The Reputation Seekers

I think Schumpeter has become one of the best writers in the Economist. Each week he or she takes a sideways look at some issue in business. Often the conclusions are imaginative and thought-provoking. This week the article concerned reputation, and it was generally trashing the industry that has grown up of consultants trying to help corporations manage their reputations. I have plenty of experience of this. I remember well the Shell scandal of inflated reserves. Sadly, this was not the only Shell scandal while I worked for them, but it was a big one. Senior managers right up to the CEO had been forced to admit that, under pressure to produce results, they had created a culture of inflating how much oil we could lay claim to. In the long run, this caused less damage to Shell than the Deepwater Horizon did to BP, but it felt life-threatening to the company at the time. After resignations, the guy appointed as CEO to sort out the mess was Jeroen van der Veer. I remember a quote he made at a big meeting soon afterwards. “Reputation arrives on foot, but departs in a Ferrari”. I agree. Frightened of the potential damage a lost reputation can do, many companies have responded by trying to actively manage their reputation. This has spawned the industry Schumpeter refers to. Luckily for Shell, Jeroen was wiser. Like Schumpeter, he also saw that reputation was a result rather than an input. Of course, it makes sense to consider reputation in actions. The point Jeroen was actually making was that all employees had to consider the reputational impact of all our actions. It is valuable to measure reputation. It is also valuable to have communication messages ready to spin any story as well as it can be spun. But stop there. Don’t start setting reputation as a KPI, or employing armies of consultants. For it won’t work. Actually it may be counter-productive, as staff may subconsciously transfer some of the responsibility for reputation to outsiders. Precisely because it arrives on foot, reputation can only be built slowly and across a whole organisation. It starts with authenticity, the very quality that the consultants invariably lack. Jeroen was a strange guy: he spoke badly, was unashamedly technical and lacked any charisma. The markets found it hard to empathise, and that was mutual. But he was so plainly authentic, he was the perfect choice for Shell at the time. When I see how the BP leadership reacted to Deepwater Horizon, I feel doubly blessed about Shell’s parallel experience. Yet nowadays Jeroen is the exception, and BP the norm. Just look at the sheiks and money men with their ready sound bites in Bahrain last weekend. Or any politician you see, in the UK, USA or anywhere else. Or the religious gurus we come across. Or even John Terry, with his first reaction to his sending off appearing on Tuesday to be a pack of lies. When I see these things, I tend to shrug and think that the Ferrari will arrive for them in the end. Sometimes even Ferrari’s take a long time to arrive, even generations, but authenticity usually wins out in the long run. In the age of the internet there are gradually fewer and fewer places to hide as well. So how can we be authentic ourselves? If we need to be told the answer to that one, we probably have already been swallowed by the reputation sharks. But we can always do better. One clue is to recognise the difference between inputs and outputs. Outputs in the end are what matters, they determine our success and our well-beings. But usually outputs cannot be directly influenced, so they are the wrong place to focus. Good work on inputs leads, in mysterious ways, to better outputs. We see this in everyday situations. In choirs, I am sometimes asked to use my diaphragm, and sometimes asked to blend with other singers. How do I do these things? I cannot feel my diaphragm, let only use it. And how exactly I am supposed to blend? Should I try to put myself into a sort of human coffee grinder? In both cases, these are outputs. My diaphragm will work for me if I stand a certain way, breathe using abdominal muscles, and so on. I will blend if I tone down, listen and look for parts that I can harmonise with. When I am teaching, I have the same problem, and most experienced practitioners do as well. That is why some people make great trainers or teachers. They can work back from outputs to inputs, and express the inputs in a way that pupils can action. But there are more important outputs in life than blending or good breathing. What about love? Happiness? Peace? Even reputation? Receiving? Fear of death? In each case, the answer is simple, yet so difficult to put into practice. Saint Francis captured it perfectly. Lord, make me an instrument of your peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love. Where there is injury, pardon. Where there is doubt, faith. Where there is despair, hope. Where there is darkness, light. Where there is sadness, joy. O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console; to be understood, as to understand; to be loved, as to love. For it is in giving that we receive. It is in pardoning that we are pardoned, and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life. Amen If spirituality can teach us one thing, it is this. To receive most outputs, work on the input that is the converse. And not just for God, because it works! Saint Francis is probably not quoted in many boardrooms. Perhaps that is too much to hope for. Reading Schumpeter and getting rid of some of the snake oil salesmen might be a more attainable goal for now.