Country reputation

There is an unusual campaign afoot to adjust the reputation of Japan. It is called The Cool Japan Promotion Strategy Programme and is housed at the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry – METI.  The campaign is to make Japan’s reputation more creative by highlighting its fashion, music, food and animation. The concept has accelerated due to the horrific earthquake’s aftermath and the need to rebuild reputation quickly in as many ways as possible.  The basic concept is to export the cultural creativity of Japan similar to what is done with cars. Such an occurrence happened in Singapore in October where a pop up store devoted to Harajuku Street Style – Japan’s edgy fashion district–appeared featuring small lines of Japanese fashion.  Harajuki is the train station in Tokyo where many fashion stores, boutiques and used clothing outlets can be found for young people who hang out dressed as anime or manga characters.  These fashion-ables break all the rules, mix and match, and have an anything goes mindset.  Must be working since I found a line of clothes at Target when I searched. The Japanese reputation for fashion and culture is expanding as wished.

  Reputation building is walking in the front door of The White House.  A recent New Yorker article on the Navy SEAL mission to capture and obliterate Osama Bin Laden is captivating and spell-binding, to say the least.  But now there is some discussion that the The White House okayed the dramatic recounting to make them look audacious, brave and effectively taking care of the nation’s big hurt (9-11).

Then I learned that there is a movie under foot with apparently deep access from The White House. Oscar-winners’ Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal of “Hurt Locker” fame are producing the big-time screen version of the killing of Bin Laden.  Due in theaters October 12, 2012.  Isn’t that near election day? Duh.

The White House is taking reputation-building seriously. A good thing. Everything seems pretty shaky right now. No doubt about it, there is going to be an all out assault and reputation redemption campaign for our beleaguered president.

The S&P downgraded the U.S. credit rating last night. The full report is here. What struck me in its overview are these two points (below) which directly speak to how our fiscal reputation is being managed. In other words, the ability of our governing leaders to work effectively as a management team is no longer putting the US at the head of the class.  We all know that when corporate boards do not function well, they are called to task, reputations gets tarnished and board members find themselves disinvited to serve. We now see the same reputational metric of good governance being applied to our government and the picture is not pretty. S&P is essentially saying that our ability to govern fiscally and responsibly is ineffective, less stable and more unpredictable than it was earlier. And our ability to collaborate across parties is in question.  It’s not just the credit rating that’s being discredited but our fiscal reputation as well.  America’s reputation for fiscal safety is being downgraded as well.

More broadly, the downgrade reflects our view that the effectiveness, stability, and predictability of American policymaking and political institutions have weakened at a time of ongoing fiscal and economic challenges to a degree more than we envisioned when we assigned a negative outlook to the rating on April 18, 2011.

Since then, we have changed our view of the difficulties in bridging the gulf between the political parties over fiscal policy, which makes us pessimistic about the capacity of Congress and the Administration to be able to leverage their agreement this week into a broader fiscal consolidation plan that stabilizes the government’s debt dynamics any time soon.

Last night I could not help but wonder how the huge decline in the Dow of 500+ points was a reflection on the perceived reputation of the U.S. government as well as the country itself. I was not at all surprised to see a poll today that expressed basically the same thing. Here is what I knew to be true as I turned in last night: almost three-quarters of the American public believe that the congressional debate over the debt ceiling agreement has harmed the worldwide image of the United States . And a whopping 82% say that the debate was all about political advantage, not what is best for the country.

The reputation of the US has been severely bruised in the eyes of its own citizens and certainly around the world. We have plenty of reputation repair to do if distrust of government becomes the new normal. Whereas most companies and their leaders recognize that reputation is essential to their success today, our dueling political parties have yet to truly acknowledge how all the rancor and incivility is a vote from the daily majority about their behavior and decision-making. For more on civility in America, please click here for Weber Shandwick’s recent poll.

As I looked into people’s somber faces last night as I subwayed home, I could not stop thinking about how the American public had given the reputation of the US a solid “thumbs down” on confidence in this country’s future. You don’t even need a poll to tell you what we already learned from the Dow. Reputation rules whether it’s related to a company, a brand, an individual, an organization or a country. We cannot afford more reputation erosion on our country’s reputation. In addition to a bipartisan committee on how to reduce the debt, I think that we should be calling for a task force on restoring our reputation for the long-term.  As more people tune out of government, as we learned in our survey, the harder it will be to build back America’s reputation for getting things done.

For the second year in a row, about two-thirds, or 65% of Americans say that civility is a major problem, according to our annual Civility in America poll by Weber Shandwick and Powell Tate in partnership with KRC Research.  The timing for this survey is pretty right on. I just read that presidential candidate Jon Huntsman pledges that there will be a climate of civility in the race to the top if it is up to him.  You would think he spoke to us first!   If you read the results regarding perceptions on civility when it comes to politics, you will quickly see that the presidential race could literally depend on the civility factor.

The perceived lack of civility in the United States has far-reaching implications for the reputation of the USA with 91 percent saying that incivility has negative consequences for the nation. Those polled said that incivility in government is harming America’s future; that incivility in American life is harming our standing in the world; and that incivility prevents the country from moving forward. About half of the respondents (49 percent) said that the U.S. was among the most civil countries in the world.

The 2011 online survey was conducted in May among 1,000 American adults to assess attitudes towards civility online, in the workforce, in the classroom and in politics.

Check out the executive summary. We have our work cut out for us.

 My colleague in Asia just sent me a link to the blog of the Prime Minister of Japan. Mr. Naoto Kan’s blog had been ongoing but after the triple disaster of the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear plant problems, he stopped blogging for good reason.  He has now just begun. Since I am always interested in how leaders communicate and how CEOs or other leaders are using social media, this was a good find. The theme of his blog is Looking Squarely at the Future (a good title)  and the blog says that he does all his blogging himself.  There is an English version which is translated from the Japanese. There are also videos of the Prime Minister on TV or at different events so it is a true multi-media platform. I definitely intend to follow it because hearing from the Prime Minister as he leads his country through this cataclysmic time will be worth my time.

Below is from Mr. Kan’s April 13th post:

Since the Great East Japan Earthquake struck, I have held back from sending out my thoughts through my blog. This was to avoid confusion amidst the ongoing flurry of large amounts of information, while I dedicated myself entirely to responses to the disaster.  With a tense situation continuing even now, a month since the disaster toward the future while I will continue to devote my energies to responses to the earthquake disaster and the nuclear accidents, I will resume blogging little by little.

Good to be home from traveling around Asia Pacific the past couple of weeks talking about Reputation Warfare.  So am now back on the blog posting trail. Two things struck me this week although I will make sure to write more about some of my observations about reputation in Asia in the weeks to come. Just to start out, while I was away, Barron’s World’s Best CEO list came out.  This highly coveted and selective list usually has a theme in addition to its traditional focus on longterm financial performance.  As they say, they like to  identify corporate leaders who make a difference to their companies and deliver for investors. Barron’s require that a CEO has been at the job for at least three years and prefers companies with market values of at least $5 billion. This year their advice to leaders is “Go Thee to Asia.”

“Any big company looking for serious growth in the 21st century must have a plan for Asia. The region is home to half the globe’s population and, increasingly, it’s driving the world’s economy. So, as Barron’s drew up its annual list of the world’s 30 best chief executives, we took a hard look at how each candidate was approaching Asia and other developing markets.”

On another note, this morning while waking up super early from jet lag crazies, I read about the Warren Buffet-Berkshire Hathaway reputation bruise.  In a New York Times article, it says: 

 ”In a July 2010 letter, Mr. Buffett instructed his managers to “zealously guard Berkshire’s reputation.”

“We can afford to lose money — even a lot of money,” Mr. Buffett said. “But we can’t afford to lose reputation — even a shred of reputation.”

These Buffett quotes don’t surprise me and neither does the removal of Mr. Sokol. When I turn to my favorite quote of all time from the sage/oracle from Omaha, it appears he acted swiftly and deliberately. In case you have never heard me say it, it is quite appropriate today. 

“If you lose dollars for the firm by bad decisions, I will be understanding.  If you lose reputation for the firm, I will be ruthless.”

It is hard not to think about the reputation that our country has as a civil nation when events like the tragic shootings in Arizona occur. I was on the phone with a colleague in London earlier this week and she exclaimed how horrific it was to watch the news about Arizona over the weekend. She said that it was on non-stop. [And yes, the young man who pulled the trigger was undoubtedly mentally insane and not just uncivil!]

For a second, I was taken about because I nearly thought of the killings as our secret and shame. However, I know that local is now global when it comes to news and once again, America’s reputation for uncivil behavior needs adjusting. Of course, every country has its moments of tragedy and loss of human life for no reason but the killings and near death of Representative Giffords made us all stop in our tracks and wonder where we are headed as a nation.

About six months ago, we surveyed Americans about civility in this country to determine whether it was in fact mounting in our national dialogue, homes, schools and online. The results were chilling and as expected — we have work to do.  My hope is that we can calm the rhetoric and discuss civility around dinner tables for a long time to come and give our young people a true civics lesson. Perhaps when we revisit civility later this year, we will see a reckoning of sorts.

Scorecards are part of our day-to-day business in building reputation. At Weber Shandwick, we are expert in identifying the right rankings, scorecards, league tables (whatever you might call them) for companies and their leaders. It makes perfect sense to me that vying for the best rankings helps boost reputation. It is but one way to spread the word that your company is worthy of what it is doing. Of course, if you dig too  deep in some of them, you discover flaws. We recently advised a company against issuing a press release on a survey that had fewer than 50 respondents because of its limited sample size and lack of representation. Sometimes you just have to rise above it.

Well, companies are not the only ones to compete for these honors. Countries have caught on as well according to an article I just read. “With investment scarce and jobs even scarcer, countries that sparkle in global league tables can send a powerful signal to investors.”  Countries are in a race to the top of the World Competitivness Index published by IMD, the business school, or the World Bank’s “Doing Business” league tables. Saudi Arabia just made it to the near top (11th place) from 55th place one year ago and Rwanda has moved up from the very very bottom to a more respectable showing. These accolades can go far in convincing investors that a country is business-friendly and investor-worthy.

Turning to company awards, I often talk about rankings fatigue and this article on airline awards in the WSJ nailed it. As it said, “The travel world is overbooked with awards these days, with some two dozen organizations around the world giving out annual awards for the ‘best.’ Each has different selection criteria, different funding and different judging, so they end up with different results.”  That’s alot of applications to fill out and data to provide. This leads me to think that there should be a new corporate title in 2011 — Chief Rankings Officer.

  Who would believe that the late Peter Drucker, famed management guru, would be a hit among young business women in Japan? Well it is true. His reputation lives on. The hit comes in the guise of a book, “What if the Female Manager of a High School Baseball Team read Drucker’s Management”  and is a favorite among this generation in Japan. The book is based on a story about a girl who is the all around go-to member of a baseball team headed by a male coach. She decides to set some goals for the unambitious team after reading Drucker’s 1973 book, “Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices” and by focusing on discrete, measurable goals leads them towards a championship title.  Interestingly, only 61% of women in Japan work and less than 1% are on boards. The hope is that these young women with the noses in Drucker’s management theories might just change the world. [Read about this in The Economist and thought it was a cool way to teach the importance of good management.]