Posts Tagged ‘Scoreboxx’

          I think about rankings and scorecards all the time. Afterall, I cut my teeth on Fortune's Most Admired Companies years back.  At the time, there were not many competing scorecards. And, afterall,  today we have an active rankings practice at Weber Shandwick that we call Scoreboxx. We help companies all the time understand what rankings are important to pursue and which are not worth the time. There is barely a day that I don't hear about a new scorecard or as I have mentioned in a post I wrote on reputation trends, a newworst-of  list.  In fact, I have started collecting worst-of lists because they fascinate me as much as best-of  lists. Strange hobby but who knows, they could be worth something in the future. Not really. Today's New York Times had a fascinating article on the rankings and metrics obsession that we seem to live by.  The writer even predicted how the frenzy will only rise as we enter the serious election campaign. Little did she probably know that the op-ed page in today's NYT had a chart on how Donald Trump was measuring up as a front runner in several polls as a presidential candidate.  Here are some the quotes from the rankings article that I highlighted for sakekeeping. They go far in explaining our rankings addiction.

"Numbers make intangibles tangible,” said Jonah Lehrer, a journalist and author. “They give the illusion of control.” "The trouble, though, is when we mindlessly and blindly rely on those numbers to tell us everything," said Sherry Turkle, a professor of social studies of science and technology and director of MIT. “Just because we have the skills and ability to put metrics on everything doesn’t mean we should.” "This reliance and overweening trust in numbers is to some extent generational," said Howard Gardner, a professor of cognition and education at Harvard Graduate School of Education. “For almost anybody in the United States under the age of 25, the only models are quantifiable rankings,” he said.

 A few comments. I don't think we can blame everything on the younger generation although Gardner has a point about everything being quantified for them (SATs), so why shouldn't they apply it everywhere else?  The truth is that all age cohorts use rankings to pick the best restaurant, best travel location, best employer and best college to apply for.  We're all hooked. The article also goes into how authors end up measuring themselves by Amazon rankings of books sold.  As the author of two books, people always ask me how many books did you sell? Personally, I have no idea since I wrote the books out of love for my topic, reputation, and much much less for my status on the number of books sold.  However, I sometimes think I am not a very good author because I don't know the answer to this frequently asked question and I'd be a better person if I at least knew. Despite that, I have to get better at checking Google Analytics to see how many people read my blog. When I have looked at it in the past, I could not figure out whether I should be blogging on Fridays or Mondays or Thursdays and just gave up. I have to get better at this because I don't know how I fare! Another element in the article certainly caught my eye. It referred to a blog posting on Online Status Anxiety by Jonah Lehrer who has a new book out on How We Decide.  He is so right. People are obsessed also with the number of followers and fans and likes.  Our social ranking is now quantified.  Yikes. Here is a selection I took out of Jonah Lehrer's blog posting:

"Now that the social web is maturing - the platforms have been winnowed down to a select few (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.) - some interesting commonalities are emerging. The one shared feature that I'm most interested in is also a little disturbing: the tendency of the social software to quantify our social life. Facebook doesn't just let us connect with our friends: it counts our friends. Twitter doesn't just allow us to aggregate a stream of chatter: it measures our social reach. LinkedIn has too many damn hierarchies to count. Even the staid blog is all about the metrics, from page views to unique visitors."

I think I am going to check out my blog postings metrics today! Enough slacking on the metrics. My online reputation should be the measure of my life!

  Not sure it means anything but we thought we’d take a look at whether there are more scorecards/rankings now vs. one year ago. We keep this large, complex and detailed database on which awards exist for companies seeking to be recognized as being the most responsible, best at diversity, most ethical, best leadership, best reputation, best training, etc.  The database looks at when applications are due, when they are announced, who fills out the surveys, how to apply, how popular the ranking  is, etc.  You get it.  The database, called Scoreboxx™, helps companies “credentialize” themselves and communicate how they lead the industry.  It is part of our reputation-building services.

 

Since we realized it would be next to impossible to determine if there has been a change in the number of scorecards year over year since many scorecards just disappear or just get added randomly, we took a look at response rates to some of the rankings in 2007 vs. 2008. Not a scientific analysis but interesting nevertheless.  Listed below is our brief analysis of some of them for what’s worth.

 

Some are up and some are down. Some are flat. Here is what Liz, my colleague, and I think. For those awards where recruiting or talent  are important, higher responses have been recorded year over year. More employers returned surveys for BusinessWeek’s Best Places to Launch a Career and Fortune’s Top 100 MBA Employers, more applications were received this year for DiversityInc Top 50 and more nominations came in for the World’s Most Ethical Companies.  It goes without saying that the lower number of respondents for BusinessWeek’s Most Innovative Companies means nothing since this has been a disruptive year for business and some executives were just holding your breath that they were not getting pink slips. And presumably many did.

 

				Chg vs. prior year
List	2007	2008	2009
BusinessWeek Best Places to Launch a Career				flat
Career directors	63	60	(will be out in Sept)
Employers	95	119		á
BusinessWeek Customer Service Champs		>1,000 readers	>1,000 readers	flat
BusinessWeek Most Innovative Companies		2,950 execs	2,700 execs	â
DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity		352 applications	401 applications	á
Ethisphere World's Most Ethical Companies			"…received a record # of company nominations…" (no data)	á
Fortune Best Companies to Work For		100,000 employees (246/company)	~81,000 employees (229/company)	â
Fortune Top 100 MBA Employers		5,769 MBA candidates	6,207 MBA candidates	á
Harris Interactive Reputation Quotient		7,105 consumers	6,587 consumers	â
Reputation Institute Global Pulse		>60,000 consumers	>70,000 consumers	á

  

What does seem interesting is that in a world where companies have stumbled catastrophically and reputational equity has been slipping away, the focus on talent, diversity and ethics might be a good sign of better things to come.

   Over the past few weeks, there have been several reputation rankings released. I am stunned by the proliferation of rankings on reputation. It is getting harder to keep track of whose ranking is whose and what’s behind the numbers. Whereas there used to only be one or two major reputation rankings, today there are scores. We (my team at Weber Shandwick) knows because we keep track of them every day in our database called Scoreboxx.  We must have over 700 primetime corporate rankings that companies can compete on and receive recognition.  These rankings fall into broad categories such as corporate responsibility, workplace, diversity, leadership, etc.  Years ago, a company only had to worry about Fortune’s Most Admired Companies survey. Now you have to be on the alert for lists that give you a thumbs up or thumbs down.

 

In the past few weeks, we have seen the release of Harris Interactive’s Reputation Quotient,  Reputation Institute’s  Pulse Survey and  Millward Brown’s  Global Brands (BrandZ).  All good and “reputable”  lists. However, they are all coming out at about the same time and comingling in people’s minds.  Years ago when I was at Fortune, we conducted a landmark survey about business readership of business magazines. A few years later, Forbes conducted their  own readership survey of business magazines with a twist that confused the marketplace. The two surveys were similar but because many people still confused Fortune and Forbes, Fortune’s competitive advantage was weakened.  

 

My reputation advocate friend Joy Sever is right when she says that all these lists are diluting one another because most people do not understand the differences between them and how the data are gathered.  She was right to also say that pretty soon it will all be about the reputation of the reputation rankings. It seems like that has already begun.

 

The most important way to measure reputation is to take these reputation rankings into account but focus primarily on your own customized research that drills down into your most important stakeholders’ perceptions and most critical reputation dimensions. By tracking your own company reputation vs. competitors over time, reputation-building has its best shot.