One of the top challenges for disclosure teams – and for companies trying to communicate to the market in general – is attaining internal alignment.
For example, when tackling the earning season – the Form 10-Q, the earnings release, and the earnings call – are we going to discuss what is important to the company’s business? Or, are we just going through a regulatory exercise?
To take advantage of the earnings season to tell the company’s story transparently within the confines of the regulatory process, communicate what’s important for our business at this moment in time.
When the company’s disclosure team gets together to plan quarter-end disclosure, that’s when you find out if your team is aligned on content, messaging, and approach. You find out whether you have a story to tell. And if you do, whether everyone agrees with how to tell it.
What if there isn’t alignment? That happens. How do you address that? Probably the same way you should be working through any misalignment. Talk it through. Find out where others are coming from and why. They wear different hats, have different perspectives steeped in their expertise in multiple disciplines.
Hopefully, your team culture allows all to engage in honest conversation, to educate each other. And hopefully it’s not a dictatorship where a CEO simply states “it’s about purple” and that’s taken as gospel.
Members of the board, other members of senior management and even members of the disclosure team not at that level might bring something to bear that is worth considering when it comes to figuring out what the company’s current story is – and how it should best be told.
This alignment is critical to getting where you need to be for transparency. To be authentic in your disclosure.
