The success or failure of a business, institutional or political project will increasingly depend on the relevance given to communication. We are seeing it live with Ábalos: the fight for reputation is becoming almost the last battle before ostracism, public judgement and flesh-and-blood failures.
In this dizzying, exciting and crazy time, we have gone from trying our hand at designing our personal brand to fighting to preserve our own reputation, just in case the party, the company or the institution that supported us on the thrones of its structure strips us of our honour when the turbulent waters turn into a tsunami.
We heard it live: Ábalos, mano a mano with Alsina and Risto Mejide, talking about mud and reputation. A stoned politician, repudiated in the Mixed Group, kicking with his hands to survive the slander about his professional and personal trajectory, while the headlines fall like a gush of mud. Image, identity and reputation are presented as a trident: a springboard to success or a slide to hell.
Take the example of Grifols. Reputation is an intangible that transforms, for better or worse. Just look at the economic headlines coming from the East, such as the case of Banco Santander, which "loses 3.14 billion in the stock market due to an account linked to Iran". A good reputation generates prestige, notoriety and trust; a bad reputation generates distrust, distance and discredit. If in good times friends appear even in doughnuts, in a badly managed reputation crisis the vacuum is lethal.
Entrepreneurs, CEOs and managing directors who aspire to a stable and brilliant professional career must today be pilots of their own reputation. The same goes for politicians, institutional leaders and influential people who wish to surf waves of prosperity and avoid drowning when the crisis shows its teeth and lashes out with the fury with which the Internet amplifies any stumble, no matter how small.
Reputation is reality. But the spotlights and megaphones of communication can distort that reality, intentionally or unintentionally. When that happens, reality becomes a spectacle. Truth and transparency are the best reputation, but it would be naïve to think that the narratives of our time are crystals and mirrors. Manipulation is a constant weapon in public conversation, and defending oneself requires learning to communicate properly, sometimes with the help of experts who help us navigate without fear.
Full steam ahead: the success or failure of any project depends on communication. Reputation is at its epicentre. Whoever seeks to protect and safeguard his or her honour, come what may and whoever falls, must be the helmsman of his or her own cause, because in collective shipwrecks no one belongs to anyone.
Kings and queens. Presidents and presidents. CEOs and CEAs. Leaders. Ministers. Members of Parliament. All top managers. Imperial influencers. Secretaries of political party organisations. Blameless today, victims of the guillotine headlines tomorrow. Reputation is such an essential asset for our social survival that we cannot relegate it outside our priority office duties. Because spite... is the devil's work.