Posts Tagged ‘Weber Shandwick’
Last night I was asked how long I had been blogging. I threw out a number without thinking about it. However, since I was not sure, I went online to determine how long it might actually be and I was curious about whether I had hit an anniversary of sorts. Should I be celebrating my 5th or 8th or 10th year anniversary of blogging about reputation?
My first web site was CEOgo.com. I defined it as "The premier site on chief executive officers, leadership and management trends." Actually, there was no other comparable site so I could have easily said it was "The site on chief executive officers, leadership and management trends." CEOgo is no longer live since it was closed down after I left my previous position and I joined Weber Shandwick, starting anew with reputationXchange. I started CEOgo in February 2000 (according to when it was registered) which answers my question on how long I've been blogging -- 11+ years. Who would have thought I had so much to say on CEOs, CEO reputation, corporate reputation, CEO transitions, leadership and all things reputation-related. CEOgo was the site to go to on CEO turnover, whether CEOs were insiders or outsiders, average tenure, reasons for departure, reputation-building, etc. It certainly chronicled my thought leadership in this area and eventually rolled itself all up into my book, CEO Capital. And although much has changed (the more common division of the Chairman and CEO role for one), much has stayed the same. It is among the hardest jobs there is, next to being President of the U.S.
I have anniversaries on my mind today because I am looking at my five-year anniversary at Weber Shandwick. Although I like to think that annniversaries come and go and corporate life has its good-and-plenty ups and downs, I have to say that my past half decade at Weber Shandwick has been fulfulling, productive and full of pleasurable surprises. The leadership and collegiality are truly the real deal and I am thankful for what I have been encouraged to accomplish. And I have also been lucky enough to work with Liz and Jen who make all the difference to my ability to face those very early mornings that are my habit.
It is important not to let important milestones just pass -- whether 11 years of blogging about reputation or 5 years at Weber Shandwick. I consider myself lucky.
I am in a big believer in being prepared for reputational damage or crisis. My book on Corporate Reputation: 12 StepsTo Safeguarding and Recovering Reputation is all about learning from crisis and being ready for the next one. As Weber Shandwick's most admired stumble rate declares, every company should plan on some reputational mishap or misstep in the future. Nearly four in 10 companies have lost reputational status in the past year. I just read an article sent to me about the National Preparedness Leadership Initiative at Harvard. The initiative's goal was to learn lessons from leaders who have faced crisis situations such as terrorist attackes (Israel, Madrid, London), natural disasters (Hurricane Katrina), health scares (pandemics), oil spills (Deepwater Horizon), etc.
One of the first lessons they uncovered applies to companies and institutions and is:
"...that bad leadership – much like smoking – is a public health risk factor. Whether in the aftermath of a terror attack or a natural disaster, we have seen that when leaders don’t perform well lives are lost and people abandoned."And the second lesson is getting everyone on the same page so everyone can work quickly, effectively and efficiently on behalf of a common and shared goal.
"Working together after a disaster requires forging bonds before a disaster."Third, and a powerful lesson for companies, is to "expect every citizen to participate." Leaders have to listen no matter how soft or weak the signals are. And these early warning signs need to get to those who can act and whose job it is to protect reputation. Empowering employees is critical to averting reputational disaster. As the National Preparedness Leadership Initiative found, "citizen bystanders" can make all the difference as we saw with the shoe bomber and underwear bomber airline incidents of the past few years.
"We should regard these heroes as leaders in their own right."
- Reputation stumblers had more CEO transitions or changes. Those companies that lost reputational status had more CEO transitions and retirement announcements during 2010. This is perhaps not surprising since change at the top can signal that a company is in turmoil or that a new strategic direction has been set. On the other hand, rankings may be very sensitive to the uncertainty of any CEO transition – voluntary or not.
- Reputation stumblers underperformed non-stumblers in terms of financial performance. Stumblers’ average share price rose 9.5% year over year compared to the 21.2% for non-stumblers . Although it might seem confusing that stumblers’ share price rose, it is important to recognize that stumblers are most admired companies.
- Reputation stumblers did not lose admiration for any one particular reason. Stumblers lost reputational equity for a variety of reasons such as governmental investigations, bad loans, poor returns on mergers/acquisitions or issues related to the housing market. No one reason appeared to stand out.
- The most pervasive loss of reputational equity between 2010 and 2011 was in the area of “wise use of corporate assets,” perhaps a sign of the challenging times. This attribute was the most frequently dinged by survey respondents – industry peers, financial analysts and board members.
- Other factors that appeared to affect the overall stumble rate were perceptions on “people management,” “management quality” and “long-term investment value.” The rankings of 15 stumbling companies on each of these factors dropped since 2010, possibly reflecting a lack of confidence in a company’s overall long-term strategic direction.
- The least damaged driver during 2010 for stumblers was “financial soundness.” Only 8 of the 22 stumblers lost credit on this attribute, perhaps because of an improving economy and/or raters cut their peers some slack, recognizing how hard it’s been the past few years to grow a business.
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!
I am always eager to learn how other countries are managing their company or brand online reputations. Here in the U.S., it is always a topic of conversation at work or at home. Therefore I was pleased when a colleague in our office in the Hague sent me some research they did among executives in Dutch organizations on the subject. I was particularly pleased that they cited our global research that we did on online reputation management in cooperation with the Economist Intelligence Unit. Here are some of the facts that jumped out at me and here is the link if you are interested in learning more.
- Most Dutch companies actively monitor social media but do not react proactively when something appears online that impacts their reputation.
- Dutch companies are slow to react to detractors online or what we call badvocates (I would say that companies here in the U.S. do not necessarily react that quickly either). Dutch companies are quicker to respond to advocates or those who support them than their critics. I think that this reflects the difficulty in getting executives to agree on what to say to detractors. There are so many opinions and people to consult unless you are extremely well-rehearsed or fairly advanced on the social media continuum.
- A large 62% said that they had encountered badvocates online and one-quarter felt that they had difficulty controling their impact. I would have expected the latter number to be higher since it is hard to control one's badvocates. It is hard to know what to do unless you are in the social media conversation often and have built credibility.
- Suprising to me, these executives believe that positive comments online have a greater impact on reputation than negative comments. I would have thought the other way around since detractors' negativity travels so quickly here in the U.S. But this does make sense.
- Nearly two-thirds (64%) say that Dutch companies do not have a plan for managing reputation online. That seems to compare with the U.S. in terms of preparation. I think that most companies think about online reputation management but their planning is less than perfect.
- Among those who took to the podium, the World Economic Forum at Davos was the leading executive speaking platform for industry-leading CEOs.
- The World Economic Forum was followed by the Clinton Global Initiative among our list of Five-Star conferences in 2010. Other forums are below.
| Industry-Leading CEOs’ Top ThreeExecutive Speaking Engagement Venues in 2010 |
| (1) World Economic Forum at Davos |
| (2) Clinton Global Initiative |
| (3) Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit (tie) |
| (3) The Wall Street Journal CEO Council (tie) |
| Other Events: (alphabetical order) Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy’s (CECP) Board of Boards, Chief Executives Club of Boston, Milken Institute Global Conference, National Press Club, Wharton Leadership |
- The global economy and outlook was the leading topic for industry-leading CEOs who participated in these events. Other themes included education, gender equality and company- or issue-specific opportunities. What will top executives talk about throughout 2011 if the economy recovers.....perhaps they will focus on their positioning and differentiation and corporate responsibility will rise again in popularity (it has slowed we think). I did hear that regional forums on corporate responsibility are increasing.
Yesterday we released our analysis on where industry-leading CEOs and the most powerful women in business invested their time speaking in 2010. Reputations can be shaped at such top-tier events and company stories can travel the world, if properly socialized. We used to depend on media coverage to get the message out about a speaking platform but with social media at our fingertips today, a speech before 50 people can travel fast to many more influential people than ever imagined. If companies can properly distribute their executives' speech-making online, they can now realize an even healthier ROI for their executives' time than ever before. And let's not forget how much time, resources and energy goes into just one speech or presentation. It is never a walk in the park!
I am going to blog backwards about our findings by starting with what we learned about the most powerful women in business first and get to the industry-leading CEOs later this week. Like we had in grade school, today is backwards day.
I am quite pleased that we decided to look at the most powerful women in business because this is a small, exclusive club that demands further research in the communications field. Greater demand for female leaders was recently underscored when we learned that the World Economic Forum now requests that 20 percent of this year’s strategic partnership delegates be female. That polite request is sure making the rounds because I see it popping up all over. Despite the small sample size of these most powerful women (alas!), we did learn some interesting trends about what they've been doing on the speaking circuit over the past 12 months. And they've been busy. Here are some snippets from our analysis:
- This elite group of powerful business women was extremely active on the speaking circuit in 2010. A large eight out of 10 (82 percent) spoke at one or more events in 2010.
- In addition, the average number of events that each woman spoke at in 2010 was 3.2 events, with 11 women having spoken at five or more events.
- The leading speaking forums in 2010 for the most powerful women executives included the World Economic Forum, Fortune Brainstorm: Tech, the Women’s Conference (hosted by former California First Lady Maria Shriver and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger), Daily Beast’s Women in the World, and not surprisingly, Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Summit (although not everyone who makes the list is a speaker). However, there was also a wide range of other types of conferences where top women in business spoke such as Business for Social Responsibility (BSR) Annual Conference, Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy (CECP) Board of Boards, Milken Institute Global Conference, and The Wall Street Journal CEO Council. Micho Spring, our chair of the Global Corporate practice at Weber Shandwick said: “The vast majority of these women leaders are taking their communications and storytelling roles seriously. There are not only many women’s conferences for female leaders, but many other non-gender specific platforms as well.”
- Leading women executives are out in force. This is quite a broad range which shows that there is demand for these top executives. The types of conferences can be categorized as follows:
| Types of Speaking Engagement Venues Most Powerful Women in Business Spoke in 2010 |
| Industry Events (50%) |
| Women’s Leadership Events (43%) |
| Academic Events (40%) |
| Five-Star* Events (35%) |
| Function-Specific (18%) (i.e., ANA Masters of Marketing, NACD Directorship Forum) |
As the new year approaches, I decided to assemble my thoughts on what's ahead in the world of reputation for 2011. I posted eight trends on HuffingtonPost that I see emerging and taking hold over the next 12 months. You will have to check out the post to see what I said about each (my way of saying please check it out). Here they are.
1. Hijacked Reputations
2. Reputation Recoverers Anonymous
3. Reputation Warfare
4. Online Reputation Revisionism
5. Ascendancy of Social CEOs
6. Reputation Blacklisting
7. Reputation Risk Insurance
8. The Corporate Brand Rises
The original title of the post is Ask the Magic-8 Ball: Reputation Trends for 2011. HuffingtonPost shortened it to make it more clear (they are right). However, the Magic 8-Ball is a toy that I used to play with when I was little and which is still around. Here is what Wikipedia says about the toy:
The Magic 8 Ball is a toy used for fortune-telling or seeking advice, manufactured by Mattel. The Magic 8 Ball is a hollow plastic sphere resembling an oversized, black and white 8 ball. Inside is a cylindrical reservoir containing a white, plastic, icosahedral floating in alcohol with dissolved dark blue dye. The die is hollow, with openings in each face, allowing the die to fill with fluid, giving the plastic die minimal buoyancy. Each of the 20 faces of the die has an affirmative, negative, or non-committal statement printed on it in raised letters. There is a transparent window on the bottom of the Magic 8 Ball through which these messages can be read.Ask The Magic 8-Ball is the perfect ending to a difficult year threatened by a poor economy and many unsettled issues that still afflict populations around the world. The question for the Magic 8-Ball is "Will 2011 Be Better than 2010?" Pick one of the 20 standard answers below that appear on the Magic 8-Ball for what's ahead. I picked the fifth one -- Outlook GOOD. Happy New Year!
- ? As I see it, yes
- ? It is certain
- ? It is decidedly so
- ? Most likely
- ? Outlook good
- ? Signs point to yes
- ? Without a doubt
- ? Yes
- ? Yes – definitely
- ? You may rely on it
- ? Reply hazy, try again
- ? Ask again later
- ? Better not tell you now
- ? Cannot predict now
- ? Concentrate and ask again
- ? Don't count on it
- ? My reply is no
- ? My sources say no
- ? Outlook not so good
- ? Very doubtful
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