Reputation by design.
Your reputation is being shaped right now, whether by you, by others or by chance.
Akela helps you take control.
Reputation is formed in the micro-moments. From the employee with the branded backpack offering their seat on the tube to how your CFO presents your vision in a meeting with investors.
Reputation is shaped by what you do and how you behave towards others. Yet most organisations seek to influence reputation only through what they say about themselves. This means, for some, their reputation will be accidental - and, for others, it will be inauthentic, misleading, and even actively detrimental.
Akela designs how others experience you. By doing so, we turn your reputation into an asset: reputational capital.
For urgent or crisis support:
What we do
We design how people experience you.
Akela diagnoses where our clients’ reputations are being formed and then we design, develop and deliver an approach to turn your reputation into an asset that works for you. This will encompass strategy, governance, organisational design, training and strategic communications.
We also work with you to identify and mitigate reputational risks, deliver strategic communications through issues and crises, and develop the strategies to regain trust, goodwill and authority in your field.
We advise both c-suite, boards and communications principals - as well as the consultancies that support them - on reputational risk & resilience, and how to manage it more effectively.
Why we do it
Because a reputation that is properly cultivated is your most important asset.
When your reputation is an asset that you actively manage, it can be your biggest growth engine and what ensures your organisation is resilient through a crisis.
Reputational capital can be designed, it can be shaped, it can be measured, and it can be drawn upon in good times and in bad.
What makes us different is that we take a whole-system approach to reputation. Akela looks beyond corporate communications to where reputation is really won and lost, helping you to understand what will make a long-term difference.
How we do it
Reputational infrastructure
We build capability in your business, rather than simply adding capacity to your team.
We specialise in:
> Reputational risk, resilience & special situations: helping you understand & mitigate reputational risks through scenario planning, training, crisis communications, and reputation rebuild programmes.
> Organisational design for in-house teams: advising on & developing your reputational operating model so that it’s fit for the challenges that communications teams and the organisations they support are facing.
> Strategic consulting for agencies: supporting corporate affairs consultancies with innovation, product and service development, new business, marketing, tools and technology advisory, and talent development strategies.
Embedded advisory
For a fixed period, we operate as your fractional corporate affairs lead to develop your communications function, create your communications strategy, and lead your day-to-day stakeholder engagement.
We help organisations going through:
> Growth: where you need a communications operating model built to sustain what comes next.
> Change: where your communications function needs to serve the business as it is today and will be tomorrow, not as it was ten or twenty years ago.
> Pressure: where you need an embedded crisis leader to advise on live reputational risks and lead stakeholder engagement through situations that threaten your licence-to-operate.
About Akela Advisory
Akela is a reputation strategy firm. We work with c-suite, boards, executive teams, and communications principals in financial services, professional services, real estate and private equity-backed businesses to design and develop their reputational capital.
We support organisations that know their reputation and their relationships with stakeholders can simultaneously be what threatens their licence-to-operate and what unlocks new opportunities. And we help them design and build it so that, when you need it, it is there - and you have the structures in place to manage it yourself, long after we’ve left the room.
Akela was founded by Ben Monteith, a reputation strategist with experience across financial services, professional services, real estate, and the public and third sectors – from founder-led businesses to global asset managers, government departments and the NHS.
Throughout his career, Ben has worked with individuals and organisations that want a reputation that matches their ambition. He has advised leaders through some of their greatest professional achievements and through some of the most challenging moments in their lives.