ENTREpreneur
Thomas Cook
Lessons to Learn Understanding your business and your industry
Governance structures
Communication is key
“We believe that there are three key things that all businesses can learn from the collapse of this business,” says Regine le Roux, managing director of Reputation Matters, South African reputation research company.
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Understanding your business and your industry: It is Communication is key: Each crisis scenario incredibly important to keep tabs on what is happening unfortunately gives us a lot of crisis communication in your business as well as the industry. Conducting content to use as case studies. There was an article regular research will help you understand what is positively that appeared in Business Insider indicating that a Thomas impacting the organisation. It will also help you to identify Cook flight attendant only found out about the company’s gaps and risk areas which are crucial to the sustainability of collapse via social media. any organisation. If Thomas Cook had engaged in stakeholder Preparing for a crisis is pivotal and a communication research on a regular basis, they would have been able to policy needs to be non-negotiable. It is so important identify red flags and put contingency plans in place to avert to let internal stakeholders know first and then have a the threats. “We’ve conducted many reputation research studies strategy in place to let all other external stakeholders over the years. Different stakeholders are able to give incredibly know what is going on and addressing all the key valuable insights into helping companies identify their blind questions. Most importantly, one should not forget that spots,” says le Roux. A key requirement of the King IV Report is you are dealing with people and that you need to be the importance of stakeholder empathetic during a crisis. relationships. Treasure your Even though the A key requirement of the King IV stakeholders and they will be company is closing its Report is the importance of stakeholder doors, those executives invaluable to your success. Governance structures: relationships. Treasure your stakeholders will most likely go looking for future opportunities. Unfortunately, more and they will be invaluable to your The manner in which often than not, it success. they handle the crisis is a lack of governance and the way that they structures that lead to communicate will have a organisations collapsing. It is massive impact on their own reputations and whether or the leadership team’s responsibility to ensure that stringent not people will want to work, or be associated with them governance practices are followed and that core ethical in the future. values are non-negotiable on all levels of the organisation.
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CeO 2020 Vol 20.1