Rod Cartwright’s 2026 edition of Reputation, Risk and Resilience arrives at the right moment. Communication leaders are dealing with volatility, distrust and fatigue. We do not need another report telling us the world is messy. We know. What we need is help making sense of it. This report does that.
The beauty of Rod’s report isn’t just that he’s read all the major reports on risk and reputation, so we don’t need to, but that his thought-provoking analysis provides actionable insight. Rod has read, analysed and summarised the 12 major reports (nearly 850 pages!) that most of us download and intend to read later, but never quite get round to reading them all.
Rod frames the year ahead as one in which we must ‘assume agency’ and ‘achieve balance’ in an age of angst and rage. It might sound like rhetoric but it is backed by serious analysis and practical thinking.
Rod is also right to challenge the long-running complaint that communication lacks a seat at the top table. Too often the profession frames influence as something it is denied, rather than something it earns. Board-level relevance does not come from asking more loudly. It comes from bringing clearer analysis, stronger counsel and better decisions. In that respect, this year’s report is less a review of external risks than a challenge to the profession itself.
The diagnosis will not surprise anyone paying attention. The report covers familiar but intensifying pressures: geopolitical tension, AI, cyber risk, climate disruption, social fragmentation and what Rod describes as an embedded psychological pandemic. However, the useful point is not that these pressures exist in parallel. It is that they compound one another. That is why communicators need to think less in tidy categories and more in systems.
AI firmly in the risk mix
As we advise chief communications officers and corporate affairs directors on AI, I had to pay close attention to what Rod had discovered about AI. In previous years it played a far smaller part than I believed it should have. That has changed in 2026.
WEF finds the ‘adverse outcomes of AI’ moving from #30 in its two-year ranking last year to #5 over ten years this year – among the starkest single risk moves ever. I’m not surprised that Rod finds that confidence in AI adoption and impact lags behind ambition.
Lots of CCOs talk about it, but far fewer are doing even part of what they should be about it.
The Reputation, Risk and Resilience 2026 report says:
“AXA find that only 11% of risk experts believe public authorities are prepared for AI risks – the joint lowest preparedness score across all risk categories. The Conference Board captures a similar corporate paradox: AI is simultaneously the #1 investment priority and the #1 perceived threat among global C-suite leaders. Among CCOs, Ipsos finds that while tackling AI-generated misinformation has become a planning priority, meaningful use of AI has fallen 15 percentage points in a single year to 43% and only 11% of the world’s most senior Corporate Affairs communicators believe their AI governance is adequate.”
What’s in the Reputation, Risk and Resilience report?
The structure helps. At the centre are summaries of the 12 source publications, split between risk and resilience, and reputation and engagement. Each comes with a useful TL;DR.
My favourite part is the letter to the CEO and Chair from Ms Dee Risk, a fictional corporate affairs director. It is clever, pointed and uncomfortably familiar. It captures the pressures of the role better than another abstract model ever could.
That is why the ‘Assuming Agency’ framework works. It combines sensemaking and sense giving. First understand what is happening. Then help others understand what it means and what to do next. Miss the first and your advice is shallow. Miss the second and your insight changes nothing.
The companion idea of ‘Achieving Balance’ is equally important. Organisations do not fail in crises simply because they lack data or plans. They fail because they overreact in one direction, underinvest in another, or treat communications as either pure process or pure instinct. Sustainable preparedness sits between those extremes. It requires method and humanity, discipline and judgement, systems and relationships.
For me, that is the report’s real strength. It does not treat resilience as a defensive exercise or reputation as a cosmetic one. It positions both as strategic capabilities. That is exactly right. Reputation is not a veneer applied after the event. It is the accumulated consequence of choices, behaviour, communication and leadership under pressure.
The reach of previous editions suggests this perspective is resonating. The 2025 report was downloaded in 67 countries across six continents.
There is a wider lesson here. In difficult times, communications teams can slip into anxiety dressed up as activity: more monitoring, more dashboards, more reactive messaging. Rod argues for something better. Make sense of the moment. Decide what matters. Act with intent.
If you don’t have time to read the 12 original reports this is essential reading. Not because it gives you certainty. It does not. But because it helps you think more clearly. And in communications, better thinking usually leads to better decisions.
I sometimes work with Rod on mutual client projects and was lucky enough to have a sneak peak of the report so I could write this review.
Download the full report from Rod Cartwright Consulting.
