The Informer - December 2018 by The Clubhouse

Members in the spotlight We look back with a round up of all our members who we have featured in 2018

Flying start Become a ‘known known’ to get noticed, supported and promoted

T h e

I n f o r m e r Issue 22

December 2018

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It takes 20 years to build a reputation and 5 minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently. Warren Buffett

REPUTATION

How to manage and protect your most important asset

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INTRODUCTION

ADAM BLASKEY FOUNDER & CEO The Clubhouse

W e l come Where has this year gone? No doubt a question that you are asking as the end of the year is now firmly in sight. Many of our members’ businesses are now growing faster than ever before, whether as a result of being better informed by data and analytics to take advantage of new opportunities, due to improvements in CRM and knowing our customers much better, through innovating how we do what we do, or being spurred on by increasing competition to retain our first mover advantage. Did someone say Brexit? An annus horribilis for the Prime Minister and which also hasn’t helped overall business confidence, but thankfully most of you have kept calm and carried on. As a result, it has been great to see many of our members’ businesses growing over the year and to have welcomed lots of new members to The Clubhouse. This year has also been very busy for us. Having opened The Clubhouse, Holborn

Circus in June, we are now looking ahead to opening further locations in both London and overseas. Our team is growing, having recently appointed Sophie Trosch as Membership Director, Rayna Chauhan as Meetings, Events & Partnerships Director and Alex Milner as Corporate Solutions Director. These are fantastic additions to our team to further help us in our aim: to make our members and their businesses more successful. So as we have all worked so hard this year and the Christmas break is imminent, we have some great pieces in The Informer this month to reflect on. The first is on page 4 and follows last month’s members’ breakfast with Emma Woollcott, Head of Reputation Protection at Mishcon de Reya. Risks to reputational damage are greater than ever before as a result of fake news, hacking and the internet, so with Warren Buffet’s famous saying in mind, Emma highlights a number of ways in which

we can better help ourselves to protect the hard-earned reputation that we have worked hard to build. On page 7, Carole Gillespie writes about relationships, opportunities and how to make your own luck through the six behaviours that form the Relationship Code. We have some great members’ events lined up for 2019 including a Members’ Breakfast on 30 January with Dr Martyn Newman, a renowned expert on emotional intelligence (EQ) who will kickstart the year with advice on how EQ can drive performance and leadership. Details of this are on page 6 along with our pick of festive events happening in the area this month, including the Mayfair & St James’s Association Christmas Carols on Tuesday 11 December. Finally, on behalf of everyone at The Clubhouse, I would like to wish you a very happy Christmas and all the best for a successful and prosperous 2019.

THE CLUBHOUSE P R O D U C T I V I T Y T I P #22

Stop checking emails

➳

The mere sight of a phone with notifications flashing and pinging raises stress levels, so on holiday, set clear expectations in your out-ofoffice message informing the sender that you are not available and won’t be reading email. The beach or mountain is not your office!

DESIGN & ART DIRECTION

Christian Gilliham_christian@cgcreate.co.uk_07951 722265

To partner with The Clubhouse or promote your business in The Informer please email adam@theclubhouselondon.com Copyright. The Clubhouse London Ltd

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REPUTATION

M A N A G I N G R E P U T A T I O N

Emma Woollcott, Partner at Mishcon de Reya, explains how and why we should protect our reputation

“Reputation, reputation, reputation! Oh, I have lost my reputation! I have lost the immortal part of myself…”

hakespeare understood only too well what it meant to lose your “good name”, but even he could not foresee the impact modern technology would have on the calamity of reputational challenges. The potential today for wholesale reputational damage is greater not just because of the volume of new media – chiefly, of course, the internet – but also the speed with which information can spread. That includes wholly fabricated allegations or “fake news”: not a new phenomenon, but certainly one that – thanks to social media platforms, anonymous blogs and troll factories – is now harder to contain. All of this can seem daunting, but there are steps you can take to identify and minimise risks. There are also legal tools that may help you, whether the problem is defamatory allegations, a data breach, or leaked private information. Whatever the reputational issue, the ability to respond quickly is critical, and that goes hand in hand with being prepared. Some crises come out of the blue, but often they stem from events or lines of inquiry that are known in advance, allowing you, up to a point, to rehearse answers and hopefully pre-empt problems. If things do spin out of control, a proper crisis plan should include

engaging with key stakeholders and seeking expert advice, as necessary, at an early stage. Our experience of advising both individual and corporate clients is that confident and decisive action can be highly effective, especially if thought through before damaging material has been published. You might, for example, have been tipped off, blackmailed or approached

by a journalist. A lot of our work happens behind the scenes, and the right approach can shape if not contain a story, to minimise the reputational fallout. We can also push for legal remedies, including a correction or apology, damages, or a final injunction preventing republication. In the right circumstances, we can even apply for an urgent or interim injunction, to stop the material in question being published in the first place. Injunctions are more straightforward against a threatened breach of privacy; in fact, the privacy injunction appears to be alive and well, despite predictions that it would be rendered obsolete in the digital age. In a recent landmark case, the Supreme Court upheld an injunction preventing the further publication of accounts of sexual encounters that were already the subject of considerable speculation online, on the basis that discharging it would unleash an even worse “media storm”. Modern privacy law protects not only the secrecy of private information (confidentiality), but also against intrusion. It therefore has a role to play even where the cat is already partly out of the bag. Likewise defamation injunctions, although harder to secure, are not impossible. The bottom line is: think ahead. The more work you can do in advance to map out how you would react to a crisis, the readier you will be if or when the spotlight swings your way. ●

Whatever the reputational issue, the ability to respond quickly is critical, and that goes hand in hand with being prepared

Meet. Work. Grow.