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As well as
providing strategic advice to clients in crisis, Chelgate also provides hands-on assistance. Often, our clients have regular business functions to deliver in spite of a developing crisis, so in-house staff cannot readily also become full-time crisis managers.
Chelgate teams can be deployed to help your firm to defend its reputation in a crisis. We work both remotely – over the phone, by email, and via video-conferencing (e.g. Skype) – or on-site, in person. Based in London, our staff supports clients from across the country, and we travel to our clients’ offices at short notice.
How we help
We provide a tailored service that delivers cost-effective, flexible assistance. Depending on the client’s in-house capabilities, we can deliver anything from an occasional, as-and-when assistance package to a full-blown crisis management operation. We offer the following range of services.
Media relations
- Handling media enquiries
- Press conferences or briefings
- Off-record media briefings
- Press release drafting and distribution
- Pre-interview spokesperson preparation
- Media monitoring
Intense, sudden negative media interest is a common feature of many crises. Chelgate will often act as a “firewall” between the client and the media, with all crisis-relevant media enquiries being routed through Chelgate. This allows our client to continue its normal operations, allowing senior management the opportunity for a considered response, working with Chelgate to determine the proper “line” being taken in press statements, and in response to press questions. By insulating the client from the media, we also eliminate the possibility of an unguarded statement being made unintentionally by a client staff member.
As well as responding to media questions, in person or over the phone, we may call and manage press conferences, and draft and distribute press releases to relevant, targeted media audiences. We will also often work off-record with the media to correct misconceptions or establish relevant context.
In the heat of a crisis, it is also important to know about significant media coverage, as soon as it appears or is broadcast. Rapid response may often limit or entirely prevent a hostile or inaccurate story gaining traction. But left unchallenged, it may establish a damaging and false narrative which can be very hard to roll back. Chelgate can very quickly apply a range of monitoring capabilities to enable early pick-up of relevant media coverage, whether print, broadcast or online.
Online media
- Monitoring real-time sentiment on social media
- Tracking coverage of a developing news story
- Managing social media channels
- Responding to online allegations, reportage or multimedia content
The vast majority of crises have a major online dimension. We monitor our clients’ crises online, and respond to the online aspects of crises as appropriate. On numerous occasions we have been successful in having online posts removed, corrected or blocked without resorting to legal action. As we respond to online challenges, we differentiate between “trolling” and genuine allegations or insults, and analyse trends across hundreds or thousands of social media users to assess the tone, demographics and significance of large volumes of Tweets, posts, and other interactions.
We also recognise that social media are critical to the media monitoring process. A story, rumour or allegation promoted through social media can be picked up within minutes by the traditional media.
Mobilising third voices
The angle taken by media coverage is rarely determined by what the two disputing parties say about a controversial situation. It is third parties, especially those with disinterested expertise, who can most powerfully affect public opinion. During a crisis, Chelgate will often work with its clients to mobilise third voices, the building blocks of a campaign to address misplaced public hostility, misinformation, or inaccurate media coverage. We have successfully managed third voice campaigns for a wide range of clients including governments, political campaigners, companies, charities and schools.
Who needs active crisis assistance?
We manage the crisis communications of clients of all sizes. Larger organisations often welcome the opportunity for management access to crisis management advice from an expert, highly experienced Crisis Management professional. Crisis Management is a very specialist area, demanding real understanding of the difficult and challenging dynamics unique to the crisis environment. This often will not be available internally, or from existing external resources. Operationally, in house communications teams are usually geared to normal workload levels. The huge increase and acceleration in the organisation’s communications demands can leave the team severely and dangerously over-stretched, and as the crisis rolls on, at the limit of their physical resources. Here, bolt-on, short-term additional emergency professional resources to assist with media relations and other communications tasks can be invaluable.
For smaller clients, including families and individuals, we often act as the client’s sole PR capability. Whilst we generally recommend that a client should represent itself in any direct dealings with the media, there are times when it is not possible or appropriate for the client to perform the spokesperson role. When this is the case, senior members of the Chelgate team, with a wealth of experience in media relations, will act as spokespeople for the client in question.
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[post_content] => Chelgate advises leaders and senior managers on their handling of acute or crisis situations. Our clients are extremely diverse, and have included schools, care homes, blue chip companies, fine art dealerships, landed estates, governments and government agencies, and globally-recognised charities.
How we advise
Chelgate typically advises the senior management of a client, be it a company, a charity, or another form of organisation. This is because our service extends far beyond the boundaries of regular PR advice. We do not simply advise clients how to speak or write. We are hired by clients who value the advice we give about all aspects of their behaviour that contribute to their public image or relationships. Consequently, our conversations typically range far and wide, and properly concern those with ultimate responsibility for the way an organisation is managed.
Generally, our relationships are long-lasting – sometimes over decades – and we, like our clients, place a very high value on discretion. Illegal activities excepted, the candid discussions held in Chelgate’s meeting rooms or in our clients’ offices will, if the client wishes, remain permanently private, shared only with the individuals present.
Depending on the intensity of the acute issue or crisis, our meetings can be regular, infrequent or intensive and constant over a given period of heavy demand. We expect to work unusual hours for our clients, in recognition of the fact that crises rarely strike or develop only during convenient working hours.
No typical crisis
There is no typical crisis, but the crises or acute issues that Chelgate manages most often include the following.
Safeguarding or lapses in duty of care
Clients with children or patients in their care sometimes make mistakes, or fail in their duties of care. We insist that our clients admit their errors honestly, and we firmly believe that honesty – which protects trust – makes good business sense. On occasion, false allegations are made against our clients, and these need to be rebutted convincingly to protect the client’s reputation from wrongful harm.
Legal challenges
Many of our clients are facing litigation from their own clients, trading partners, staff or others. We work with lawyers, and can recommend highly skilled lawyers, in fields ranging from employment law to education to defamation. We understand how on-going court cases affect what can and cannot be said under law, and help our clients understand how to manage their reputation both during and after a legal struggle – even if a case leads to legal exoneration, the reputation damage can be far-reaching, and must be repaired skilfully over a longer period of time.
Read more about our work with lawyers
Improper conduct
We regularly handle cases arising from staff misconduct. Whether a finance director has emptied a company bank account into his own Swiss account or a charity’s chief executive has acted without regard for rules or the law, we stand ready to advise companies, charities and other bodies recovering from the poor decisions of their colleagues or former leaders.
Acts of God
From a building collapse to the blameless death of a key member of staff, unfortunate or natural accidents – for which nobody, sometimes, is responsible – can negatively affect an organisation’s reputation, sometimes devastatingly. Responding to loss of life or injury requires extreme corporate sensitivity, proper management of media interest, and respectful treatment of grieving families, colleagues and friends. Many organisations, concerned that expressions of sympathy or of sorrow can incur legal and financial liability, handle such situations clumsily, sometimes creating upset and unnecessarily harming relationships with employees or others.
Others
Over the 25 years’ of experienced gained since we were founded, we have advised clients on an enormous range of crises, ranging from the mundane to the extraordinary. To speak to us about your particular situation,
please call or email us during office hours, or phone our crisis line at any time if your situation requires urgent advice.
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[post_content] => Chelgate’s “audits” companies and other organisations to help them gauge their readiness for a crisis. Our crisis preparedness audits offer constructive, thorough investigations of a client’s plans, working habits and performance.
How an audit works
Like a financial audit, our reviews pick out problems, and confirm that important elements of crisis preparedness are in place.
Most audits take place in two phases. In the first phase, we meet with all leading individuals in an organisation responsible for crisis communication, often including the CEO. In a series of meetings, spanning from half a day to a whole day, we discuss with each individual their understanding of their employer’s crisis protocols, documents, routines, experiences, weaknesses and strengths. In the second phase, we review any documents handed to us by the client related to their crisis plans.
On the basis of our assessments, we prepare a report summarising our view of the client’s preparedness. This report can be followed up with meetings, and with additional training.
The nature of an audit
Our crisis communications audits take several aspects of crisis readiness into account, and are tailored to the likely risks facing a given client. However, we bear in mind that the most devastating crisis are often the least foreseeable, and might come from quotidien activities just as readily as from specialised or unique company activities.
Audits consider the following core issues, alongside other client-specific issues:
- Staff knowledge
- Staff understanding of their own crisis communication role
- Staff understanding of others’ roles
- Staff experience / prior performance
- Genuine flexibility and crisis expertise/experience within the communications team
- Structures for effective teamwork in crisis
- The existence and use-ability of a crisis manual
- Clear, widely-understood definitions of crisis
- Existing facilities (e.g. for press conferences) and resources (e.g. appropriate client photographs)
More information is available on our
Chelgate Crisis website
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Chelgate has delivered crisis simulations to a range of large and small firms, educational bodies and charities.
Typically, participants range from 10-20 in number, but events can cater to smaller or slightly larger teams if needed.
Each scenario is a carefully structured unique creation, reflecting the particular characteristics, needs, vulnerabilities and resources of the individual client.
Desk-based scenarios
The desk-based scenario is a lower-key test of an organisation’s crisis resources than a full, live action simulation (see below).
It is, like its live action counterpart, run by a Chelgate convener. Usually taking place over a half day, events will be unfolded by the convener, to which the client Crisis Management Team must react. The events will not be known to the participants in advance.
The desk-based exercise will have few if any live events (interviews, call-ins, unexpected visitors etc), although it may incorporate limited drafting exercises (press releases, Q&As, stakeholder communications etc). Instead it will test existing arrangements and procedures against a variety of unexpected situations, and examine the Crisis Management Team’s familiarity with current guidelines, and its ability to respond.
Live-action scenarios
Live action scenarios simulate crises with a higher level of realism than desk-based exercises, adding the pressure of real-time, and challenges designed to add additional stresses typical of a “hot” crisis. Typically, a real time crisis scenario day will also include a variety of “bear-traps” – that is, changes of direction or unexpected revelations which may well expose and subvert earlier decisions, communications or positions adopted.
Live emails, phone calls and face-to-face interviews feature in the course of a live action scenario day. Sometimes these will be enhanced by other events (unexpected visitors, removal of team leader, discovery of hazardous device, loss of mobile phone networks etc). The client team must respond to developing events throughout the day, and events will alter in response to choices made by the team. Multiple demands may arise at the same time, each requiring urgent action.
The events are designed to be learning exercises in themselves. In other words, the team will discover for themselves the consequences, shortcomings, requirements and opportunities inherent in their response to situations arising. They will also have the opportunity to practice roles and tasks relevant to their Crisis Management responsibilities.
Upon completion of a scenario exercise, Chelgate will prepare a detailed report for the client management team. This will give an overall assessment of the day, and indicate areas of particular strength or weakness. This will usually be accompanied by specific recommendations as to ways in which the client might address areas of potential vulnerability, and possibly build upon areas of existing strength. Following submission of this report, Chelgate also meets with the client for a more detailed discussion of findings.
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an audit, Chelgate can work with a client to improve the company’s readiness for a crisis.
The crisis communications plan and the documents
A crisis communications plan should form the basis of any company’s public response to a crisis. This plan should have several key elements:
- It should set out clear policy parameters to underpin decision making during a crisis. For example, if the public interest is the primary consideration in any communications decisions, that should be stated here. On the other hand, if protection of the integrity of the business, and safeguarding of shareholder interests are the primary considerations, then this should be made clear too.
- It should define crisis, and the circumstances that justify the application of special crisis procedures. It should also be clear about who is authorised to declare crisis procedures “live”.
- It should set out clear crisis alert reporting procedures
- It should establish levels of authority, and lines of reporting and approval for all matters and materials relating to crisis communications. This may necessarily short-cut the normal processes.
- It should identify tasks and roles for a dedicated Crisis Communications team, and establish clear lines of leadership and reporting for that team.
- It should define the role and access arrangements to necessary external resources. These may include lawyers, PR / Crisis consultants, insurers, medical advisers and others. There should be clear indications as to which member(s) of management has the authority and responsibility for contacting and managing these external resources.
- It should spell out arrangements for the crisis information control centre, and the location for holding/ briefing on site media.
- It should also indicate arrangements for a back-up control centre if on-site access is impossible for any reason.
For many Chelgate clients we also prepare a handbook for members of the team with management responsibilities. Recognising that most crisis manuals are out-of-date as soon as they are printed, and are often relegated, ignored to a dusty shelf, our Crisis Handbooks are loose-leaf, and require completion and regular updating by the client team. This updating process is built into the crisis plan.
The typical handbook will have three principal elements:
- Guidelines and instructions relating to different stages of the crisis process
- Contact lists (landline, mobile, email) for team members , and also for important external audiences and stakeholders. These may include media, emergency services (comms departments and operations), local and national government contacts, regulators etc). Where possible, these should include out-of-hours/ weekend contact details
- Blank working pages to keep a timed log of outside contacts and significant developments occurring during a crisis.
Materials
In addition, the Crisis Communications plan should identify materials which can and should be prepared and held ready in advance of any crisis. Typically, these might involve:
- High resolution management photographs. These normally will be unsmiling – to avoid an inappropriate cheerful image running alongside a negative or tragic story.
- Management structure details, with names
- Media friendly short descriptions of the organisation and its main elements, together with longer descriptions which the media can also draw upon.
- Copies of recent press releases and public statements
- Charts, graphs and relevant statistics
- Where appropriate, relevant high definition maps and aerial views
- Relevant high definition captioned photographs
Chelgate work with their crisis clients to identify and prepare the materials and resources necessary to prepare a plan relevant to their specific operations and requirements
[post_title] => Developing a Crisis Plan
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[post_date] => 2016-09-21 10:32:39
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Chelgate is a leader in issues management. We work with clients to help them to foresee and manage acute reputational issues before they become significant problems – or crises.
Managing crises is the core of our business. But if a crisis can be avoided, through careful planning, much of the stress and work of crisis management can be eliminated. During more than two decades of experience in this field, we have worked with hundreds of crisis clients, and regularly interact with clients who wish they had acted earlier to mitigate threats to their reputations. Of course, not all crises can be foreseen. But many can be addressed through careful planning, informed by experience and expertise.
Chelgate’s acute issue management
We work with clients facing all manner of reputational risks. Take, for example, market adjustments. As the oil price fell through late 2014, companies operating in the field had to make fast, but not instantaneous, adjustments. Radical changes in a market can have a heavy bearing on a client’s reputation. Chelgate might work with a client to ensure they can explain significant downturns in quarterly results both convincingly and honestly; we help clients to articulate messages about their performance vis a vis rivals in a tumultuous market; and we position our clients as expert commentators and analysts in the relevant global media during times of rapid change.
Risks to reputation also come from inside one’s own organisation, and handling those risks means changing the way on behaves, as well as how one communicates. We advise clients about their commercial decisions – about whether to recall a product, for instance – and about their internal relationships, say with employees or directors. The risks we identify can be days or years ahead, and we help clients to stand on their own feet: we put in place the systems companies need to foresee, understand and pre-empt their own risks. And we are always on call, should those systems fail.
How we do issues management
We typically begin with an in-depth strategy session. In a dialogue with senior staff, we explore the client’s relationships with its “key publics” – those groups who matter most to the organisation in question. We ask how those relationships look today; we ask how those relationships would look in an ideal world; and we advise clients how they should move from one to the other.
The sessions prompt clients to think in a fresh, critical way about the gap between their real and ideal corporate relationships. They can force clients to acknowledge, for the first time, as a group or even to themselves, the seriousness of the problems that are holding back their communications. But they are also constructive experiences: as the session progresses, and in the subsequent report from Chelgate, we and the client devise new ways forward. These sessions are often the beginning of a rejuvenation of the client’s relationships with its key publics.
In the wake of the strategy session, we continue to work with the client’s leadership on a regular basis, designing and executing initiatives, and advising in-house teams as they realise the strategy inside the client’s own organisation.
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The Law and Reputation Management
During many of the crises and acute issues where we are engaged, Chelgate works very closely with our clients’ lawyers.
These days, there is widespread recognition that it’s not enough to win the legal battle if your reputation is left in tatters. So managing public perception in the post-verdict or post-settlement phase can be critical.
But even before any final legal resolution, reputation and perception matter, and can shape or influence any ultimate legal settlement, whether in court or out-of-court. How you manage opinion and information in the early stages of a crisis will directly impact public opinion well into the future. If there is an adversarial legal aspect to the crisis, the other side will be taking account of public opinion when they make decisions about the positions they adopt.
In Court, an organisation with a good reputation, which is thought to have reacted honestly, transparently and with proper recognition of social accountability through critical stages of the crisis, is likely to find a more sympathetic hearing than if it had been evasive, dishonest, taciturn or unresponsive.
Working with Lawyers
Sometimes there can be understandable tension between the differing needs for reputation protection and legal protection. A typical situation may be one where the cautious legal advice will be to say nothing, or say as little as possible, minimising any possible unnecessary risk. But reputation protection requirements may demand that the organisation informs, explains and is seen to be accountable and transparent.
Lawyers who work in crisis management and reputation protection increasingly have a good understanding of the needs to balance both areas of concern. Similarly, firms like Chelgate ensure that no sensitive communications take place that have not been checked with the client’s legal advisers. An effective client advisory team sees lawyers and PR advisers working in close cooperation to ensure the best balanced outcome for the client.
Where the crisis is linked to a Criminal (or potentially criminal) case there can also be a high level of aggressive media intrusion into the lives of the individuals involved, their families and their loved ones. There are a number of response measures available, some possibly involving legal action, others closer to the field of media relations. We expect to work with our client’s lawyers to agree and help implement an urgent strategy designed to provide the fullest and most effective protection possible.
Many of Chelgate’s crisis assignments result from referrals by lawyers who have seen how we work. Even where a client has existing and effective PR resources, it is recognised that Crisis and Acute Issues Management is a specialist area, where different rules apply. Experience and specific crisis expertise are at a premium.
In the same way, Chelgate will often recommend a law firm to a client. The firm of solicitors to whom they have entrusted commercial contracts, employment issues and property matters may be excellent, but they may well not have the particular expertise to handle high profile litigation or defamation situations. Chelgate has worked with many lawyers over the years, and we know firms and individuals whom we would recommend without hesitation. We also recognise that the same firm may not be right for every client. So where we make a recommendation, we try also to take account of culture, style, size and situation.
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[post_content] => Brexit is not a seven day crisis; nor even seven week or seven month.
In fact, there has never been anything like this. Yes, of course, there are immediate issues to be addressed. In an utterly changed landscape, issues of confidence have suddenly been unleashed. Previously solid, secure, safe enterprises now find their very futures questioned. Staff look for reassurance on job security; lenders want to know that their exposure is still without risk; clients and customers need to be sure that delivery will in no way be impaired. But in a time of churning, opaque uncertainty, messages of reassurance can easily sound more like whistling in the dark. As ever, credibility is king, and reassurance based on wishful thinking can do more harm than good.
But for many organisations, this will be merely the beginning. Ahead lies the likelihood that a changed professional, societal, political and commercial universe will demand hard decisions and painful measures. And each of these will need to be managed in such a way that they do not, in themselves, spread further uncertainty and alarm.
These days, most well-run organisations have their Crisis Management plans in place, but fewer have strategies for Acute Issues Management, and this is what will be needed now. Systems and
strategies for issues monitoring and early identification, scenario planning, access to informed, objective external counsel, especially in areas such as legal risk, government affairs, and indeed, strategic crisis management can all be hugely important.
Stakeholder communications will also be uniquely difficult. In most Crisis Management these can be planned in terms of the crisis event, and the management of a projected, intended future. But here we are looking at the probability of wave after wave of unexpected events, each with the capability to shock, destabilise and re-direct. Future uncertainty is a critical part of the crisis we now need to manage, and many of the usual tropes of management, control and direction will be wholly inadequate in this context.
Experience and well-honed judgement will be at a premium now. But there is a danger, too, that experience will become its own trap. For many organisations, the challenges that lie ahead will be unprecedented, and application of rules, procedures and responses that worked in more normal times will be simply inadequate. Good management now will need more than at any time to show the ability to think outside the box; to move beyond immediate experience Crisis is also a time when management teams can slip into Group Think, developing rigid, single-view, sclerotic positions and responses, hardening with each new challenge. This, again, is a time when a knowledgeable, independent, sympathetic source of advice and comment can be of real value. This may be a non-executive chairman. It may be a trusted legal or strategic public relations advisor. It may be a respected former colleague, perhaps retired but still current, close enough to advise with authority and understanding, but not so close as to become part of any settled internal perspective.
Difficult, challenging times. But, change can bring opportunity too, and those organisations with effective Acute Issues Management strategies may find that they not only limit potential damage, but that they actually create areas of fresh opportunity.
[post_title] => Managing your Brexit Crisis
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[post_content] => Chelgate is available to provide urgent crisis assistance, without notice, 24 hours a day. You do
not need to be an existing Chelgate client to make use of our Emergency Service, although different terms apply, and it may be necessary to carry out some urgent checks and validation measures.
Call the 24 hour Chelgate Crisis Line:
020 7939 7999
Speed of response can be critical to the successful management of a crisis. What you do now, or what you say, can shape the entire future course of the crisis.
Chelgate has the experience, expertise and specialist understanding of the particular dynamics that apply in crises, to help you ensure that your early decisions are robust, clear, well-founded and effective. We also have the skilled team members available to provide emergency additional support to your existing communications team.
Containing a public relations crisis or acute issue demands professional assistance. Please
contact us now to discuss your particular situation with the crisis team. Chelgate can be contacted during work hours on 020 7939 7939 or after work hours on our dedicated crisis line, 020 7939 7999.
Within our crisis containment service, we offer various forms of assistance, all of which come in ways tailored entirely to your or your organisation’s needs.
Consulting and advice
When a crisis strikes, many normal business rules change. The right response may well be the counter-intuitive one. Information moves much faster, and differently, often through conduits that may not normally be significant channels for your communications. New stakeholders enter the picture who would not normally feature among your priority audiences. Normal processes for clearance and approval may now be too slow and cumbersome. Audiences may respond to events, or to information, in ways that are entirely foreign to their normal patterns. When these things happen, management teams will often benefit from access to advice from experienced, expert and supportive Crisis Management who understand the particular rules and demands which a crisis can create.
As crisis management professionals, with a huge range of relevant experience, Chelgate is well placed to offer clients that expert advice and guidance concerning the special requirements of crisis response
Ad specialists in the field, Chelgate have acted as advising crisis PR consultants to a host of companies, schools, government bodies, institutions, family interests, charities and private individuals. We advise on any issue that might pose a serious threat to the way an organisation is perceived, or to the relationships critical to that organisation. Our advice will cover all areas of relevant communications, and also address the strategy behind those communications. But we also look at the impact of corporate actions on reputation and relationships, and our advice may relate to potential corporate action as much as it does to communication.
For more information on this service, please visit our dedicated
Consulting and Advice page, or call us directly.
Active crisis management
In addition to providing strategic advice, Chelgate can also provide the additional communications resources needed when a crisis strikes.
For some clients we provide the front-line initial media contact role, both fielding media queries and also initiating contact with the media, distributing media information etc. Even if a client has a good and professional internal media relations capability, that will almost certainly be geared to normal circumstances, and can easily be overwhelmed by the intense, continuing, 24/7 pressures created by a high profile crisis. Whilst as a general rule we believe that a client should speak for itself, there are occasions when that may not be possible or wise. On those occasions, Chelgate has also acted as the official client spokesperson. At times, too, a crisis may require physical media relations presence – for example, to set up and host a media room, to manage a press conference, to deal with media at a crisis/ disaster location etc. Here again, these demands may over-extend an in-house team who also have to manage the still continuing needs of business as usual.
For more information on this service,
call us directly.
Legal challenges
Often, when a crisis strikes, there will be important legal implications. Chelgate works closely with lawyers, and understands the importance of balancing reputation protection considerations and legal requirements . On occasion, even where a client has a good and well-established relationship to meet the legal needs of its normal business, we will recommend lawyers who can offer the specialist and particular skills required by exceptional crisis circumstances. For more information on this service, please visit our dedicated
Legal and Defamation page.
Issues management
Chelgate helps clients to identify, understand and pre-empt major threats to their reputations. In our issues management practice, we advise clients in stand-alone strategy sessions or over extended periods of months or years. For more information about our Issues Management service, please visit
Issues management.
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