Narrative risk: a note for boards

Boards keep registers of operational, financial and legal risk. Few keep one of the stories that could be told about them, or of the people most likely to tell them.

Most boards we advise keep a risk register that runs to several pages. It lists operational, financial, legal and regulatory risks, scores each for likelihood and impact, and names an owner. Very few list the stories that could be told about the organisation, even though the consequences of those stories are often what turns an operational risk into a crisis.

Narrative risk is the risk that a particular account of an organisation becomes the accepted one. It is not the same as reputational risk, which is usually described in terms of outcomes (“loss of trust”, “damage to the brand”) rather than causes. A narrative risk is specific: “a former employee describes a culture of ignoring safety warnings”; “a researcher shows that our product does something we have not disclosed”; “a regulator’s decision is reported as a finding of dishonesty”.

Three questions

Which stories could plausibly be told about us in the next twelve months, and which of them would be true?
Who is most likely to tell each of them, and what have they written before?
What could we do now, while nobody is asking, to make each story less likely or less harmful?

The second question is the one boards find least comfortable, because it involves thinking about named journalists, campaigners and researchers. It should not be uncomfortable. Knowing who covers your sector, what they have published and what they tend to ask is ordinary preparation, drawn entirely from what they have published, and it is what good journalists do about the organisations they cover.

The third question is the one that matters. A narrative risk register that does not lead to any change in what an organisation does is a list of things to be surprised by later.