Reputation is all about having advocates to support you in time of crisis. An article in today’s Wall Street Journal on Lehman Brothers CFO, Erin Callan, supports this side benefit of building relationships before you need them. “To squash fears that Lehman could face the same kind of liquidity squeeze as Bear (now being acquired by J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.), Ms. Callan has had hundreds of face-to-face meetings and phone calls with investors and trading partners. She aggressively roots out rumors, even while pushing her bosses to disclose more financial information.” Sounds to me like she is out winning the vote every day.

The risk is often worth the reward.

It seems that the world has gone list crazy. Everywhere I turn I see 10 best ways to do this or that. I thought I would take my list for safeguarding and recovering reputation and add it to the listmania. When I searched google for “top 10″ I found 499,000,000 mentions. Just that number alone seems to be deliberately set. Perhaps I should come up with 99 tips on protecting reputation. I don’t think I have 99 tips but I bet if I got started, I could get close. But for now, here is a list of 19 tips….hope this satisfies the world’s ranking urge (and mine).

1. Don’t leave your reputation up to the roll of the dice
2. CEOs must be the first line of defense
3. Communicate in heavy doses
4.  Pay attention to your employees’ vital signs
5. Think of stakeholders as your electorate
6. Remember no reputation is bulletproof
7. Multiply all the bad news you hear by 10
8. Don’t forget that we all live in glass houses – there are no secrets
9. Inoculate your reputation – build a reservoir of goodwill before you need it
10.  Shift focus from what has happened to what should happen next
11. Don’t underestimate your competitors or critics
12. Recovery is continuous with no short cuts or days off – stay the course
13. Don’t let the Internet’s allure blind you
14. Each crisis has its own rhythm
15. Don’t believe your own propaganda
16. Use the “R” word (recovery) judiciously
17. Second chances are rarely a matter of luck – don’t waste them
18. Spin gold from clay – turn crisis into opportunity
19.  Restoring reputation is an epic voyage