10 Lessons From CEOs on How to Manage Corporate Reputation in a New Era of Activism

A changing landscape of social, political, and business dynamics is creating a new set of challenges for CEOs. Corporations and their hard-won reputations now have as much to gain as they have to lose from sudden changes in perception. To gain a deeper understanding of the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead, we sat down with corporate leaders representing almost $2 trillion in market cap, billions of dollars in revenue, and millions of employees and asked them to share what they see on the horizon and how they are approaching the changing demands of corporate reputation.

We view corporate reputation as the overall perception of an organization that is held by its internal and external stakeholders—based on its past and current actions and probability of its future behavior. Forward-thinking leaders will prioritize an always-on investment in reputation, combining actions and accountability that connect business decisions to their impact on reputation, which will allow organizations to build a bank of goodwill that protects their license to operate.

Individually, the leaders we spoke to provided examples of nimble and nuanced approaches to managing corporate reputation. Taken together, their stories offer a revealing glimpse into the future.

Here are 10 insights that are keeping CEOs up at night, and what to do about them.

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