The Role of the Corporation in the Defense of America’s Democracy
If the need for corporations and their CEOs to play a bigger role in civic leadership wasn’t clear before, the events of this week must surely remove all doubt.
The specter of mobs overrunning the U.S. Capitol, of an unstable president hunkered down in the White House, and of democratic institutions barely functioning in the face of irrational public chaos is the culmination of years of failing government: Scorched earth politics, legislative gridlock, public deception and eroding competence at the top.
As they began to over the long hot summer of COVID-19 and racial equity protests, many companies and business groups have stepped up to address what happened on Wednesday. They quickly fired employees caught participating in the Capitol riots. They issued statements condemning political violence and reasserting corporate values. Some associations — most notably the National Association of Manufacturers — called explicitly for the president of the United States to be removed from office, a demand that would have been unthinkable even six months ago.
That’s the sound of businesses leaders exerting public leadership. It’s also the sound of businesses responding to risk — the realization that norms and institutions that enable capitalist activity and U.S. economic leadership are in trouble. The incoming American administration will need all the help it can get to restore them. And that means companies need to be rethinking their communications strategies for the coming year — and probably well beyond.
These five priorities should be on their minds.
1. Help restore the public’s trust in the truth. I heard a commentator this week liken facts in a democracy to oil in an engine. Without it, the machinery overheats and seizes up. At a time when some prominent political office-holders are actively misleading an impressionable public, companies have a role to play not only in telling the truth about themselves but defending truth in the public domain: calling out lies, helping to squash conspiracy myths, challenging social media policies that enable disinformation, supporting media that adhere to professional standards of reporting. They might even consider adding techniques for critical thinking to employee training and development programs. Public truth and faith in facts are not just nice-to-haves for business; they are foundational to their ability to do business.
2. Redirect political influence. Corporations control fewer of the levers of government than their critics imagine. But corporate influence is powerful nonetheless. Misused, that power smacks of cynical manipulation for bottom line interests. Well-used, corporate influence results in effective and balanced public policies. More of the latter is needed now more than ever, and not just on matters of direct commercial interest. Companies need to be thinking about a broader agenda of public advocacy, ranging from social equity to climate change to health care to public education to the basic principle of wearing a mask during a pandemic. At a minimum, companies urgently need to be looking at where their PAC money is going; already there is a movement to punish corporations with financial ties to senators and congressional representatives who supported the disruption of Wednesday’s electoral college certification. With some justification, stakeholders assume that companies put their money where their real principles are, not necessarily where their mouth is.
3. Restore U.S. reputation overseas. One of many humiliating images in the media this week was the collage of front pages from major national newspapers around the world, each of them devoted to shocked headlines and jaw-dropping images of an American democracy in apparent meltdown. Many of us with friends around the world fielded a wave of calls and emails, some simply with “?!?” The scarring of the American government’s reputation as a stable, reliable and (mostly) ethical political and economic partner could quickly extend to American companies as well. But at the same time, U.S. business presence in markets around the world is a channel for restoring that reputation. CEOs and Corporate Communications Officers for global U.S. companies need to be thinking quickly about how to reinforce Brand U.S.A.’s image as one of competence, innovation, intellectual rigor, decency — and for unabashedly bearing the standard of that shining city upon the hill.
4. Take care of people. This has become a very real imperative in these fraught times, one that goes beyond tweaked HR policies. Employee lives are, literally, at risk. So is their economic security, emotional health and faith in the future. A new American president is poised to project a more inclusive and supportive national leadership message than his predecessor; but men, women, children, neighbors, families, communities will be looking closer to home as well for signals that someone actively cares about their safety and well-being. They will make lasting judgments based on those signals. And as often as not, “close to home” means the companies they work for.
5. Draw bold bright lines between right and wrong. This will be the hardest instinct for CEOs and their CCOs to change. We are used to staying carefully neutral in public debates and maintaining studious “non-partisanship.” We are reluctant to offend either the current crop of political office-holders and regulators or the one that may come next. For legitimate reasons we are keen to avoid alienating stakeholders — and especially customers — who may have strong views that diverge from ours. So we’re conditioned to stay in the safe rhetorical zone of uncontroversial principles. We work hard to avoid being drawn further. That may not be smart anymore. It may not even be possible. When a public debate spills beyond the boundaries of legitimate options and civil dialogue — especially when it becomes violent and disconnected from reality — none of us as citizens or as companies should stand by and pretend that we’re simply watching the First Amendment at work. Arguably we have an obligation — as citizens and as companies — to defend core truths and principles of democracy that we depend on.
The United States is in the eye of a crisis like no other in most of our lifetimes. As my former boss, Colin Powell, said this week, we will as a nation get through this. But not without all of us — individually and institutionally — playing a responsible part. For corporate leaders, this is a moment when communication risks need to be recalibrated. Our instinct for caution — a sensible one when the risk is of twitter storms and partisan criticism — may not be adequate when the risk is long term damage to the public institutions we depend on.
If that argument is not compelling, perhaps this one will be: there will come a time when employees, customers, investors and our own children look back on 2021 and demand to know who did what and where they stood.
