deal, and then lawyers would worry about getting approvals, managing claims, and so on. Then, when everything was completed, the corporate-reputation firms like ours would ensure that investors, shareholders and customers saw the advantages of the new company.

But today, these events happen at once. If media report that legal processes are going badly, investors get nervous. Loss of investor confidence drives down share prices, and this gives licence to politicians and competitors to criticize the deal, making it seem less likely to succeed. This, in turn, makes regulators nervous and makes it more difficult for the legal team to obtain approvals. A vicious cycle of failure can ensue if these steps aren’t handled effectively. But a well handled transaction can generate positive financial coverage and support an easier road to the legal and regulatory objectives.

The problem is that the legal team fears legal risk, and the communications team fears a reputational risk that will lead to loss of market capitalization and future investment. But it comes down to this: if organizations wait for pleadings and discovery before addressing the reputational issues, there may be nothing left to fight over in court. As Mark Twain once remarked, ‘A lie can make it half way around the world before the truth can put its pants on.’

It is difficult to strike the right balance between the two jeopardies. The old days were easier, to be sure. But we don’t live in those days anymore. Lawyers and communications professionals no longer have the choice of separately handling each type of risk. We must work together and find the cross-disciplinary solution that balances the realities and jeopardies our clients face.

Jaime Watt is the Executive Chairman of Navigator Ltd. He specializes in complex public-strategy issues, serving both domestic and international clients.

Many challenges threaten to upend the peace that has descended on the Canadian political scene since Trudeau’s election, and with it, the narrative of a sunny and consultative government the Liberals so confidently promised.

This article appeared in the Toronto Star on October 9, 2016.

 

One of the first things we are taught about literature is the narrative arc; the underpinning of all stories. Without narrative direction, you end up with a rudderless tale that the reader can’t follow.

The same rule applies to communicating in politics.

Take back control for Britain. Make America great again. Sunny ways for Canada.

All three are formative slogans and statements used by politicians and political movements that have shaken political establishments in the Western world. While each drastically different, each spoke to, and captured, nascent desires in electorates better and more effectively than any other campaign.

During the campaign on whether the United Kingdom should remain in the European Union, there was near-unanimous support for staying among the elites of civil society. But a restlessness existed among Britons who felt left behind by London’s economic success. The sinking economic performance in rural England and a significant uptick in immigration coincided with the increase of European Union regulatory control. The result? Many, too many, average Britons were left feeling powerless.

The call by Nigel Farage and his ragged band of outsiders to ‘take back control’ spoke to these disaffected voters. Three simple words encapsulated what so many voters felt, but had been unable to articulate.

An equally simple statement has defined a political movement in the United States. ‘Make America great again’ is almost absurdly uncomplicated. And yet its clarity addresses the worries and frustrations of so many Americans who fear America’s superpower status has evaporated, and that the likes of China and Russia have superseded America’s natural position in the global world order.

Rising anxiety has led to the triumph of Donald Trump among many Republicans and independent voters despite not having the support of most of America’s business and political leaders.

Although the actual phrase was not used by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau until his victory speech following the Oct. 19, 2015, election, the Liberals were swept into power by preaching the virtue of ‘sunny ways’ to an electorate that had experienced 10 years of tough economic circumstances, and with a Prime Minister’s Office, and a government, in near constant conflict with the media, other levels of government and the Supreme Court.

When Trudeau spoke of the possibility of an open government that worked collaboratively with others, he spoke to people who had grown weary of the previous government’s approach. They rallied to his cause: young voters turned out in numbers not seen for decades, urban voters abandoned a sinking NDP, and significant numbers of suburban voters responded to the siren call of optimism and our better selves.

Sunny ways had securely captured the Canadian political imagination.

And, for the last year, the federal government has worked to deliver on that sunny approach. Since the election, it has completed more than 300 consultations. Polls show the Liberals are still riding high and Canadians are satisfied with the country’s direction. And Trudeau remains astronomically popular among young Canadians.

However, as this week has demonstrated, it may not be all blue skies ahead.

Inevitably, governments must make difficult policy choices and decisions. That a government’s best day is its first day is not a clich’ by accident. Each day that follows means actions that will inevitably alienate supporters and embolden opponents.

Two such decisions, recently made, threaten to interrupt the Liberal’s narrative of a sunny, open government.

Cabinet’s approval of the LNG pipeline in British Columbia was met with protest by both the indigenous community and environmentalists.

And after the government announced a plan for a carbon tax, three provincial environment ministers walked out of a consultative meeting, with Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall said ‘the level of disrespect’ shown by the government was ‘stunning.’

Only time will tell if there is consequential fallout from these decisions. While Canadians know well the government must make difficult decisions, their willingness to embrace these decisions is not universal.

What’s more, many more challenges threaten to upend the peace that has descended on the Canadian political scene since the election, and with it, the narrative of a sunny and consultative government Justin Trudeau and the Liberals so confidently promised.

Either that or the Liberal government could be fashioning a new narrative — one of a government boldly unafraid to act on items related to its core ideology, whether or not it provokes the usual hue and cry of protests all governments face.

Jaime Watt is the executive chairman of Navigator Ltd. and a Conservative strategist.

The convergence of entertainment and politics moves substantive policy debate to the background and deters experienced candidates from entering the fray.

This article appeared in the Toronto Star on October 2, 2016.

‘Politics is Hollywood for the ugly,’ mused Bill Clinton strategist Paul Begala in the mid-1980s.

On July 17, 1960, in a suburb east of London, England, Mark Burnett was born. Who could know that Burnett, the son of two factory workers, would one day help flip the American political establishment on its head?

At age 17, Burnett enlisted in the British Army and became a section commander in the Parachute Regiment. In October 1982, he emigrated to the United States, where he worked in Beverly Hills as a nanny and chauffeur to the stars.

In 1995, Burnett purchased the format rights to a French adventure competition television series, the Raid Gauloises. He then brought a similar competition to America. Eco-Challenge would launch his television producing career. With his hit series Survivor, Burnett began reshaping the television landscape and institutionalizing what we now call ‘reality TV,’ an accomplishment for which he is simultaneously lauded and panned.

Burnett changed America, revitalizing what was a failing television industry while masterfully entertaining millions. Today, he is responsible for some 11 programs that span the four main U.S. networks.

But, as almost always is the case, there were unintended consequences to building this voyeuristic genre dependent on cartoonishly absurd people. And one of those consequences was the convergence of reality television and politics.

In January 2004, American’s were reintroduced to businessman Donald Trump on Burnett’s program The Apprentice, ironically billed as ‘the ultimate job interview.’ Trump went on to spend the next 14 years firing hundreds of job ‘applicants’ on prime-time television.

Last Monday, the tables were turned. Trump was no longer in his iconic boardroom lambasting and publicly humiliating contestants. Rather, he was himself being interviewed, in front of 100 million people, for the job of the presidency of the United States.

The result was nearly as absurd as the many hours of The Apprentice had been.

The convergence of entertainment and politics presents challenges for meaningful governance. It moves substantive policy debate to the background. It deters serious and experienced candidates from entering the fray. It further exacerbates the role capital plays in campaigns

On reality television, fans frequently cheer and vote for the entertaining, the vain, the crazy and the downright bizarre. In politics, we can only hope that voters do not base their ballot-box decisions on these criteria, but rather place emphasis on intelligence, experience, judgment and sound policy.

We are fortunate that in Canada, regardless of partisan affiliation, our political discourse has not stooped to this level. Rather than expending time debating the whereabouts of birth certificates or the physical stamina of candidates; Canadians have largely resisted the urge to plunge into that silliness that has gripped the political arena of our neighbours to the south.

We are lucky to live in a country where we can watch a debate among party leaders and witness thoughtful discussion about Canada’s place in the world, about diversifying our economy, and about contrasting approaches to deficit spending.

All too often, like the weather, people complain that Canadian politics is boring, dry, insignificant and uneventful; these commentators may have a point.

When a juicy story comes along, we all chase it like a shiny piece of tin foil blowing down the street. We spent two years debating a $90,000 cheque, and the F-15 procurement fiasco seems to have lingered on the front pages for a decade.

But this doesn’t even come close to reality television material. That said, we too are at risk. At a time when all media are working overtime to construct new business models and people seem to be happy to consume complicated stories in eight-second clips, it is easy to see how we could take a sharp turn into reality TV land.

While his Trump’s candidacy may seem like a harmless diversion in a world fraught with genuine, real and vexing problems, his ability to galvanize so many citizens in the United States should serve as a warning to other countries, including Canada — a warning that we have no idea where the blurring of the line between politics and entertainment will take us.

Jaime Watt is the executive chairman of Navigator Ltd. and a Conservative strategist.

Life on the Hill, particularly for rookie and backbench MPs, can be a lonely, tedious and thankless life away from family and home — but we owe these men and women gratitude for their commitment to Canada

This article appeared in the Toronto Star on September 25, 2016.

Three weeks ago, students across Canada begrudgingly woke up, dusted off their backpacks and headed to school, ending their summer vacations.

This week, our federal members of Parliament did the same.

As Parliament returns, there is no shortage of issues on its agenda. These include setting targets on carbon emissions, agreeing to potentially dangerous peacekeeping roles in Africa, changing Canada’s approach to marijuana, decisions on the building of pipelines and on ratification of new free trade agreements, and the fundamental altering of the way Canadians vote in elections.

Amid these important debates, it is often lost on us that we will be represented by 338 members of Parliament, each with a unique point of view, and each with his or her own careers, family and lived experience.

On Oct. 19 of last year, a record number of rookie MPs were elected — 197 out of 338 — and they were thrown immediately into their roles. They opened offices and hired staff, got to know the media on the Hill, boned up on the issues and got down to the nation’s business.

For new MPs, the first year is an utter whirlwind. They are idealistic and enthusiastic, and the change they can affect and the opportunities in front of them seem limitless.

But soon, just as the freshness of any new government begins to wear off, new MPs face the reality that their scope and influence might not be quite what they had envisioned.

It was Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s father who remarked, some decades ago, that backbench MPs were ‘nobodies 50 yards off the Hill.’ Harsh, perhaps, and despite efforts by Pierre Trudeau’s son to change that reality, the unfortunate truth that many MPs come to discover is that real influence and power is invested in just a few of the 338 MPs in the House of Commons.

For many, their high hopes of joining the Privy Council as a cabinet minister are dashed. Others find themselves on Opposition benches they had hoped never to occupy. Nearly all face day after gruelling day filled with meetings on issues they had never cared or thought about, or in committee meetings filled with hours of testimony on policy minutiae.

On top of that, after five days a week attending to hours and hours of parliamentary business, MPs are expected to return to their ridings every weekend to spend time with constituents, attending festivals, local meetings, and what seems like an endless march of parades and charity runs.

It’s all glamorous, until the MP finds themselves attending their seventh church strawberry social instead of watching their child’s T-ball game.

And so, just as MPs adjust to their new jobs as parliamentarians, they and their families also adjust to new and very different lives as well. When MPs move to Ottawa, they leave behind family — and often the bonds of social restraint — in the spirit of public service and personal ambition.

In Ottawa, MPs once again live like students who have just moved out of residence and into their first apartments. In middle age, they often live with roommates, eat off mismatched dinnerware, leave pictures unhung.

Their commitments, understandably, are to their own communities, not to Ottawa. And so with no families to come home to, every day becomes the same. After work, receptions and dinners fuel the makings of a toxic brew of power, exhaustion and a feeling that ‘no one else understands our world.’

The grim, but too often unspoken, reality is that many politicians end up struggling. Marriages end. Relationships fray. Families suffer. Substance abuse issues emerge.

Some MPs’ struggles make it to the front page but dozens more struggle in the loneliness of the shadows.

As Parliament returns this week, we all should remember that these 338 people are not nobodies at all. Rather, they are wives and husbands, fathers and mothers, friends and colleagues of us all.

What’s more, they are the ones we have chosen to represent us in the people’s house, the House of Commons. And agree with them or not, it is only decent of us to honour the sacrifice that they make every day to do their best for our country.

Jaime Watt is the executive chairman of Navigator Ltd. and a Conservative strategist.

This article appeared in the Toronto Star on September 18, 2016.

Watching the circus that is the presidential election south of our border has long been a Canadian pastime, especially since Donald Trump rode that escalator to announce his candidacy.

As a former political communicator, I have watched, with not a small amount of sympathy, as Republican operatives have tried (with limited success) to defuse scandal after scandal their candidate himself has created.

Donald Trump’s campaign careens daily, thanks to a candidate who seems more interested in building his personal brand, selling branded steaks, and stoking angry supporters than in becoming the head of state for the most important nation in the world.

While Trump’s campaign has been described as unfocused, bigoted, incendiary, juvenile and just plain mean-spirited, you will struggle to find anyone describing Trump’s campaign ‘good.’ By all accounts, it has been a disaster that has Republicans terrified of the down-ballot consequences.

And yet, after a summer of near-constant missteps and scornful media coverage, Trump’s campaign rattles forward. Polls this week have shown predictions of his campaign’s death were greatly exaggerated; that there may now be a path to an Electoral College win for him.

All of a sudden, he is now, based on polling, within striking distance of Hillary Clinton.

There are three essential reasons for this, even though the thought of it is unfathomable to many political analysts.

The first is that the political divide in the United States has grown so large that many Republicans and Democrats would tolerate nearly anyone as their party’s nominee merely because that person was not the ‘other side.’ In today’s political environment, even Mother Teresa would struggle to gain cross-partisan support.

The second is that while the United States has experienced rapid economic growth in the last several decades thanks to globalization, not everyone has benefited to the same degree. Blue collar workers across middle America have watched as manufacturers, the bedrock of economic opportunity in many small towns, fled offshore. They have seen wages stagnate, opportunities dry up and the long-term outlook grow more and more anemic.

Not unreasonably, that segment of the population feels more than just disenfranchised; they feel they have been left behind. Fed up with the establishment politics they see as having led to the decline of the America they knew, it is impossible to underestimate the level of antipathy among these voters toward politicians like Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, whom they see as harbingers of America’s continued woes.

However, even considering these factors, Trump’s potent mix of intolerance and incompetence should have sunk his campaign by now. But it hasn’t. And that’s because the third factor faces not him, but his opponent.

That factor is entirely a Hillary Clinton phenomenon. While much of the attention has been focused on Trump’s unpopularity, Clinton is not far behind. The Democratic nominee is seen as untrustworthy, secretive and cynical.

Events of the last several days — the ham fisted handling of a simple medical issue — give us a glimpse into why American voters are so leery of Clinton’s trustworthiness.

After Clinton fainted at a public event, her campaign’s first instinct was to obfuscate. After that failed to quell interest, her campaign officials blamed the problem on heat overexposure.

They neglected to mention the pneumonia diagnosis she had received a few days before; a diagnosis they only admitted after intense media pressure.

A textbook example of a self-inflicted story.

Too often, politicians, business leaders and other high-profile people fall prey to their instincts and try to shut down a story and minimize damage by dissembling and hiding.

It’s a strategy that never works. Giving evasive answers, using weasel words and avoiding the issue only generate more interest and pressure from the media, who sense something is amiss. And the drip, drip, drip of negative stories only compounds the problems the candidate faces.

After years of covering Clinton, reporters are keenly aware of her instinct to try to hide the entire story from them. Journalists react by continuing to dig, ask questions and press the campaign to come clean.

Every time another of the campaign’s stories unravels, it represents another strike against Clinton’s credibility. Her trust with the American people is at an all-time low, and the fact she struggles to connect with voters is largely a self-created phenomenon.

Should Donald Trump be elected president on Nov. 8 in spite of a campaign filled with gaffes, bullying and outright bigotry, the Clinton campaign’s mismanagement of the media will be a key part of the tale.

Jaime Watt is the executive chairman of Navigator Ltd. and a Conservative strategist.