EXPOSED: CAN YOU LIVE WITH YOUR COMMUNICATION GOING PUBLIC?

The two major “dumps” of sensitive communication by WikiLeaks have reverberated around the world. Embarrassing. Destructive. Worrisome. Threatening. These are just the more polite descriptions of the fall-out from the public exposure of these private communications. Governments are scrambling to do damage control and prevent another round of leaks. And businesses are not immune to the WikiLeaks mandate – a major US bank is waiting for a WikiLeaks document dump at any moment.

This isn’t new – just the volumes and importance of the communications are novel. People have been blowing the whistle, as they say, and leaking caches of communications for a long time. The solution is prevention. Simple, but far from easy. Why? It requires major behaviour change and that, I have concluded, is the hardest solution to achieve.

Leaking isn’t the only way private communication gets into the public domain. Decades ago I worked for a company whose in-house lawyer demanded that all senior management personnel get more “security” conscious about our communication. He wanted us to be careful about how we said things in our written communication, especially advice or comments that were meant for management’s eyes only. I had largely forgotten that counsel – behaviour change is hard to remember – until I saw this report about Shell Oil in The Guardian Newspaper in the UK. Everything that lawyer warned us about so many years ago became reality for Shell.

The lead paragraphs from the Guardian story paint this picture:

Secret internal company documents from the oil giant Shell show that in the immediate aftermath of the execution of the Nigerian activist and writer Ken Saro-Wiwa it adopted a PR strategy of cosying up to key BBC editors and singling out NGOs that it hoped to “sway”.

The documents offer a previously hidden insight into efforts by the company to deflect the PR storm that engulfed it after the Nigerian activist was hanged by the country’s military government. Shell faced accusations that it had colluded with the government over the activists’ death.

I do not in any way wish to minimize the seriousness of the death of Ken Saro-Wiwa by using this report as an example of the need for caution, even in internal advice communication. However, the example, as exposed in the Guardian story, powerfully shows the conflict between the very serious context and the bloodless way in which communication can sound many years later, particularly with the language that is chosen. Here’s just a sample from the report:

The documents even reveal that Shell discussed whether it should stay in the country in the wake of Saro-Wiwa’s death. One scenario was called “milking the cow”, whereas the “pull-out” scenario was seen as “giving in” or “caving in” which would set a “very negative precedent for the group”. Another reason for not leaving was that “issues of liability will not disappear even with a total withdrawal.”

So, does this mean that we shouldn’t commit our advice to written (paper or digital) form? That would bring the business/organizational world to a halt. And as I said, even though I was warned a long time ago about the dangers of legal exposure or “leaking” that we now see in the Guardian story, I have written many PR strategy documents in the intervening years and I am certain my language and my advice, at times, have been fairly strong.

After reading the Guardian story, I wrote a strategy for a client addressing a post-crisis recovery and I changed my usual behaviour as a consequence. I think the takeaways from the Guardian example include the following:

• We need to remind ourselves and others to be conscious that everything we communicate – memos, emails, tweets, voicemails, verbal comments – can be brought out in court evidence that includes testimony (where a witness testifies to what you said in a private meeting, for instance).
• Our choice of language is critical and will often be reviewed later in the absence of the emotion that provoked it or the context that explains it. Just look at the offers of resignation sparked by the WikiLeaks exposure of diplomatic cables.
• If you make a conclusion, back it up with some proof. I did this in the strategy I wrote after reading the Guardian story. It only took one more sentence.
• Speed is the enemy of well considered communication. Emails and tweets needing remediation are so frequent these days one doesn’t have to look far to find proof of this lesson.
• If you couldn’t tolerate having your communication out in the public domain, then eliminate it (and I mean by that don’t write it or say it – I don’t mean delete or shred it, which in some circumstances can be criminal offenses) or re-consider how you will communicate.