The Price of Reputation
In today’s instant, interactive and impulsive online environment, perhaps as never before in communications, these words ultimately define the destiny of an organization as well as an individual:
Protecting a reputation begins with understanding the implications and potential cost of not protecting a reputation.
Roughly 82 percent of an organization’s shareholder value is intangible, according to a survey a couple of years ago. It’s merely a perception, impression, or … feeling that people have about a brand, an organization or an individual.
In researching my new book, “The Media Savvy Leader,” I found that today’s authentic leaders are keenly aware that reputations can be injured with a single misstep. They also know that the investment to protect a reputation is infinitely less than the expense needed to fix one that is damaged, sometimes by self-inflicted mistakes.
How do you protect a reputation? Openness. Transparency. Clarity. Responsiveness. That’s just for starters. Seems like commonsense but it’s one of the greatest challenges some organizations confront in today’s Internet Era.
As billionaire Mark Cuban told me:
In the Internet age, executives have to learn how to shape information about themselves and their companies, or the Internet will do it for them, and it won’t be pretty.
Category: Featured, Reputation management, Social Media
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Yes, we often make judgements based on perception. We’re also far more likely to give an organisation or individual the benefit of the doubt (or give them longer to fix things) if our initial perception is favourable.
I wonder though if there’s a danger we’re breeding more cautious and conservative leaders who fear the ‘misstep’ because they know that it will be reported immediately. Does this need to protect reputations inadvertently create a culture of less transparency.
I don’t know the answer, just ruminating!
Good questions, Tess. We need to mindful of the difference between a true leader and today’s run-of-the-mill CXOs, politicians and bureaucrats. True leaders share a common trait of implementing bold ideas through clever and smart use of the media. They know the value of a face and voice of leadership out front. The others hide behind spokespersons, lawyers and press releases.
Is that the same Mark Cuban that was so transparent about his *alleged* insider dealings?
No matter what you say (offline as well as online) in however much secrecy, it always finds a way of becoming public. Remember that and save yourself an unpleasant task further down the line.
Yes, the same Cuban. But the day he was accused, he blogged about it … which demonstrates his openness, I believe.
One of the biggest missteps that a company can make, and we’re seeing it happen more and more in today’s economy, is going silent altogether in an effort to save cash.
I just wrote a column about this in the local business journal. (http://tinyurl.com/bv5nwz). Companies that go silent are likely to be forgotten when the economy turns around. You can’t protect your reputation if you no longer communicate with the audiences that are important to you.