Organizational Convalescence is a Community Affair
By Dawn Morais Webster 04/17/09

Five years ago, reeling from the loss of the $5 million dollar Tesoro account, Loomis-ISC was rumored to be on the brink of closure. I took over at that juncture, not fully realizing what I had let myself in for.  However, I quickly learned that the agency had a sterling quarter century record of integrity and professionalism. There is nothing more valuable than the integrity of one’s brand and what it stands for: our values, and how steadfastly we live by them in the eyes of those who expect us to honor our financial obligations, deliver quality communications and offer thought leadership.

I learned that in a crisis those values matter because it prompts behavior from staff that tells the world that this is a business that lives its brand. It instills confidence in those who do business with you and gives you breathing room in which to rally your energies. Above all, our crisis reinforced the lesson that organizational convalescence is a community affair. No organization in crisis recovers without community support and everyone can benefit when businesses get a fair shot at rebuilding. The street we travel doing so is called Trust. To violate that trust is to crash headlong into a wall of disenchantment that can be fatal. We believe that Loomis-ISC weathered its crisis because we kept faith with our values as a community-centered agency. We treated our relationships with employees, vendors, clients and associates with the respect they deserved. That trust was returned and we are the stronger for it.