Private-Sector Diplomacy

Much of your leadership occurs inside the firm, but you need to be looking at your relationships outside as well.

The recession has affected firms' relationships with their customers. In many cases, your efforts to cut costs may have reduced the quality of your customer service. If you've missed deadlines or turned out products that aren't hat your customers were used to, then you'll need to work to regain their trust.

You may also have seen a negative impact on your relationship with your pool of potential employees. Maybe you had to lay off employees, and will need to be hiring more Creatives once things are better. But the simple fact that you laid off people in the first place may have given you a bad reputation, leaving potential employees wary of coming on board. You need to fix that, too.

An interview conducted this summer by the folks at McKinsey Quarterly addresses how firms can work to repair their reputations with different stakeholders. You should consider not only customers and potential hires but also your current employees and your shareholders, if any. The idea is to take some of the concepts governments use in "public diplomacy" (think of this as the "winning herats and minds" kind of thing) and apply them to private businesses. Public relations specialist Richard Edelman, interviewed by McKinsey, discusses it far more eloquently than I can, so go hit that link and watch the interview (also, I don't want to be accused of plagiarizing...just go to the source!)

Economists and government officials are saying the recession appears to have bottomed out and things are getting better, but the recovery will be slow. If so, we all have some work to do, so let's get at it now rather than waiting around. Fixing your bruised relationships is one key part of that.