CEO Guidelines For Speaking Out On Controversial Issues

“All CEOs should be unilaterally focused on their customers and their employees and the market they serve,” says Alexandrakis.

Millennial employees also should loom large in this consideration. “You have to step back and say, ‘What values do we believe in that would resonate with the workforce we’re trying to hire?’” says John Grace, president of the BrandTaxi consultancy.

Have a rein on social media: The C-Suite must make sure it has control of the marketing department—and especially trigger-fingered social-media staffers—when it comes to company statements and positioning on issues of the day.

Keurig Green Mountain CEO Bob Gamgort learned that lesson the hard way in November after the company pulled ads from Fox News in the wake of a host’s defense of Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore of Alabama against allegations of sexual harassment. Irate consumers smashed Keurig coffee makers and put videos online.

Gamgort apologized to employees, saying the decision to “pause” advertising was “highly unusual” and “outside company protocols. This gave the appearance of ‘taking sides’ in an emotionally charged debate that escalated on Twitter and beyond…which was not our intent.”

Social media are hamstrung “by the inability to have thought-out, thoughtful conversations,” says Andrew Caravella, vice president of marketing at Sprout Social. “So CEOs have to be extra careful.”

Beware me-tooism: Consumers may grow tired of the exercise if every brand feels obligated to make a political or social case. And each successive company that goes in this direction runs a bigger risk of encountering such resistance.

No one is likely to mimic how Interface approached the notion of purpose. The $1 billion, Atlanta-based commercial carpet manufacturer has been pursuing purpose around environmental sustainability for almost 25 years. One of Founder Ray Anderson’s defining moves was to pioneer the procurement of used fishing nets from places as diverse as Cameroon and the Philippines as raw material for new nylon carpets, creating a huge and ecologically beneficial recycling loop that is central to Interface’s supply chain.

“In finding purpose, you have to get to the intersection between what the world needs and what your company can be the very best at,” says Jay Gould, who became Interface’s CEO in 2017. “One-third of architects make decisions about purchases like carpet based on a company’s position on sustainability. So it’s actually central to our position in the market.”

Get everything else right: Some research shows that CEOs who embrace standing up had better perform well in traditional metrics— or else. Examining the exits of Fortune 500 bosses over several years, a team led by University of Notre Dame Professor Tim Hubbard found that CEOs who heavily invested company resources in good corporate citizenry were 84 percent more likely to be fired amid sluggish financial results than CEOs at poorly performing companies who spent less on do-good initiatives.

“I didn’t expect to find the negative side of this when I started,” Hubbard says. “I’m a big fan of CSR. But the perception is changing that CSR is good for business. The research doesn’t support that.”

On the other hand, according to Hubbard’s research published in Strategic Management Journal, at “high levels of financial performance,” boosting spending on Goodist initiatives can reduce a CEO’s chances of dismissal by 53 percent.

“CEOs should be thinking about purpose that leads to profitability,” says Sara Roberts, executive director of purpose-led transformation for consulting firm EY. “Not rainbows and unicorns, but something that really creates longevity for their company.”

Read more: 5 Lessons in Corporate Citizenship for CEOs