Reputation has become a governance matter. Directors are increasingly asked not only whether a risk was managed, but whether it was anticipated — and whether the board had the information required to test management's judgement.
The difficulty is that reputation resists conventional measurement. It is built slowly through consistent conduct and lost quickly through a single mismatch between what an organisation says and what it does.
Effective boards address this by asking for a small number of durable indicators: stakeholder sentiment over time, regulatory posture, employee confidence, and the organisation's record on commitments made in public.
They also rehearse. Scenario work conducted in calm conditions is the cheapest insurance available, because it exposes the gaps in decision rights and escalation before those gaps become public.
Reputation governance is not a communications exercise. It is a discipline of alignment between strategy, conduct and voice — and it belongs on the board agenda as a standing item.