The Audience Changed

Every organization has its own shorthand. It makes sense in a room with board members, executives, and colleagues. It exists for expediency and resonates with everyone in the room because it is constantly repeated within the walls of the business. When the microphone is no longer internal and the media asks a question, those same words can create or exacerbate a crisis. Why? Because the audience changed. 

In a crisis, the context is rarely yours to control. The phrase that felt like honesty inside the organization can be interpreted as indifference, arrogance, or even an unintended admission to the outside world. The executives who emerge from a crisis with their reputations intact choose their words through an external lens. What the audience hears, reads, and judges to be true begins there.