Author: chatterton

Goeasy, a publicly-traded Ontario lender, watched more than half its market value evaporate in a single day. Not because borrowers were missing payments. That’s a business problem. Business problems are manageable. It was because they got caught hiding it.

Their subsidiary, LendCare, was seeing rising delinquencies. Borrowers struggling. Payments not coming in. None of that is unusual for a subprime lender in a tough economy. What was unusual was the response: staff pulled unexpected payments from overdue accounts, restructured loans to make them look current, and did everything possible to keep the real picture off the books.

A short-seller called it out publicly. The company denied it. A spokesperson went on record: LendCare has never taken steps to suppress delinquency rates. Then the Toronto Star confirmed the whole thing. Internal records. Court filings. Staff testimony. The result? A $178 million charge and a 57% stock collapse in a single trading session.

Here’s what actually kills me about this story. The delinquency problem was real. It was going to come out eventually. It always does. The only question was whether it came out on their terms or someone else’s.

They had a chance to get ahead of it. A statement like ‘We’re seeing rising delinquencies. Here’s what’s happening and here’s our plan’ is painful. But that story doesn’t end with a 57% crash.

The cover-up didn’t protect them. It gave them a second crisis on top of the first one. They stopped being the company with bad loans and became the company that lied about bad loans. Those are very different reputational problems — and the second one is much harder to recover from.

If you’re sitting on bad news right now, thinking you just need a little more time to fix it before anyone notices: this is your cautionary tale.

Can you guarantee the water is safe?’ Six words. And most leaders freeze.

You can’t guarantee it. You know you can’t. Your lawyer knows you can’t. The journalist asking knows you can’t. So you hedge: ‘Well, we believe the water should be safe…’ And you just made the front page — in the worst way.

Here’s what nobody teaches you about the word ‘guarantee’: people don’t actually need one. They need to hear one. There’s a difference.

Watch what happens when you borrow the word rather than dodge it:

‘I can guarantee you that every resource we have is focused on making sure this water is safe.’

‘I guarantee we will not rest until we have answers for this community.’

You didn’t promise the water is safe. You didn’t lie. You didn’t overcommit. But you gave people the word their brain was desperate to hear, and you attached it to something you can actually deliver — effort, urgency, accountability.

Compare that to the hedge. ‘We believe it should be safe’ sounds like you’re already building yourself an exit. It signals that you’re thinking about your own legal exposure, not about the people in front of you. That is exactly what crowds hear, and exactly what they remember.

‘I guarantee we’re doing everything in our power’ sounds like leadership. Same facts, completely different outcome.

The technique works in any high-stakes communication situation. When someone asks you to guarantee something you can’t, don’t dodge the word. Borrow it. Attach it to what you can absolutely commit to — your effort, your values, your next steps — and you’ve answered the question without making a promise you can’t keep.

A major industry association called me after a break-in. What went missing wasn’t cash or computers — it was a laptop containing names, dates of birth, and addresses for their entire membership. The kind of personal information that makes people feel exposed.

Behind closed doors, leadership was running the math. Regulatory fallout. Member cancellations. Lost renewals. The number they kept landing on was north of $2 million in potential damage.

Some people in the room wanted to wait. Get more information. Figure out the legal exposure before saying anything.

I told them we were reaching out to every single member. Proactively. Before they heard it somewhere else.

We wrote a notification that led with empathy rather than legalese. Not ‘we regret to inform you’ — real, human language that said we know this is unsettling and here’s what we’re doing about it. We trained every frontline staff member on how to handle the angry calls, because they were coming and the worst thing you can do is let an unprepared voice be your first impression. We monitored every online mention and every internal conversation so we were never surprised. And we told members exactly what was changing internally so this wouldn’t happen again.

Yes, angry calls came. Fewer than they feared. And they didn’t last long.

The final damage? Zero lost memberships. Every single policy renewed. Not one dollar in lost revenue.

The $2 million crisis cost them nothing because they chose honesty over hiding.

For many leaders, the instinct after a breach is to go quiet until they have answers. That silence is where trust goes to die. The organizations that come through these moments intact are the ones that treat their stakeholders like adults — telling them what happened, what they’re doing about it, and what comes next.

Ring ran a heartwarming Super Bowl ad. A lost dog. A neighborhood of cameras. AI scans the footage. The dog gets found. The family is reunited. It was well-made and genuinely cute.

You know who didn’t think it was cute? The internet. Comments piled up fast: ‘Dystopian.’ ‘Terrifying.’ ‘Mass surveillance wrapped in a puppy.’

Within a week, Ring cancelled a major partnership. The founder started an apology tour. The company scrambled to explain that the feature people were upset about was… exactly what the product does. They apologized for accurately describing their own product.

This is a teaching moment, and not the one Ring intended.

There is a moment in every crisis when you have to make a clear-eyed decision: did we do something wrong, or did people not like what they heard? Those situations require completely different responses.

If you lied, own it immediately. If you did something harmful, fix it and say so. But if you told the truth and people didn’t like what they heard, that is not the time to grovel. The moment you apologize for something that’s true, you confirm every fear the crowd already had. You take ‘maybe this is a problem’ and turn it into ‘they know it’s a problem.’

Ring’s ad didn’t malfunction. Their communications did. They had a legitimate product doing what it was designed to do. They should have stood behind it — calmly, honestly, with respect for the concerns people raised — while making clear they weren’t going to apologize for making the thing they set out to make.

The wrong apology is worse than no apology at all. It trades your credibility for a moment of temporary pressure relief, and the pressure doesn’t even go away.

Mexican President Sheinbaum stepped in front of cameras and told the world Mexico ‘is calm.’

This was happening in the same moment that 70 people were dead, 10,000 troops were deployed, 250 roadblocks had been erected across 20 states, and American tourists in Puerto Vallarta were sheltering in place with shuttered stores and no food. Flights had been grounded by American Airlines, United, and Air Canada.

Mexico is calm?!

I have spent 25 years helping leaders communicate through crisis. The single fastest way to lose public trust isn’t the crisis itself. It’s saying something that contradicts what people can see with their own eyes.

Tourists were posting videos of smoke over Puerto Vallarta in real time. Their president was saying everything was fine. What the world heard was: you cannot believe a word this government says.

And this matters far beyond that week. Guadalajara — where armed cartel members had stormed the international airport — is scheduled to host World Cup matches. Playoff games were one month away when this happened. FIFA was watching. Every tourism board, hotel chain, and airline with Mexican routes was watching — not what the government did militarily, but what they said, and whether any of it matched reality.

Mexico had a choice. They could have acknowledged the severity, owned the response, and let the world see them taking it seriously. That story ends with an honest picture of a government dealing with a genuine security crisis. Instead they chose reassurance that no one found reassuring.

The crisis didn’t destroy Mexico’s credibility. The response did. Tell people everything is fine while their phones show them it isn’t, and you don’t get a second chance to be believed.

Mexican military forces killed Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes — El Mencho — the leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel. The retaliatory response from the CJNG was immediate and devastating: coordinated attacks across multiple states, burning vehicles blocking highways, gunmen storming Guadalajara International Airport, flights cancelled by three major airlines, and U.S. shelter-in-place orders issued across five Mexican states.

Here’s something most people don’t understand about crisis communications: you don’t have to be the story to be destroyed by it.

Every resort in Mexico that had nothing to do with that day’s events inherited a reputation problem. Every tour operator, hotel property, and destination marketing organization that had spent years building an image of safety and welcome woke up to a different reality. Not because of anything they did. Because of geography and timing.

Social media was simultaneously flooded with unverified claims that American tourists were being held hostage. No credible news source had confirmed it. It may have been true. It may have been wildly exaggerated. Here’s the thing: it didn’t matter. The confirmed facts alone — an armed cartel presence at a major international airport, flights grounded, Americans told to shelter — were devastating enough for booking decisions. Add unverified hostage claims on top? That’s the headline that cancels honeymoons, reroutes cruise ships, and moves corporate retreats to the Caribbean for two years.

Fear doesn’t wait for fact-checkers. A country that has worked hard to position itself as a safe, welcoming destination had that narrative shattered in a single morning. Rebuilding it takes far longer than restoring order on the highways.

If your reputation can be damaged by proximity to someone else’s crisis, you need a communications strategy that’s ready before the story breaks.

A few years ago I was working a complex crisis at a Toronto venue. Multiple parties, multiple moving issues — one of those situations where everyone has a finger in the pie. One of the other parties had brought in a well-known firm. Smart people. Good reputation. But the consultant they actually sent was junior. A few years of experience, maybe.

They weren’t stupid. They were sharp. Polished. Confident. Confidence isn’t the same as pattern recognition.

When you’ve lived through enough crises, you start seeing three moves ahead. You hear a client say one thing and you immediately know what’s about to become a problem before it gets there. I’d love to tell you it’s because I’m particularly smart. It’s because I have scar tissue. You can’t buy scar tissue. You accumulate it by being wrong, by watching things go sideways, by calling it right and calling it wrong enough times that the patterns become automatic.

This consultant was smart and confident but didn’t have it yet. Things kept stalling. Moves were being made without understanding the ripple effects, and nobody on their team was catching it.

Eventually the client quietly flagged it. The firm’s managing director showed up, assessed the situation, and made a handful of strategic adjustments in about fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes. That’s all it took once the right person was in the room.

A firm that sells you the senior partner and then hands you to someone with three years of experience isn’t saving you money. They’re gambling with your crisis using someone who hasn’t lost yet.

When you’re hiring for crisis support, ask one question before you sign anything: who exactly picks up the phone when it all goes sideways at 11pm? If the answer is anyone other than the person sitting across from you right now, keep looking.

I received an email congratulating me on being named the Most Iconic Voice in Corporate Reputation Defense 2026.

For about four seconds, I sat up a little straighter.

Then I noticed that McKenzie and Chad were also CC’d. Word for word. Same award. Same publication — Enterprise World Magazine, which I’d never heard of until 9:07 that morning. Same $2,000 price tag for a 10-page cover story going to 350,000 ‘C-Suite Executives.’

We were all the most iconic voice. That’s quite a crowded podium.

This is a textbook vanity play, and it works constantly on smart, successful people. The formula is simple: flattery so thick you could spread it on toast, impressive-sounding reach numbers nobody can verify, a price tag just low enough to feel like ‘why not,’ and just enough urgency to prevent you from thinking too hard about any of it.

I had a client who would have jumped on this immediately, then complained about two thousand dollars out the door and a day wasted. Don’t make that mistake.

Here’s what’s actually interesting about this scam from a crisis communications perspective: the mechanism it exploits is identical to the mechanism that destroys leaders in real crises. Both work on the same vulnerability — the instinct to react to flattery.

When a crowd is angry at you, the temptation is to react to the fear. When someone offers you praise, the temptation is to react to the ego boost. In both cases, the right move is to pause, assess reality, and respond deliberately rather than instinctively.

Don’t let ego write your checks. That’s advice for vanity awards, and it’s advice for every crisis you’ll ever face.

Nine people are dead in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia. Population 2,700. The kind of town where the mayor says he probably knows every one of the victims by name. Parents dropped their kids off at school. Some of those kids didn’t come home.

There’s nothing adequate to say about that. There shouldn’t be.

What I know from experience is what happens in the hours and days that follow, beyond the immediate tragedy. There are people in leadership roles right now who barely slept. Not because they were in Tumbler Ridge. Because they’re responsible for schools, campuses, public spaces, and communities of their own. And this morning their phone is ringing.

School superintendents are hearing from terrified parents: could this happen here? What are you doing about it? Principals are trying to find the right words for Monday, knowing there aren’t any. Security directors are being asked to explain protocols to boards and executives who are suddenly, urgently paying attention. Municipal leaders are being asked ‘what’s our plan?’ and not being sure they have one.

These people aren’t in crisis. But they’re standing at the edge of one. And most of them are navigating it alone.

The challenge of being adjacent to a tragedy — of leading an organization that isn’t the story but is now being asked to respond to it — is one of the most underappreciated leadership situations there is. You can’t claim the grief of those directly affected. You can’t be dismissive of legitimate fear in your own community. You have to walk a line that requires genuine empathy and genuine competence at the same time.

What people on that edge need is someone who has been there before. Not a binder. Not a protocol. A person.

She’d spent 10 years building her food company from farmers markets and weekend craft fairs up to national distribution. Early mornings, late nights, cold calls to retailers one by one. Then her 16-year-old son ended up on video at a fast food restaurant making genuinely offensive, racist remarks to the employees.

The video went on social media. Within hours, local accounts had identified him, identified her, and connected him to her business. Her phone wouldn’t stop.

She called me in a panic. ‘What do I do? I didn’t raise him this way. But I can’t exactly go on TV and say my kid is an idiot.’ Trust me — she wanted to. She was furious with him, mortified by what he’d done, and genuinely sickened by his behavior.

Here’s what we actually did. First, we created a place for her to speak directly, human to human. She didn’t have a personal social media presence, so we set up an account specifically for her to respond — not as a brand, as a person. Second, she posted a genuine apology. Not corporate speak. A mom, mortified, saying: this is not how I raised my kids. He will be making a personal apology. We are committed to doing whatever we can to make this right. Third, we reached out to every retailer who carried her products before they saw it on Instagram. We showed them the statement, explained what happened, and made sure they heard it from us first.

The response from retailers? ‘Sometimes kids can be idiots. Thanks for doing the right thing.’

No boycotts. No products yanked from shelves. Sales untouched.

She called the penalty flag on herself before the crowd could. Speed, honesty, and transparency won. In a world obsessed with cancellation, the leaders who take genuine accountability first still come out standing.