Author Archives: Lisa Lawless

We’ve yet to finish the first quarter and already 2020 is one for the record books. Anxiety and fatigue are setting in for companies, consumers, and employees, as we all try to figure out what to do next, embarking on new territory that seems to be changing at the speed of light. This is “Who Moved My Cheese,” on steroids, and you are seeing how that is impacting society already.

As leaders, what you do now in the middle of chaos influences where your brand will stand in the future. This moment is where you can begin to architect your reputation, which is the difference between thinking not only in crisis and change management terms but also expanding your vision to a longer-term result of reputation building. It is essential to remember your mission, values, and purpose as you lead through the weeks and months ahead. Dust these words off and bring them to the forefront as you will need to rely upon them as you make upcoming critical decisions for your business and your stakeholders.

Four things happen in a crisis that are important for leaders to be aware of and be prepared to act upon with your leadership teams and stakeholders. Your mindset toward these outcomes can be critical to how your brand survives the crisis and comes out on the other side. The commonality of each is that communication is essential.

Crisis Exposes Gaps and Bad Behavior

Any disruption in the way you do business, especially in a crisis scenario, will expose all of your gaps and inefficiencies. It will also showcase those companies, and frankly employees and leaders, that talk a good game but aren’t delivering upon their promises. Many companies have been on such a growth trajectory that they may have some significant gaps that they weren’t aware existed. This is an opportunity to close these gaps and fix these issues while holding everyone in your organization to a higher standard. It may also be a matter of removing some barriers that are slowing down success and the ability to move with agility. In the next few weeks and months, you will be totally focused on supporting your employees, your customers, and your business. But, the sooner you close the gaps, remove barriers, and get the right people on the team with refreshed accountability standards, the better you will weather the storm and come out on the other side in the best position to recover faster.

Leaders Lead

As we see fear and panic spread across the globe; calming, trusted leadership voices are needed. Employees are more likely to have trust in their employers than anywhere else. (In the 2019 Edelman Trust Barometer, more than 71% of respondents said they were looking for leadership from their employer to respond to challenging times from issues regarding industry, political events, national crisis, and employee-driven issues.) But this also extends to all of your stakeholders — your customers, your partners, and your community. So, it is extremely important that your leadership team takes this responsibility to heart. Stay calm and communicate often with transparency and open channels of communication. Both expressing and demonstrating accessibility is important. This is new territory, and many will be figuring it out as we go. Also, don’t forget to share your expertise and thought leadership. Here is an opportunity to distinguish yourself from your competitors by sharing what you do best, how you are innovating, and how you think. Your customers are looking for partners to help them through difficult times, so don’t forget to share your knowledge and collaboration on solutions.

Innovation is Born

Sometimes customer demands are the cause of disruption, but in this case, the crisis is requiring us to think in a completely different way. Some newer disruptions like online grocery shopping, food delivery services, and telemedicine were already in place, but demand and preparedness are being tested. If you are in that business, how will this change your processes forever? And whoever thought we’d have drive-thru virus-testing centers? Will that be a permanent solution for flu, strep throat, etc.? Drug stores like CVS and Walgreens are looking at delivery of medicines, not a new idea but a revitalized one. This is your opportunity to innovate. How can you still deliver to your customers while keeping your employees safe? As social distancing is in place and people are self-quarantining, can you provide knowledge sharing and thought leadership through alternative methods? Can you utilize this time to talk to your customers, maybe conduct perception audits and surveys? Then create new ideas to better support their needs, perhaps accelerate or shift R&D. Can you look at how other industries are innovating and creating efficiencies and see what might work for your industry, cross-pollinating as you will? Can you provide your employees with much-needed training that no one ever has time to do? How about having those strategy sessions you keep postponing? And there is no better time to create and implement a risk assessment process? Can you share what you are learning with your customers so that they can innovate too?

Battle for Trust is Won

In times of crisis, trust and loyalty to your brand, almost for the lifetime of a stakeholder, can be earned or lost by the way you handle the adversity. Back to the Edelman Trust Barometer…the 2020 report highlighted trust being heavily tied to competence and ethics. This battle can be won as simple as this – deliver a good product or service, do the right thing, and communicate with honesty and empathy.

As the world is in chaos, understanding these four outcomes and being able to embrace them and adjust can be the beginning of architecting your reputation. Staying close with your stakeholders through a stabilizing, inside-out communication strategy that is anchored with a transparent and empathetic dialogue will create long-term equity for your brand.

Please visit our COVID-19 Resource page for curated information concerning brand and reputation during this time.

The importance of a good corporate reputation is at an all-time high, yet 2018 is the first year of significant reputation decline since the end of the Great Recession according to the Reputation Institute. Surveys like Edelman’s Trust Barometer showcase consumers have significantly lost trust in media and governments.

Though stakeholders trust corporations less than they did a year ago, they are still more trusted than media and governments. This environment gives corporations an opportunity to build trust through leadership and direct communication.

Many CEOs claim that reputation is a focus area for them, yet a crisis can still set some of the most reputable companies back for as much as two years according to a study conducted by the William Allen White School of Journalism & Mass Communications at the University of Kansas.

Today, stakeholders are expecting never-before-seen levels of transparency. Online reputation management companies are sprouting out of thin air to help companies clean up their online reputations. Millennials have said for years that a company needs to be corporately responsible to earn their business. But just wait, Gen Z is going to place even higher demands on the lip service of Millennials and require proof that companies are, indeed, ‘good.’

No matter the size of the company you lead, whether a young growing company or a global conglomerate, you will be faced at some point with solving the problem that is known as your reputation. As a CEO, how do you lead a company to architect and protect its reputation?

The first step is to understand who owns reputation in your organization. In a smaller company, it may be your executive team or marketing. In a larger organization, you may have a Chief Reputation Officer. If so, is this role filled by a communicator, a lawyer, someone with an HR background, or maybe a marketer? To whom does the Chief Reputation Officer report? Is it the CEO?

If you don’t have a Chief Reputation Officer, then who is tasked with protecting your organization’s reputation?

Communicators own reputation management and crisis; so, perhaps it’s them? But wait, ethics and compliance are the protectors of the reputation, so maybe they own reputation in your organization. Marketers own the brand; does that put them on point for reputation, as well? What about corporate social responsibility — isn’t that role ensuring the organization is doing good work? And, don’t forget HR leaders, they own your culture, and lead employees who deliver on the brand promise; so, do they own reputation?

In some ways, everyone owns a piece of the reputation pie. But who do stakeholders, the public, and your board hold responsible for the reputation of the company? Yep, that’s you – the CEO.

Now, do you see why there’s a corporate reputation problem? Everyone has a role in reputation, yet no one is really making a difference. Departments are siloed, have different agendas, and often have no organization-wide focus or strategy with regard to reputation. At times, they are actually working against each other. Frankly, the corporate world is stuck in the mud when it comes to reputation.

Perhaps it’s time to change things up and consider architecting reputation versus managing it. How about a team approach?

Reputation has key drivers that can be addressed in many departments within your organization, so it is impossible to think that one person (other than the CEO) can own reputation. The Chief Reputation Officer is a great idea but will struggle to be successful without the power to lead change across an entire organization.

The alternative of selecting a Reputation Team for your organization does require careful consideration. It’s not the NFL Draft, but your future as the coach (CEO) may depend on who you put on the team. First, let’s start by analyzing who within your organization owns the reputation drivers.

1. Products and Services
   The most important driver of a reputation comes from products and services, with more than 1/5 of your reputation laying at the feet of why you are in business. In reality, good products and services are table stakes for being in the reputation game, as you must have good products and services to even consider reputation as a priority. However, when you have a crisis with that which is core to your business, recovery will take longer due to trust erosion, and customers will vote through their wallets. This includes delivering on your promises and making good when things go wrong. So, who owns this in your company – the COO, the VP of Products & Services, or perhaps the Chief Innovation Officer? Whoever it is, she must be included on the Reputation Team.
2. Governance
   Governance is the next most important reputation driver behind products and services. If products and services are equal with competitors’, here is where you can begin to use reputation as a differentiator. Does your company, its partners, and your employees do the right thing? Do you have the processes in place to assure you do the right thing? Who owns this area in your company? Is it Ethics & Compliance? Whoever it is, a spot on your Reputation Team is certain, and he or she is a good candidate to lead the team.
3. Citizenship
   This is the third most influential driver of your company’s reputation. The communities where you work, your customers, and your stakeholders want to know you care about the environment, the people who work for you, and your surrounding communities, including, of late, social injustices. Beyond the products and services, your stakeholders now want to know about the company behind those goods. Are you a purpose driven organization? Do you live that brand? Do your CSR programs align with your brand? The head of your corporate social responsibility team needs a place on your Reputation Team.
4. Leadership
   Not only is leadership important to the reputation of a company, hearing the voice of the leader is more critical than ever. The CEO has to have a role within the Reputation Team. Stakeholders are looking to the CEO to have a conscience, and to think beyond profits and align leadership with the greater good both societally and ethically. And stakeholders want to hear from the CEO directly, not filtered through communications channels. For CEOs, building trust with stakeholders and the public may be job one – a position supported by the 2018 Edelman Trust Barometer where 64% of respondents believe that CEOs should take the lead on change rather than waiting for government to impose it. What an opportunity for corporate leadership!
5. Communication
   We say communication runs through everything within your organization. If you don’t control the narrative, at best people won’t know what your company is doing and for what it stands. At worst, others will control the conversation for you. Transparency is important as is frequent communication. Being perceived as a “genuine” company is the personality trait that yields the highest impact, according to the Reputation Institute’s Global RepTrak report. A communicator should undoubtedly be on your Reputation Team, and in the absence of an ethics & compliance officer, is an excellent choice to lead the team.

A five-person reputation team is a good start, but we would also recommend including your chief people officer, particularly in the absence of a corporate social responsibility lead. Another consideration would be to add your chief marketing officer, especially if he or she is the owner of your organizational brand.

All data points to the importance of a corporate reputation to your organization, but recent research shows that organizations aren’t reaping the rewards of their good reputations and are challenged to sustain reputation levels in a transparent environment. So, something has to change, and organizations that are willing to make the change will stand ahead of their competitors. Creating a Reputation Team within your organization is an excellent first step along the path of architecting your corporate reputation. The rewards will be worth the journey.

When your competitor is experiencing a crisis, what should you do?

Certainly, there is the opportunity to laugh your way to the bank, after all their mistake is your gain – right?

The more prudent approach, though, is to study carefully the circumstances of the crisis and ask, how easily could this happen to us?

When your competitors are in crisis, your industry is at risk and you have reputational exposure if only guilt by association. Crises erupt for large companies almost daily — everything from overbooked airlines to financial fraud and natural gas explosions, as well as faulty batteries, automobile recalls, and cybersecurity attacks to name just a few.

However, it doesn’t matter whether you are a large conglomerate or a small company in a less publicized marketplace. Any crisis your competition is experiencing is yours to address as well.

If your industry already suffers low levels of trust, then your reputation can ill afford to take any further hits. That is when customers begin to find alternatives to your products and services, or when regulators get involved. Large companies can often weather new regulations or significant loss of market share, but smaller companies may find themselves either out of business or ripe for takeover.

When there is a crisis in your industry, instead of watching the flames from afar, assemble your leadership team and get to work solidifying your own reputation with these eight steps:

1. Assess Situational Risk – Maybe you’ve had similar instances that your company managed without large-scale exposure. How did you handle it? Were the situations resolved appropriately, did you change policy and processes, or did you just sweep it under the rug, and hope it didn’t happen again? Are you now at risk of having your dirty laundry exposed while the industry is under a microscope? This is not the time to glaze over reality. Ask the tough questions, understand scenarios, and make sure you are talking to the right people, particularly front-line employees. Never assume managers are fully aware of their staff’s experiences and make sure people feel safe to share.
2. Adjust Policies and Procedures – If you have not been through a similar crisis, how can you keep it from happening to you? Is it a policy issue, or outdated process? Are procedures too complicated to follow leading to missed steps? Do you need to replace equipment or better train employees? Is there a supplier issue, or are your schedules too rushed for proper quality assurance? Are you listening to your customers? Are you listening to your employees? Have circumstances changed since you implemented those processes? Has social media created a new challenge? Are employees prepared?
3. Communication with Transparency – Your stakeholders need to know you are concerned about the situation, and what you are doing to address it within your own company. Take this opportunity to build relationships and trust with your stakeholders by showcasing your care and protection of them. Be sure you are reaching all your stakeholder groups with consistency and aligned messages. And make sure your employees are the first stakeholders on your list.
4. Train for Success – Employees need to understand specifically how these issues and any implemented changes impact them. Train for the situation but also train with your brand’s vision in mind. If you are a customer-centric brand, then elevate your customer care training. If you are in food processing or construction, you may need to re-address safety standards. If you’ve been through a merger or acquisition, is everyone to the same standards and are the standards high enough for the new venture? Are you at risk for cybersecurity attacks that require new training for employees to protect data exposed by multiple access points? In each case, training should be a form of brand buy-in, where everyone is on the same page and agrees this is how you will work together to move your company forward.
5. Conduct Overarching Reputational Risks Assessment – Though you immediately reviewed your situational risks, you need to also evaluate your overarching reputational risks. What are other areas where you risk relationships with your stakeholders? How high are those risks? How damaging would those risks be? Then, what kind of gambler are you? Since the industry is under scrutiny, you are already highly vulnerable. And it is often worse to be the second crisis exposed within an industry because customers are less forgiving of second offenders who didn’t learn from a competitor’s mistakes.
6. Monitor Your Reputation – You should always monitor your reputation but during this time, it is essential. What are influencers saying? How is the situation impacting your reputation with your customers, with the community, with investors, with government/regulators? Is it impacting your current workforce or your future one? How is it impacting your company online – are conversations about your competitor overshadowing or spilling over to your brand?
7. Showcase Your Difference – Remember, reputation is the ultimate differentiator. This is not the time to be a “best-kept secret.” If you are doing things right, if you look at things differently than your competitor, if you have invested time and resources to safeguard against such lapses, you are in a good place and should utilize this opportunity for your brand to shine. You can also showcase that you are learning from mistakes in the industry and are doing things differently from here on out. This is often where challenger brands or even smaller market players can make advances because of their nimbleness and ability for entrepreneurial transformation.
8. Create a Reputation Platform – This is an ideal time to look at your reputation for the future. For what do you want to be known? What characteristics do you want stakeholders to trust and hold dear? What does the marketplace say about you? Where can you build equity? A reputation platform is a leadership plan that expands across the entire company and moves beyond assessing reputational risks. A reputation platform is a roadmap for developing corporate reputation across all seven reputational dimensions — products and services, citizenship, innovation, workplace, governance, leadership, and performance. Through a reputation platform, you will drive toward a brand vision that equals the reputation you want to have. In doing so, your company will develop a living brand that builds equity every day.

Most CEOs say their company’s reputation is important, but also admit they aren’t certain where to focus their efforts to improve reputation or to see more impact on the bottom line.

For companies that have great products or services, and are doing good work but just haven’t broken the reputation code, we suggest CEOs focus initiatives in five areas: brand, communication, culture, connections, and insulation.

Here are 6 questions with follow-ups to help begin your analysis. Try it for yourself over your morning cup of coffee to assess where your company’s reputational focus might begin.

1. What is your company’s brand promise? Not only can you articulate the brand promise, but also is it utilized when making corporate decisions? Employees should know the brand promise as well as their role in delivering upon it – do they? Are you marketing products or service levels that you can’t consistently deliver? Where are your weak links of promise delivery?
2. Are the greatest values of your company a secret? Do you merely tell a product/service story or a complete brand story? Upon how many stakeholder groups does your company focus? How familiar are those groups with the merits and expertise of your company?
3. Does your culture align to your company’s brand? Is the company culture defined by a foosball table and Taco Tuesdays, or is there a deeper sense of purpose? Do people enjoy coming to work and are they engaged with what the company is trying to accomplish? Do the values and mission of the company align with the brand? Do employees know how they are making a difference? Is brand considered in the hiring process?
4. Do you communicate from the inside out? Do your employees learn company news from Google Alerts, or is there a system of communication that keeps them informed? As a company leader, do you have conversations with employees? Does your organization have a culture of communication with crosswalks across divisions and departments?
5. Have you taken the customer journey? Is your company creating experiences along the journey? Are you dropping important stakeholders along the way? What happens when things go wrong, does your company shine in adversity? Do you look at stakeholder surveys? Are you asking the right questions?
6. What are the Top 5 reputational risks for the company? What are the smoldering crises? Is cybersecurity a threat? Overpromising what can be delivered? Rapid growth? Hiring the wrong people? Lack of innovation? Industry slowdown? Regulatory change? Online reputation?

These questions provide the starting blocks to revealing, and ultimately improving a company’s reputation. If you’re comfortable with the answers, you’re likely on the right track. If not, or if you have more questions than answers, give us a call and we’ll walk through the conversation together.

As CEOs and corporate leaders, you are always looking for an edge. How to stay a step ahead? How to outwit the competition? Where to go next?

There are investors and owners looking over your shoulder and employees and communities that count on your decisions every day. Industries are cross-pollinating ideas to capture innovation. Challenger brands are taking market share from the establishments. There is talk of Millennials and Gen Zs, and disruptors are taking advantage of the buying tendencies of those generations.

It is a lot for a leader to think about and some of the things that likely keep you up at night. But what if there was something you could do as a leader of a company that would increase the likelihood that someone would purchase your product by triple-digit percentage points?

What if you could do the exact same thing and increase by triple-digit percentage points the likelihood someone would invest in your company, or come work for your company? Wouldn’t you jump all over it?

For most the answer is obviously, yes; but it begs the question what element can impact those business areas by triple digits?

In the 2017 Global RepTrak 100 survey – which looks at the top 100 reputable companies in the world – the Reputation Institute looked at the link between corporate reputation and stakeholder support. Those surveyed said the likelihood they would buy a product of a company with a weak reputation was 16 percent, however, that increased to 83 percent for a company with an excellent reputation — a 418-percent boost just from reputation. Likewise, the increase for recommend a product was 530 percent, while would work for increased by 329 percent, and would invest in saw an increase of 509 percent.

Reputation is the key. Improving the reputation of your company from having a weak or nonexistent reputation (not even a bad reputation) to having an excellent reputation provides a significant lift on purchasing decisions, recommendations, investments, and talent acquisition. And when a company hits a bump in the road, an excellent reputation provides protection for a quicker recovery because you have equity to draw from.

No other marketing, communication, public relations, leadership, operational, or employee initiative can bring you these numbers. Reputation is the ultimate differentiator and can help you disrupt your industry.

For most company leaders, reputation is a fuzzy thing that is hard to measure. We know it when we see it — our company has familiarity in the community and marketplace, people may even think we do good work, and maybe (if we are ahead of the curve) they even know what we do.

We also know reputation from the negative perspective as the news and social networks keep us well informed of companies that are failing.

For some, the reputation goal may merely be to avoid headlines for something gone wrong. So, they’ve built a crisis plan, they monitor the internet for what people are saying, and they are focused on being a good company with good products. Check! What else can be done really? Reputation is something that you can’t really take ownership of – right?

Wrong. Ultimately, a company has ownership of its reputation and how it is taken care of is entirely up to leaders. Here are four reasons why company leaders should make reputation a strategic focus:

1. The Best Defense is Offense
   We can do more than just protect our reputation, we can guide it, we can create it. No, we don’t fully own our reputation, but we have more opportunity to influence it than anyone or anything else. Reputation, as defined by the Reputation Institute, is an emotional bond that includes trust, admiration, esteem and feeling. As corporations, we can sit back and watch our competitors actively work to acquire this emotional relationship with stakeholders or we can make it an intentional effort of our own. We can control our narrative, tell our story, and create our own connections. Or, we can let others have that influence. Ultimately, our corporate reputation is really in our hands and if we don’t embrace the opportunity, others will.
2. Cha Ching to the Bottom Line
   Reputation impacts stakeholder decisions of whether they will support our company’s efforts, which gives reputation a direct correlation to bottom line results. Companies with excellent reputations see a significant increase over those with weak marks in decisions such as will buy from us, will work for us, will invest in us, will refer us. According to Reputation Institute research in 2016, people showed a 16% likeliness to buy a product from a company with a weak reputation and expressed an 84% likeliness to buy a product from a company with an excellent reputation. Thus, companies with weak or even average reputations get stuck in discussions around price and soon find their products are being commoditized.
3. A Championship Team
   Talent acquisition is a growing business. How much do we spend on talent acquisition in our companies? It’s an important area because people are the innovators within our company; they are the service delivery and the quality control. Our success, as well as the success of our company, relies upon the talent with which we surround ourselves. Reputation has a huge impact upon who we can attract. The Reputation Institute’s research shows 17% of people are willing to work for a company with a weak reputation. However, 73% would work for a company based just upon an excellent reputation. But don’t just think about it from their research, look around at sports teams. Look at college recruiting, year in and year out the University of Alabama has one of the top football recruiting classes. With 16 National Championships, 4 in the last 10 years, Alabama has a reputation for winning championships. So, if an athlete’s goal is to be a part of a championship team, he is certainly going to consider Alabama. However, a star player might also look to go to an up-and-comer because he wants to be a part of creating success.
4. Weather the Storm
   The best protection for a reputation in crises, as well as in downturns, comes from having equity with stakeholders. Working to create real connections with the people that buy our products, partner with us, work with us, and live in our communities over time creates that trust, admiration, esteem, and feeling that insulates our company and allow us to weather the storm when bumps come along, and when others go on the attack. But this equity doesn’t happen overnight. It requires intentional focus on culture, communication, and connections with all stakeholders.