Under Construction
Posted by Tom Gable
Why invest in reputation and image as a part of corporate strategy? As covered here previously, recent studies show companies that invest in reputation – and walk the talk over time – do better than their competitors in a number of ways:
- Growth versus peers
- Profit margin
- Employee morale
- Community goodwill
- Investor support (upside and downside)
- Relationships with vendors, suppliers
- Self-pride
What are the basic steps to building reputation over time? This will be the first in a series of posts based on presentations given the past year to a variety of professional and business organizations on the benefits of investing in image as a part of corporate strategy. Let’s start with building the machine. Some basic questions to ask:
- How do you want to be known in two to three years?
- Is your strategic plan, financing, mindset, commitment and other resources up to the task?
- Can you clearly differentiate against the competition?
- Does everyone sound alike?
- Can you be provocative (even controversial)?
- Does the organization have a culture, a personality?
- What do you stand for – the core values?
- Can you establish a solid foundation from your values and then demonstrate proof of principle over time?
Can you be disciplined enough to carry out a strategic program of reputation management for reaching multiple constituencies?
- Internal Audiences
- The Value Chain
- Consumers
- Investors
- Potential Partners
- Decision Makers
- Regulators
- Suppliers
- Distributors
- Analysts
- Customers
- Community
Focus on three to four essential elements as the pillars of your image and reputation. How do these important values and benefit your many constituents? Can you build relationships that go beyond the typical top-down, one-way organizational model of communications? Envision how the organization will walk its talk for each core value over time and demonstrate proof of principle for each target audience.
Once the values are agreed to, plan for pushback, cynicism and ambushes along the way from the media, disgruntled customers, bedraggled investors and competitor attacks. Be prepared to stand tall and respond in character – true to your ethics and vision for how you want to be known in the future.
The analogy is to build image like a great skyscraper: brilliant design, spectacular engineering to set the foundation and then aggressive, engaged project management to keep adding substance to your structure with precision. But pure science and engineering don’t build reputations for the long term. As proven in our Guru Program®, it takes a combination of creativity, engineering, science and a bit of daring to rise about the crowds.
Next: the three dimensional chess game.
