Crisis Management Unveiled with Rod Cartwright

In this episode of Leadership Bites, Guy Bloom interviews Rod Cartwright, a crisis management expert, who shares insights on the importance of crisis preparedness, the role of human systems, and the impact of social media on crises. Rod discusses his background in public relations, the significance of leadership in crisis situations, and the need for organizations to focus on character and culture. He also highlights the importance of crisis simulations and training, and the findings from his recent Reputation Risk and Resilience Report.

Takeaways

• Crisis management involves preparing for major moments that threaten reputation.
• Organizations often seek help too late, when crises occur.
• Crisis preparedness should be embedded in organizational culture.
• Human systems are crucial for effective crisis management.
• Crisis simulations help organizations prepare for real-life scenarios.
• Character and culture are as important as operational capability.
• Social media can amplify crises beyond control.
• Crisis training should create a safe space for learning.
• Organizations must focus on relationships, not just reputation.
• Crisis management requires a long-term perspective. 

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Crisis Management
02:54 Rod's Background and Experience
06:11 Understanding Crisis Preparedness
08:44 The Importance of Human Systems in Crisis
11:47 Case Study: Coldplay CEO Crisis
14:45 Character vs. Capability in Crisis Management
17:44 Crisis Simulations and Training
20:41 The Role of Leadership in Crisis
23:48 The Future of Crisis Management
26:42 The Impact of Social Media on Crises
29:26 The 2025 Reputation Risk and Resilience Report
32:25 Long-term vs. Short-term Thinking in Organizations
35:14 Conclusion and Future Directions

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Transcript

Guy Bloom (00:20)
Okay, so we've had a countdown which ⁓ shows our professionalism and we'll get straight into things. So Rod, it is wonderful to have you on this episode of Leadership Bites. Welcome.

Rod Cartwright (00:32)
wonderful as it is to be here frankly.

Guy Bloom (00:34)
Aha, well we'll find out in the next half hour 45 minutes if you go this is one of the greatest regrets of my life. Hopefully not. So I clearly know who you are because by definition I've asked you to come on the podcast you've been gracious enough to say yes. So if you met somebody at a barbecue and they said, Rod what do you do for a living? What would you say that you do Rod?

Rod Cartwright (00:56)
So I work in public relations and communications with a specific focus on crisis and risk. So basically, how do you get people ready to deal with major moments in time that can fundamentally threaten their reputation and their relationships? And if the worst does happen, how do you help them through it?

Guy Bloom (01:22)
Well, this is brilliant because I know just enough about this topic to know what I think you mean, absolutely, yes, exactly. But not enough to actually know what I'm talking about. So that's great for me. So I can be as gaunt as I like and there's no penalty for it. Now, let's just make sense of. ⁓

Rod Cartwright (01:28)
dangerous yes

Guy Bloom (01:41)
Let's bring your background to life for people because I do believe that understanding the human being helps me understand why I would listen, where do you come from. So just give me that history that says, look in a nutshell guy, this is where I've come from, this is my background, this is my history and that'll just help people resonate and make sense of what we're about to talk about.

Rod Cartwright (02:03)
it so I'll do part professional part personal if that works I'll go personal first so I'm 55 have a wife of 25 years been together nearly 30 wonderful daughter 23 years old live in South London some of the time spent quite a lot of time in South Africa which is where my mum was originally from yeah that's that's me in a nutshell

Guy Bloom (02:07)
Perfect, perfect.

Rod Cartwright (02:29)
Professionally, my background is basically 25 years in big international PR firms based in London, but increasingly with European and global roles. And then a month before the pandemic, because my timing is absolutely exquisite, I decided to start working for myself, which for a few months was a little bit squeaky bum. But when you specialize in risk issues and crisis and the world is

struggling as it has been probably for the last decade at least there are worse things to specialize in so the the visceral fear of what on earth have I done luckily didn't last too long.

Guy Bloom (03:11)
Well, that's hilarious for me because I literally did the same thing. I went self-employed, Covid hit and I went bugger. It actually worked out in my favour, but it started the podcast and lots of my clients were in construction, so they just kept going. I was blessed. But it does. I know what you mean. It is that moment of, right, somebody either up there really likes me or really doesn't. So I did have that anxiety moment as well.

Rod Cartwright (03:14)
Brother.

Yes.

Yeah, but what I would say

is I, you know, I filled the time by building things by, know, I created a ⁓ crisis methodology of my own. I wrote about 10 modules worth of training content. So when the world did take its, you know, its hands off its head and went, okay, we've got to deal with this. I was kind of ready rather than, you know, just completely addled by too much Netflix.

Which I did as well to be clear.

Guy Bloom (04:07)
Do you what it... Well,

of course. ⁓

And I'm fascinated by this just on a personal level because the setup that I've got here with the cameras and the everything. And that came from just recognizing, how long is this going to be? And colleagues were going, I'm not really getting the work. And I go, no, because they were running training sessions. Nothing wrong with it. But they had a rubbish laptop with a rubbish microphone. you're right. It is that. Do you know what? The world gives you lemons. Better make some lemonade then, right? And it's just understanding that.

Rod Cartwright (04:37)
Well, it's funny you say that because...

Yeah, because from a training perspective, because I built and delivered, know, training is about a third of what I do because I delivered it all remotely. I built it to be delivered virtually and therefore probably 90 % of my training is still online because I think we just got used to not traveling, you know, not sending 20 people to the other end of the country when you can sit around a laptop, ⁓ like, you know, like a fire and do it this way. So yeah, I, built it to be virtual.

glad I did.

Guy Bloom (05:11)
So let's get a little bit deeper into it. If we're going to talk about, there's so much here to talk about, I think, if somebody was just going to say, help me understand why somebody would reach out to you, what would be potentially, and I'm sure there's a spectrum, but what would be on the spectrum of reasons that somebody might go, right, this Rod can't write, we'd better reach out and have a conversation with him.

Rod Cartwright (05:40)
Yeah. So I think, how do I do this without being sardonic? I think they do it often for the wrong reason and too late and then wish they'd done it the right reason and earlier. So let me explain that. Very often people will phone up when their hair is on fire and something horrible has gone wrong and they haven't invested in any preparedness because I think people tend to view

you know, resilience and crisis preparedness, a bit like an insurance policy that none of us really like buying insurance because we might never, you know, we might never use it. So they'll kind of go, I'm sure we'll be fine if it happens. And then they realize that they haven't done any training. They haven't got any systems or processes or materials. So that's part of the time when they call to go, we're not ready for something that has just happened or is about to happen.

you occasionally, more than occasionally, get people who go, we know that in order to be more resilient, we need to put in place those systems and processes and training and the training bit. can't stress strongly enough. It's very sort of highfalutin and overblown, but I talk about something called critical human infrastructure to explain the horrible jargon. People are really obsessed with their business infrastructure systems, processes. So they build their systems.

and their manuals and those things sit on their shelf with a hard drive gathering dust. And then they realize they haven't actually kind of embedded them in their people or their culture. So I'm very big on saying, I'll help you with your systems, processes and materials. But if you want it to really work, you need to...

You need to develop those human systems and stress test those human systems because if you don't you've just got theory. You've just got we think this might work.

Guy Bloom (07:36)
So what is this covering then in terms of just scope?

Rod Cartwright (07:42)
Yes. So if you take crisis management writ large, there is essentially the operational piece of identifying

mitigating and managing risks for an organization. So you'll have a risk register, often which is very focused on sort of operational things like if my factory blows up or if there's a cyber attack or my systems go down or there's fraud.

And then there is the reputational piece, is what, if that were to happen, what would it do to our reputation and crucially our relationships? And again, we can talk about this later. That relationship bit for me is often ignored. People go, ⁓ reputation. Fine. But reputation is what people understand, think and feel about you. What really matters is how do they behave practically? So I'm really big on the relationship.

So yes, you start with your risk infrastructure and then you work out how does that play out in the reputation space. So it's working out how do you integrate into your risk planning all of the materials, which is usually a crisis communications plan, and then the training and the simulation to bring it to life and embed it in your people.

Guy Bloom (09:10)
Just course correct me here, because again, I'm just going to make sure I'm keeping up with the main party, which is that you're not working with individual departments on, for example, if it was the construction industry, how to be less risky on a, on a, in the workplace, you're going, because that there's so many variables all over the place, you're going, if something goes wrong, which should have been under control, and it's

Rod Cartwright (09:35)
Yep. Yes.

Guy Bloom (09:39)
I suppose, and I'd be interested as an internal brand as well, because again, depending on the size of the organisation, it can be damaging to the people internally, as much as to the external world. So you're going, insert crisis here.

Rod Cartwright (09:48)
Yes.

Guy Bloom (09:54)
Regardless of what it is, some maybe I've never even thought of, it doesn't matter because you may not have thought of it yet either, but actually we have an algorithm, we have a methodology, we have an approach that is not just in a document that we pull off the shelf and almost like, know, how do you control this part of the car because we've never done it before, we will, to have done it well, it won't just be in a manual, there will have been a process that we've actually trained and got better at.

So actually, we're fight fit when the fight comes as opposed to blimey, that was something I did 10 years ago and it's in a drawer somewhere. Have I got that right?

Rod Cartwright (10:34)
You absolutely have an in reverse amusing beyond belief. So my my methodology is called match fit.

because the metaphor was during lockdown back to that, there were all these premiership footballers going, I'm doing my very best to stay in condition in the back garden. But I don't know when I run onto the pitch, literally whether I'll be match fit or not. And that struck me as the perfect metaphor for how ready are you? How prepared are you should the worst happen? And to your point, yes, I don't deal with the operational risk of let's take construction of a building site.

But if there were to be a major accident, then what does that mean for the reputation and the relationships? And you're absolutely right. The internal piece is

absolutely vital and very often ignored. Frankly, people go, they mainly worry about the media or what happens to our reputation in the media. And we always say in PR, the media are just a channel. They're not an audience. What really matters are your employees, your customers, your investors, all those stakeholders. So yeah, people obsessed with media when they don't necessarily need to, to the extent that they do.

Guy Bloom (11:49)
So I'm going to jump to something that's pretty live now. Coldplay and the concert. I know I had to, I had to. And it's just hilarious that I should be speaking to you. So there you've got the CEO Andy Byron, he was having an affair with his HR director. He's had a Coldplay concert. And by the way, if you listen to this and you don't know that's happened, good God, where have you been living? But you've clearly not got social media. which is not a problem.

Rod Cartwright (11:53)
do it. Yes, I knew we'd go here. knew we'd get there. Yes.

Guy Bloom (12:17)
And, you know, Let's step away from the ethical decisions that were made and all that. That's not a judgment call. That's a crisis, right? That's a crisis for him. It's a crisis for the organization. And I'll guarantee you they've got nothing in place and they're all running around like headless chickens, you know, trying to figure it out. And this would be an atypical unseen, couldn't have planned for it, insert issue here, who knew?

Rod Cartwright (12:43)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Guy Bloom (12:45)
It's not something we'd have rehearsed and let's make up something like that because it would have been comedy gold and guess what? Bam! Then it happens. So when something like that goes into play, ⁓ if they had something in place, what would be inherently happening, be it regardless of who's doing it, what would start to happen if, boom, that's just hit the media?

Bloody hell, where did they find that out from? Or that blew up in Saudi Arabia and it shouldn't have done. my god, what do we... It doesn't matter, but Let's just take that one because it's very viral and very real,

Rod Cartwright (13:23)
Yeah.

So I mean, gosh, where do I start? And thank you for bringing it up. knew there was no way that as of today, Monday, we were going to get through this without talking about about about Andy Byron. So I think what's really interesting is, I said earlier on that people prepare for the operational stuff. They prepare for the factory explosion, the cyber attack. And there's a very good writer from Oxford University who talks about there are two types of crises. There's capability, which is

what you do, your functional ability to deliver goods and services. And then there's your character, which is your ethos, your values, your ethics, your behaviors. And I've seen increasingly that people massively downplay basically human frailty. You you sit, I sat in a risk workshop once and you know, I try and be really creative when we're doing, when we're assessing risks.

to go look, I know a factory could explode or a system could go down, but honestly, one of your senior team could sexually assault a colleague and people go, gosh, no, we're all godparents to each other's kids and we all know each other terribly well. And six months later, sadly, because human beings are flawed and frail, ⁓

someone has sexually assaulted a member of team. So I think that what I'm hoping is that people are starting to wake up to the idea that character is where some of the biggest, biggest risks are. know, I'm not saying people discount cyber attacks, but everybody knows that every organization is at risk of a cyber attack. So when it happens, there's not sort of the, I can't believe they've done this. It's more, how do they deal with it?

Guy Bloom (15:17)
quite interested in that element as well because if I'm understanding this correctly, it would be a risk but it wouldn't be unforeseen and it wouldn't, even though it be horrible, it wouldn't be a surprise even though it's surprising. You know, if you work in a high-risk environment of, I don't know, pressure cookers and we test pressure cookers, there's a very good chance that one might explode one day. Who knew?

Rod Cartwright (15:26)
you

Yes.

Guy Bloom (15:42)
horrible, we don't want it to happen, but we wouldn't be surprised if testing pressure cookers meant that one day one went wrong. But Bob turning out to run a, I don't know, a heroin ring where he's supplying drugs globally out of the HR department, who saw that coming?

And what I mean by that is that would then hit people emotionally, they'd feel betrayed, they'd be... So I think there's something here about the level of crisis may not be worse, but the emotional impact and then the impact on culture and what that might mean if the pressure cooker went bang. That's part of a business process, that's part of it, but actually what could be left as an aftermath of what's happened with people could then stain people's relationships.

Rod Cartwright (16:22)
Yes.

Guy Bloom (16:30)
with each other and then society looks at inwards and goes, blind me. So yeah, think there is, if I'm hearing that correctly, that human element is where there's a lot going on there by the sounds of it.

Rod Cartwright (16:44)
Yeah. And I I talk repeatedly in my work about what I call the human imperative.

is that in everything you do, whether it's the training and embedding of stuff in your people, on your culture, or whether it's focusing as much on those you've impacted as protecting yourself, that focus on human beings and human outcomes is absolutely, absolutely fundamental. And again, tends to get ridden roughshod over when people are looking at the operational side of things. And I think, you know, I was saying a few minutes ago that that whole process, you know, people go, I've

got my risk register and it's very esoteric. It's finance and culture and systems. What I tend to try and help people do, I was going to say force, but no help, is to go, how do those show up in the real world? What does that actually look like? And I don't think with the best will in the world, even the most creative imaginative process could have imagined that absolute intersection of things at the Coldplay concert.

You know, the CEO of a $13 billion company is, you know, found hugging his HR director on screen at a Coldplay concert. And he's called out. No scenario workshop I've ever run would have got you to that, combination of things. But what it would, I mean, it will. And this is kind of useful because next time people go, no, we don't need to be too imaginative. You really do.

Guy Bloom (18:06)
I bet the next one will.

Rod Cartwright (18:16)
But I think that what hopefully that will provide as a lesson is how do you say, we can't foresee that very specific scenario, but there is a scenario whereby a very senior member of staff is found conducting an extramarital affair.

And therefore, what does that mean for our values and our ethics? What is our policy? So hopefully an organization would have put in place a template response that when that happens, they're not literally scrambling around with blank pieces of paper going, can someone come up with a statement that you've actually got some basic materials? You've got a basic holding statement. You've got a basic Q &A. ⁓

They are never absolutely fit for purpose, but they're better than the blank sheet.

Guy Bloom (19:11)
Is this a little bit like running a fire drill?

Rod Cartwright (19:14)
and we talk about it all the time. And I work with an amazing company called Polpeo who do crisis simulations. And they basically built this simulator which replicates all of the major social media channels. And you basically drop a scenario into the simulator and you've pre-populated it with half a day's worth of plot twists. And every 15 to 20 minutes, a new plot twist comes in and people have to respond in real time and do

and statement and it is literally a reputational fire drill.

Guy Bloom (19:49)
There must be something.

you lot? What happens actually if it's a senior, if you're working with a senior team, what happens if it's impacting on you in such a way where you two are on holiday, something happens with you two, who doesn't matter. So actually, how does it run if the problem sits here?

Rod Cartwright (19:58)
When you say you lot, what do mean? Yeah. Yes. Yeah.

Yes.

Yeah. And that's, mean, that's so many angles to come at that from. mean, it's partly a cultural thing. It's partly a leadership thing. ⁓ because I think a tendency for senior teams is to go, this is about reputation. Reputation equals the comms function. So comms, can you go away and get us ready?

And then you realise when it happens that more often than not, I hate to say it is increasingly the misbehaviours of misdemeanours of senior people. the more I always say, you know, organisational risk is organisation wide, therefore you have to prepare as a complete team, including all the most senior people. If you do simulations with just the comms team and a few others.

That doesn't simulate anything. That simulates an exercise where the board or the SLT couldn't be bothered to show up. you know, I think if you take one other example, you know, the Louis Rubiales affair in the last Women's Euros, where he kissed Jenny Hermosa on the lips in front of billions of people. And then the organization doubled down and backed their man.

in the face of any sense of decency or natural justice. And again, that was a very character led scandal rather than operationally led crisis, which was about the people at the very top, the governance, the senior leadership and what it tells you about the organization. There's one great maxim that I could pretend I'm clever enough to invent it, but I didn't, which is that your organization is defined not by the

values that you promote, but by the behaviours and attitudes that you tolerate. And I think that is absolutely brilliant.

Guy Bloom (22:02)
So just walk me then through how, because this is, I mean it's quite fascinating and it should almost be, I mean wouldn't be a legal requirement, but by golly it should be a real level of requirement for any organisation to once a year be doing a, ⁓ even if it's just a three hour simulation drill or something that just says, know what, for the day that almost certainly won't come, let's just.

Let's spend two or three hours on this and just do a run through and make sure we're nice and sharp about it. So you get a phone call that says, Hey, Rod, we had listened to that podcast. It sounds as if we're big enough that actually haven't forbid, ⁓ come and, come and do work with us. What, what, what me through you going hello to the time when you go, okay, see you in due course. What, what's your process of approach?

Rod Cartwright (22:34)
Yeah.

mean, the process unsurprisingly is kind of auditing where they're at in terms of system processing materials, but in terms of ethos, attitudes and culture. And again, I'm belaboring that yin and yang purposefully, because I think even in my profession, a lot of people still obsessed just with the system processing materials. So it'll be about looking at what they have in place.

the risk register, the risk appetite statement, the risk heat map, the crisis communication manual to say, how well does this war should face against best practice? What's maybe missing? What could be simplified? Because I find again and again, especially when, and this is not a criticism of operational people, but you know, I'll get a business continuity plan that is 120 pages long.

And I know that if the balloon goes up and something horrible happens, you don't have the time to cross reference the decision tree and flowchart.

at point 16B subsection one against appendix four. So I'm a big fan, especially for slightly smaller organisations who don't need to be, you know, BA, IBM, Nike, world class. How do you put in place simple stuff that works and then you can layer on complexity and nuance later on? So it's essentially going, how far away are we from a decent minimum viable

system as opposed to how close are we to the world-class gold standard.

Guy Bloom (24:38)
See, again, I like this because when I do work with teams, there is a level of thinking that can go into what we are as a leadership team and who I am as a leader. And you can disappear down many a rabbit hole from the academics of it all the way through to the self-reflection element of it, et cetera. Then there comes a point where when you're under stress and all eyes are on you, then actually you need to have a relatively well

practiced way of behaving because at that point the point for self-reflection Is not now it's the work you've done prior that will create the reaction a little bit like sport I guess you know you don't think in real time when you're playing the sport you're in a reactive mode so you better have done the work beforehand and So that really sort of I think really strongly resonates with me. So is there am I hearing there that there might be

a big job of work that goes into underpinning, you if we are a large organization that there might be some depth and scale to it. But in truth, we then need a way of that translating into when it's smash glass grab here, the fire extinguisher may have written instructions, but the chances are it's that little diagram on the side that just says hit this.

Rod Cartwright (26:03)
Yes.

Yes.

Guy Bloom (26:05)
You

know, we need the cartoon level, not because we're stupid people, but because in truth, we have to factor in that when we are in a panic mode and the press are standing outside or social media is going bonkers and Bob's on holiday, blah, blah, blah, then actually it's not keep it simple stupid, it's keep it simple and specific.

Rod Cartwright (26:26)
No, indeed. And I think that, you know, I saw a thing yesterday I've never seen before, which is a crisis is not a good time to realise you don't know where the fire extinguishers are. And I thought that was really nice. It's funny you talk about, again, we keep coming back to sporting metaphors. I talk a lot about muscle memory.

Because the point of having the cultural embedding and the training and the stress testing is that unless you've taken the stuff off the shelf and played with it individually and as a team.

then you haven't got the muscle memory. You don't run onto the pitch knowing that if someone lobs in a high ball, you're not all going to run around going, who's going to get this? Because guess what? You've actually done a high ball before. So again, I'm warming to my theme again, that it's about human muscle memory as opposed to am I wearing the gold boots or the black boots and which type of shinbads have I got? mean, the metaphors just exploded in 400 directions.

Guy Bloom (27:27)
And I wonder also the value of when you run a simulation like this or you do the practice or whatever it might be. I'm wondering if it highlights the fact that, we definitely don't want this to happen for certain things. I wonder if it is in itself, not just a training session for how do we handle crisis, but actually, by God.

If this is what we'd have to deal with if we were in a crisis like this, then for the love of all things sacred, let's make sure we don't have one.

Rod Cartwright (28:01)
Yeah, and that's absolutely right. And, know, when I do the crisis media training, where you're essentially putting people through their paces against a specific scenario, I always say, this is an ultimately safe space. I want you to be able to say things and make mistakes.

in the safety of the training room so that guess what? This should be worse than anything you experience. And have I made people cry? I have, but not because I'm a bad human being, but because you have to simulate the stress so that when they get into the stress situation, there's a lot of basic physiology here of fight, flight and freeze. And you don't want to do any of those things. But the problem is physiologically, if we are threatened, we involuntarily

voluntarily do that. So in a way it's helping people to, what's the word I'm looking for, to avoid that visceral instinctive response because they've been here before.

Guy Bloom (28:59)
Hmm.

You haven't

made somebody cry, have you? You've laid on a scenario and they've had a reaction to it that is maybe their first experience of genuine stress, even though it's in a safe space. And that might be a recognition. It's like presentation skills training. You can do presentation skills training. I've just been asked this morning about this. I said, well, there's presentation skills training, which is the inherent skill of doing it. And then there's stress training, that presentation, i.e. Bob goes, is that right?

Rod Cartwright (29:11)
Yes. Yes.

Yeah, indeed.

Guy Bloom (29:31)
and he starts to push on you, right? So again, the inherent skill is one thing, but the under stress is another. And you have to, for the want of a better word, you you've got to toughen the skin, you've got to get a few calluses, because if you don't, then when you actually need it, by golly, you know, that's when you're gonna get damaged. know, hmm, yeah, it's really quite fascinating. If...

Rod Cartwright (29:37)
Yes.

Exactly that. Exactly that.

Guy Bloom (30:02)
What am I thinking now? In terms of just how an organization puts something like this into place, where does it normally come from? Who generally reaches out to you?

Rod Cartwright (30:16)
So it varies more often than not. It's the communications function because that's where organizations go. This is a crisis comms is about reputation that sits in comms and that's fine. Sometimes it comes from the risk function. So there might be a review of risk and the business continuity plan and they want that to be part of it. Sometimes it comes from human resources who are looking at it from

a people and culture perspective. Very occasionally it comes from the CEO's office, but invariably not because sadly this stuff tends to be delegated to risk HOMS or HR.

Guy Bloom (31:00)
Tell me about the risk report, the 2025 Reputation Risk and Resilience Report, which I know has just recently come out because I couldn't get you on before because you were busy doing it. So bring that to life for me as well.

Rod Cartwright (31:07)
Yes.

Yes, no,

No absolutely. I so that was that was one of those moments where I was sitting there ahead of Davos, you know, the World Economic Forum meeting in January.

Everyone brings out a report on risk, basically. And I was sitting there three years ago, ploughing my way through, I think that year, 335 pages of reports. And I said to myself, well, wouldn't it be wonderful if someone had just summarized these? And I remember it viscerally, this little voice in my head went, that's a great idea, Rod, why don't you do that? So I thanked the voice for ruining the next month or so of my life. And I produced this report that basically summarizes and analyzes that year five major reports.

reports

says what are the 10 key themes running through them and what are the 10 things you should do as a result to deal with this environment. People seem to like it and I'm a total masochist. So last year I expanded it from five reports to eight because also I wanted to bring in, although I wanted to keep looking at reputation, risk and resilience, I wanted to look at things like employee engagement, things like security.

I brought in some reports on that. And then this year, because I mentioned my masochism, I did 11 reports. So this year it was 837 pages of source material synthesized into this report. it's designed, there's a lovely phrase that the National Preparation Commission talks about, not just admiring the problem. So as much as it is there to analyze,

Summarize, here are the 10 things. The big thing is what do you do about it? What are the things you should be doing to cope with what is increasingly a very complex and fast moving and febrile environment?

Guy Bloom (33:03)
What are the... Give us that kind of summary view of that report. What are the takeaways that we would go... This may also tweak people's interest to reach out for it.

Rod Cartwright (33:09)
Yes.

Yes.

Yeah. So in terms of the 10, I won't go through all 10 risks because what I did this year was I said there are kind of three big buckets of stuff going on, three buckets of risk. One of them I called...

steady state table stakes. I wish I'd not said that because it's really hard to say, but it's things like geopolitics, which is absolutely central this year, economics and the fear of economic downturn, cyber insecurity and fraud and the climate emergency, which is hiding in plain sight as the number one issue, but it's getting squeezed out. So those are the obvious ones hiding in plain sight. ⁓

Then there was sort of a handful of what I called sleeping giant risks. So things that are bubbling under that we are not paying attention to as much as we should. So, you know, I think there are some big demographic developments going on with aging populations and tensions between generations. There's also the uncertain relationship between human beings, technology. And then a big one is the absolute

Thank

plummeting nature of mental health, wellbeing, anxiety, depression and employee engagement and the numbers around employee engagement globally and the damage to business because of poor mental health is eye-watering and I don't think we're talking about it. I think we've pretended that the pandemic never happens when in reality it was a massive global trauma and we are still paying the price at a human level for that trauma.

And then there were three kind of risk accelerants. One of them is the fact that although there are all these individual risks, what makes it so difficult is how all of the risks intersect and how they all sort of mutually reinforce each other. And then there's that focus on operational stuff over the human imperative. So, as I say, steady state, sleeping giant. ⁓

and accelerants. That's a kind of summary of the 10 things that are going on. The last thing I would say that really surprised me is that we've reached the stage now where actually the buckets of risk are relatively consistent. People tend to go, what the world feels weird. What are the big new scary things? Actually, the big buckets of risk are very consistent. They're just getting much more intense and much more interrelated.

Guy Bloom (36:00)
So when I think about organisations, what I notice is that they are very time-focused. And those time-focuses are very interesting. If some organisation's on a three-year earn-out for a group at the top, then the focus tends to be very short. They can talk a good talk about the future, but in truth, their focus is very narrow. And then the ability to...

Rod Cartwright (36:09)
Yes.

Guy Bloom (36:31)
people have heard me say a thousand times to hold two opposing trues and still function. You know, the now, the short term and actually being five, eight, nine, 10 years and actually maybe planting a tree that I'll never see the fruit on kind of thing, which I'm very interested in. What's the, what do you find? Would you say it's a mature business that, or it would be a demonstration to a business of itself and its own maturity?

Rod Cartwright (36:45)
Yes.

Guy Bloom (37:00)
to start to think of and factor in this because without it you're either A. oblivious to it or B.

you're so short-term focused that actually you can't handle two opposing crews, you can't handle two timelines, you're very much in the now. Is that a thing?

Rod Cartwright (37:23)
I mean, it's massively a thing. I think, you know, we could do an entire series of podcasts on wither ESG and, you know, the future of the planet and environmental responsibility and corporate social responsibility. That's not your question. Your question is, I think, how does this play out in this reputational risk space? And I think that all of it for me comes back to this word relationships is because if you are viewing risk through the lens of things

are going to happen to us, therefore we need to protect ourselves, then you will be seen to do that. If you think there are things that may buffet us that will result in other people suffering internally or externally, where is our focus? Were that to happen?

And if you focus on the other, and I'm talking about the self and the other, almost in a philosophical sense, unashamedly, is if you focus on the other, by definition, you are more likely to protect the self. So I think the instinct to put your hands over your head and go, how do we protect ourselves? Intuitively makes total sense.

sometimes it's not the right way to go. And also that tends to be quite focused on the short term. So I think the medium and long term, I get why, particularly if you're a listed company, particularly if the next quarter quarterly update and you know, the CEO's earnings call is really important. I get that, but you can't sacrifice the medium and long term a hundred percent on the ultra of the short term. just doesn't work.

Guy Bloom (39:00)
And I wonder if it's a, I think, I think there's a thing here that I'm thinking about, which is the maturity of the organisation to take an interest in something that in itself may not feel tangible. And I think maybe that's what I'm also interested in, which is if we talk about the crisis management, how hard can it be? You know, we just put out an email or we just put out a statement and... ⁓

Rod Cartwright (39:08)
Yes.

Guy Bloom (39:31)
you know, and that'll be our response to anything. This is where we are right now, we're looking at it and we'll let you know. I mean, how hard can it be? I almost wonder if that's, you know, people don't know what they don't know and in reality, even if they intellectually get it, they go, yeah, but have you seen how busy we were half a day to look at something that might never happen? I just, I wonder if that's a sign of maturity.

Rod Cartwright (39:42)
Yes.

Yeah, and I want so I think it is a sign of maturity, but I don't know whether it's a sign of maturity of the organization or a sign of the maturity of the leader. Because, I was doing I was having an initial conversation with a pretty successful international business, but still medium size, still mid cap. I don't even listed yet. And their openness to the idea that it's about capability is about character, not just capability, that it's about relationships, not just reputation. And I think that was about the

of the leader and the leadership team as opposed to, know, so do blue chip behemoths? Have they gone through the maturity cycle and they're automatically more enlightened? I couldn't empirically tell you what the pattern is. I just know that small and mid-sized companies can be as mature and rounded in their thinking as big international organizations.

Guy Bloom (40:55)
So what is it that, if I fast forward you and I go just where your energy is right now, what's your sort of...

12 month, five year plan for what you're doing. What are you putting your energy into? it... Great to understand that.

Rod Cartwright (41:14)
Sure. I mean, partly I'm

putting my energy into being a good husband, father, friend and member of my community, because it's very easy to answer that question through the work lens. So I try and do that. My family will doubtless tell you fail on a regular basis, but such is the nature of adult life professionally in a way more of the same, because, know, I'm six years in. I say this not

to say, look at me. won an award, but I won independent PR practitioner of the year a couple of weeks ago, which says to me, I'm doing something right. And therefore if it ain't broke. So I have no plans to scale and hire loads of people. have no plans to radically change what I'm doing. I really want to write a book that that's my part of my five year plan. And I kind of know absolutely what that'll be about. And I want to do rather more

teaching. So I'm a visiting fellow at Cardiff University. I want to keep it sounds very virtuous and pious, but I talk about the baton pass to the next generation. You know, I've no idea. shouldn't ask a lady. I no idea how old you are. We won't be doing this forever. There will be a point where I cease to exist professionally.

I want to have passed the baton in a way that leaves my industry ever so slightly better than the state I founded in. Will I achieve that? No idea, but that's kind of the, you know, decent work for decent clients and continuing to contribute to the industry and pass the baton.

Guy Bloom (42:53)
It's beautiful thing. ⁓ It's funny you say PR and it just, it's funny, it clearly is what you're doing because you just said it, but actually it doesn't feel like PR. I don't know why that just made me go hmm, because hearing you talk about what it is in terms of that topic of crisis management, mean clearly yes, but at the same time it feels like its own thing. PR, I have a sort of sense of...

in a brand advertising or something like that, which it is, it's brand protection, it's all those kind of stuff. So it's just interesting that you said it, because actually in this entire conversation, I've not really thought of you through that lens, which is just interesting in itself.

Rod Cartwright (43:32)
No, and

I think it is, you I sit in quite a specialized part of the PR industry writ large or the communications industry.

Guy Bloom (43:40)
Mmm.

Rod Cartwright (43:43)
I think partly what you've just said, and thank you because actually I appreciate that, is because although I come from the comms end of things, a lot of what I do sits at the intersection of crisis comms consultancy. There are elements of management consultancy. So there's quite a lot of process. You know, I do quite a lot of nine box stuff around risk prioritization. then, know, given that this is leadership bite, we haven't even talked about the leadership piece. And that's a huge part of my background.

is in the intersection between effective leadership and effective communication. So I bring a big leadership background because so much of this is fundamentally about leadership behaviours under pressure.

Guy Bloom (44:28)
So, and I'm just super alert to time because again, with everybody that I get on the show, you know, with a bottle of wine and a pizza, I just go all night. know, we just talk comedy gook for the next six hours. ⁓ But I am just going to jump into something I'm particularly interested in, which is I have this sense that, you know, go back pre-social media and you can have a relatively stock response to the...

Rod Cartwright (44:35)
Yeah.

Guy Bloom (44:53)
if the media took an interest and it would be maybe one conversation and they'd all know. And it's a classic example with this Coldplay and Astronomer CEO, et cetera. The internet has its own mind and it's literally like a squirrel that's got out into the woods. Good luck in trying to catch it. It's not as obvious as you might think. You know where it is, but good luck.

I guess I wonder if people, dare I say of a certain age, I don't know, I wonder if they really realize it, if something goes wrong. Back when they started out, that was maybe a little bit simpler to manage. But in the context of today, from AI and fake memes and just people taking umbrage over something and how they can start to generate things, I wonder if people really understand that you're trying to stop something.

that is self-powered and even if what you've tried to do is move on and put it to bed, the world may now not be done with it yet. And I'm just wondering if people get that.

Rod Cartwright (46:05)
Yeah. And I mean, so many things to say on that. And, know, on the Andy Byron thing, I thought it was fascinating that, you know, one of the defining facets of that crisis over the end of last week and over the weekend was the fake CEO statements that were out there. And I literally had people in my industry posting commentary pieces on, you know, the statements, not realizing that they were fake, that actually Andy Byron hadn't said anything. So, you know, we used to talk in crisis management,

crisis comes about the golden hour. It's about 15 seconds now. The fact that within probably two or three minutes of that happening in the stadium, someone sticking it on TikTok, I haven't looked at the time scale after which those fake statements were put out there.

But it is absolutely instantaneous and the fake news and the miss and disinformation coupled with polarisation, because I think we're seeing it in my report, this big dynamic of how polarisation drives misinformation.

dis- and misinformation drive polarisation. So, you you see this with rather, I don't want to belittle the astronomer thing, but relative, for example, to the riots last summer, where it's polarisation-fuelled misinformation that suddenly has people commenting on stuff that is 100 % fake. But the problem is it's out there because people put it out there on purpose. So I think, again, without belittling the human costs, and I have to say, I found the number of brands

jumping on that and putting out memes of know Lego characters hugging or Aldi and &S. I get it but there is you know a wife who has just discovered along with probably you know three billion other people that her husband

is unfaithful. He has children. I worried about the extent to which everyone piled on, thought it was all hilarious. And there is, the words going to come up again, there is a real human cost at the heart of this.

Guy Bloom (48:13)
There is and what's interesting is the internet doesn't care and it does care so there are people that but you get guess what you've got the entire spectrum of humanity and it's right there you've got somebody that just sees the funny side of it somebody that's mortified because they kind of it touches a nerve for them personally etc but I think I am particularly interested and I think you it's become a social mean where people are reenacting it now on the you know within the internet so when you're at stadiums it's not it's a much more

Rod Cartwright (48:17)
No, the internet absolutely does not.

Guy Bloom (48:42)
where the cams go round and spots people, but even the mascots are reenacting it. And as you say, when you've got your Legos and your large national social media teams who are responding to it, etc., etc., then it becomes something that you have to recognise that you may think that you're not very important. And you may think that this would just be tomorrow's chip paper. But actually...

if it strikes a chord and it's a little bit like putting a song out, isn't it? Why does one song do well and one song doesn't? Well, sometimes who knows? Because it just strikes a chord. It just resonates in a way that means something to somebody. And if your thing is that thing, then by golly, you better hold on for the ride because strap in buddy, because we're about to go. And if they've got no line of sight on that.

they've never done anything with somebody that goes, you know where this could in theory, what could happen? Let's just feel that for half an hour and go, holy schmoly. You know, that's where I think that's something for organizations to just go, it's not like it was.

Rod Cartwright (49:42)
Exactly. Yes.

Yes, exactly.

And as I say, and again, I probably said it too many times.

It is the character piece and the culture piece. know, when I do training, I have a thing called the crisis iceberg, and it's literally an iceberg and above the water line is the word PR crisis. And below the water line is system structures, leadership, behavior, culture, governance, because 99 % of, and I literally love doing this, but I will PR crises are not PR crises. are caused, you know, there's a great maxim from, can't remember who said it, but it's

Guy Bloom (50:00)
Mm.

Rod Cartwright (50:28)
much harder to communicate your way out of a crisis you behaved your way into. And that is particularly true when it comes to the character and the culture, not the capability.

Guy Bloom (50:40)
Yeah, I love it. Wow. Well, listen, ⁓ if people want to reach out to you, Rod, ⁓ rodwrightconsulting.com.

Rod Cartwright (50:51)
rod cartwright consulting dot com

Guy Bloom (50:53)
Rod Cartwright,

you see, I looked to my left and I didn't read that properly. So, good, that's why you're here.

Rod Cartwright (50:56)
Yeah, that's okay. mean, the name. Yeah,

the naming brainstorm took literally months. I mean, I just thought, you know, I am me. I could call myself Fish Fork or Banana Rama Limited. But I just thought, no, it's it's it's me consulting. So that's it. Yes.

Guy Bloom (51:11)
So

Rod Cartwright, R-O-D-C-A-R-T-W-R-I-G-H-T, consulting.com. And if people wanted to find you on, would you be on LinkedIn?

Rod Cartwright (51:22)
LinkedIn I'm all over absolutely yes

Guy Bloom (51:25)
and that would be Rod Cartwright again. Perfect. Right, well listen, I think this will have done huge benefit for anybody that just kind of knew it as a word, but now has an insight. I am like with all these things, you you're scratching the surface of somebody's knowledge, who has deep knowledge. So I think if it's ringing a bell with anybody who's in that kind of, I would say from HR, yeah, to internal comms, who's in operations.

Rod Cartwright (51:26)
Yes, exactly that.

Guy Bloom (51:53)
of an organization that says, what if, you know, would we know, would we have the stepping stones in place? And if the answer is probably not, then I think it's probably worth ringing up, sending an email to Rod. So I've learned something. I can see your passion. I can see you clearly know what you're talking about. I've got a very good radar for people that are winging it and people that are deeply steeped in a topic. it showed me something and I really value that.

Rod Cartwright (52:09)
Good.

Guy Bloom (52:22)
So I'd like to just stay on just while we close things down, just to make sure everything uploads, because I had a disaster two weeks ago that I'm still not getting over. So I need to get that right. And just for me and everybody listening, Rod, just thank you so much for taking the time just to come on and give us a little bit of your insights. I've really appreciated it.

Rod Cartwright (52:30)
I that one.

It's an absolute pleasure

and I've loved the fact that it was a chat, not a lecture, and that we've spanned across so much ground. I live in a relatively small bubble. It's lovely to get back into the leadership space writ large because it's one of my real passions. So many things we could have talked about today with leadership, but that's for another episode, as they say, dear listeners.