Companies, I’ve got news for you. Managing your reputation isn’t that hard. Here is what you need to do. Just five points. There may be more, but these will always get you started in the right direction.
1. Be as visible as you need to be. You can’t have a relationship with a person or a group, or be important to them, if they don’t know who you are and what you stand for. The first step of reputation management is to maintain adequate awareness among your key audiences. And don’ just bazooka your information at them. Stay in a dialogue with the people who you need to motivate to act or advocate on the company’s behalf. In times of stress, be present, provide information, be quick, and be honest.
2. Think in terms of values, value and valuation. Have good values, and live up to them in decisions, actions, and relationships. Find out whether your organization’s decisions and priorities reflect your stated values. Find out whether the company’s values are the same as constituents’ values. Define the value that is created in each relationship. Make sure it is sufficient to support the valuation you want—whether that is product pricing, talent compensation, stock price, or some other valuation.
3. Be as you wish to appear to others. Invest in the attributes you want to be known for. Make sure the attributes matter to your key audiences, and communicate them. Be the company, or the person, you want your audiences to think you are.
4. Know what to say, to whom you need to say it, and when. Focus on those three simple criteria for communications. Don’t say anything that doesn’t fit that definition. Anything else is wasteful. But saying nothing at all is often a false economy. When in doubt, think of the relationship you want to create or maintain with the key audience. Think of a one to one conversation with someone in that key audience. What do you want them to say to othes about you? What are they saying now? What do they need to know to manage their own risk? When do they need to know it? Consider your values. In most situations, you are judged as much by what you don’t say, as by what you do say. Be economical, but don’t fail to say what needs to be said.
5. Say what you mean. Mean what you say. The global tolerance for corporate double talk is lower than ever. Hiding the message, hoping to be ignored when there is bad news, not following through on commitments–that may work with some of the people some of the time. But when they finally realize you ‘ve been trying to mislead them, or have said less than you need to, less often, those relationships are damaged or ended. You will lose reputation.
We hear a lot about transparency. It’s hard to make new commitments to be transparent. But controlling the time and place and context of information sharing is much easier if you maintain a stream of information and build good relationships with those who use it. Involuntary transparency occurs when someone else discloses something you want to be kept out of circulation, or you are force to do it at an unplanned time. That is often very painful and damaging. Leaks, rumors, new regulatory or political mandates are natural actions to fill a void. Like nature, your relationships abhor a vacuum.
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