Reputation: Earning It Rather Than Managing It

The past three have years have not been kind to many corporate reputations, nor to those of the people who lead them. The explosion of online investigative inquiry as well as the analysis of what its practitioners unearth has given PR firms and corporate communicators lots to 'manage' but has not raised the state of performance.

In striving to shape, frame and spin - the sculptural metaphors abound in this business - professionals and their clients appear to ignore a central theme; that reputation is based on performance and performance is most often assessed within the framework of standards, values and metrics the subject itself presents to the world. There is nothing an investigator or journalist loves more than a good contradiction which can be turned into a morality tale about hypocrisy.

The nature of global interest in the complexities of this subject is exemplified by the review below: a book by an American whose work is being published in India. As society derives more of its news, information and viewpoints from the internet, society will, in turn, need to keep the interrelationship of behavior and reputation in mind as it both performs and communicates about performance. JL

D. Murali reports in The Hindu (hat tip Leslie Gaines Ross):

Though reputation, like trust, is not a new concept in business, there has been an explosion of interest around the subject since the mid-1990s, observes Dov Seidman in ‘How,’ recently out as a reprint from Wiley India. He rues, however, that a fair amount of the current interest in reputation revolves around creating and managing corporate reputation as an extension of brand awareness in the marketplace, an effort colonised by public relations and corporate communications departments and consultant. Conditions of transparency

The problem with external approaches to corporate reputation and trust, as the author explains, is that they look at reputation as a silo to be managed, a story to be spun. “This thinking, with its roots in fortress capitalism, stands little chance of success today. To truly thrive in the internetworked world, business and the people who labour in business need to find a way to operate within the new conditions of transparency and interconnectedness…”

The book cites an apt quote of McDonald’s CEO Jim Skinner, that transparency means people have a very clear look at your behaviour, and that they now make their own determination of whether or not your behaviour adds value, whether it is significant relative to your success, and whether or not the behaviours are part of the integrity and ongoing culture of a company.

Reputation is weighed not only by the customers but also by other stakeholders such as investors and employees, reminds Seidman. In the working world today, he says, most of us see ourselves as freelancers, staying with a job or an organisation as long as its goals and the benefits we can accrue in the pursuit of them remain tightly aligned with our own.

What the talented look for

The author mentions an insight from Jeffrey Kindler, ex-CEO of Pfizer, that really talented people are inspired to work in a place that gives them ample opportunity and resources with which to grow and develop as a person and make meaningful contributions; to work for and with people who share their belief system, their professional aspirations, and their objectives for what the enterprise can accomplish; and to work in an enterprise that is somehow making the world a better place in some dimension that is important to them.

To those who may like to discount Kindler’s top thoughts because of the $34 million severance package he took, it can be educative, however, to read about the difference that reputation makes at the entry level recruiting. The book reports the finding of a survey of about 800 MBAs from 11 leading North American and European schools, that more than 97 per cent said they were willing to forgo, on average, 14 per cent of their expected income to work for an organisation with a better reputation for getting its ‘hows’ right.

“A reputation for doing it right and for caring about employees both rose to the top third of the list of 14 attributes these MBAs most valued in a prospective employer, proving to be about 77 per cent as important as the top criterion of intellectual challenge and only slightly below financial package in relative importance.”

Not spin

Echoing the view of Charles Fombrun of the Reputation Institute that reputation is not about spin but it is the merging of what is real with what people think about you, the author notes that the brain is exceptionally good at recognising conflicting messages. “If those to whom you are communicating sense dissonance or apparent conflict between your carefully crafted message and the realities of your behaviour, they will quickly turn away.”

Emphasising, therefore, that reputation is something holistic and authentic, the author calls for a shift in our thinking – from managing reputation to earning it – to thrive in the transparent, connected world. He advises that reputation cannot be spun like the gossamer threads of a spider’s web intended to catch flies, but must be built, brick by brick – one communication and one interaction at a time – to form a structure capable of sheltering the aspirations of those who wish to live there. “You cannot get to a good reputation by cutting corners; reputation is on the square, or not at all.”