THE VALUE OF HAVING SEEN IT BEFORE
There is a point in many careers when experience becomes a euphemism. You are praised for having accumulated it, then quietly encouraged to make room for somebody with less of it!
This is an odd approach to professional advice. We would not question the value of an experienced surgeon, barrister or pilot. Yet in communications, familiarity with what happened last time can be treated as less useful than enthusiasm for whatever might come next.
At Gong, our senior team includes four advisers with more than 25 years’ experience each. Between us, we have worked through short-seller attacks, difficult corporate transactions, security alerts, hostile media campaigns and intensely personal situations involving senior leaders. We have advised organisations operating across markets where commercial decisions are closely entwined with politics, communities alongside public expectations.
We have also launched companies into sceptical markets, introduced journalists to technologies that barely made sense at the time and managed important events at which the guest of honour was several hours late. Experience teaches you that reputational challenges come in many forms. Some are genuinely serious. Others look serious at the time but can be resolved with a calm head and good judgement.
The value clients get from an experienced adviser is not simply knowledge of communications. It is judgement about what matters now, what may matter in two hours and what will probably have disappeared by tomorrow morning.
Knowing when an issue is serious
One member of our team once received a call from an FT journalist who had heard a short seller publicly criticising a client’s accounting practices. The short seller’s name was not widely recognised at the time, but it was familiar to the adviser because of an earlier attack on another complex international business.
That recollection changed the assessment immediately. This was not treated as an awkward media enquiry to be managed by the communications team. The chief executive was alerted at once. He abandoned his travel plans, cleared his diary and led the response.
The attack developed into a sustained and aggressive campaign, but the company was ready to rebut the accusations clearly from the outset. It emerged from the episode in a stronger position.
It is tempting to describe this as instinct. In reality, instinct in business is often experience arriving at a conclusion before we have had time to write the conclusion down.
In reputation management, the visible problem is not always the most important one. An unhelpful article may pass quickly. A seemingly obscure allegation may be the opening move in a much more serious challenge. The adviser’s job is to distinguish between them without either creating panic or offering reassurance that events may soon disprove.
As Sir Andrew Likierman, former Dean of London Business School, has written, judgement is the ability to combine personal qualities with relevant knowledge and experience to form opinions and make decisions. That combination matters because reputational questions rarely arrive with complete evidence or an obvious answer.
Preventing the crisis that never happens
The most valuable communications work is sometimes the work nobody notices.
A private equity client was preparing to sell an education and professional qualifications business. The transaction depended on securing sufficient support from its membership and student community. A vote against the sale would have jeopardised the exit and created a much wider reputational problem. Our team did not wait for opposition to gather momentum. We developed a campaign that brought students into the discussion directly, including through events on campus. Local radio, newspapers and video were used to explain the case for the transaction in terms that mattered to the people being asked to support it. The necessary vote was secured. There was no crisis, no emergency response and no dramatic story about how the business had been saved. The transaction simply moved forward.
The value of strategic communications often lies in recognising where confidence could break down while there is still time to act.
Calm does not mean passive
Another member of the team was working on a large event at a mixed-use development in a developing market when rumours of a bomb alert began circulating on social media. Senior people from the private equity owners were brought together on site. The team established what was known, prepared an accurate statement and arranged a press briefing within hours. The aim was not merely to respond quickly. It was to answer the questions that would otherwise be filled by speculation. The rumour lost momentum and the event went ahead the following day, attended by hundreds of people.
Calm advice rarely looks dramatic. In this case, it meant establishing the facts, anticipating questions and preventing speculation from taking hold. Experience also teaches that not every question needs an immediate answer and that clients rarely benefit from false certainty.
Not every accusation deserves an explanation
Organisations under attack often feel compelled to explain themselves immediately. That can be a mistake, particularly when the allegation itself is untrue.
One client faced hostile coverage after competitors briefed a national newspaper about its business. The instinctive response might have been to produce a lengthy defence, addressing each claim and explaining the context. Instead, our team examined the premise of the story and concluded that the central assertions were false.
Lawyers were brought in and the original story was stopped.
The right response is not always to communicate more. Sometimes it is to correct the record firmly; sometimes it is to say very little. The decision turns on the facts, the credibility of the source and the consequences of allowing the allegation to stand.
The task is not to apply a standard response process, but to recognise which kind of problem the organisation is facing.
The right experience in the room
Clients rarely come to us because life is calm. It might be that something important is changing, a decision is attracting attention, expectations have shifted, or a situation that once felt manageable has evolved into something unexpectedly complex.
Communications expertise matters in those moments, but experience matters too. Not because it gives anyone a crystal ball, but because it helps separate what is genuinely unusual from what simply feels unusual in the moment.
The examples here come from four members of our team, but the underlying experience is broader. Across Gong, advisers have supported organisations through transactions, scrutiny and periods of significant change in different sectors and markets. The common task is helping clients make clear decisions when pressure makes that harder.
Experience cannot prevent the unexpected. Its value is having people beside you who can keep their perspective when it happens.
