Three Ages of Reputation
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The business community’s attitude to reputation management has evolved/mutated in several steps within the framework of Ukrainian business practice. During the times of economic growth reputation was confabulated and stories were told that it was the key factor of market compounding. During the times of “improvement” reputation was the lowest of the low – they said that in the days when everything was decided by divine beings’ backroom dealing there was no need to waste money on “PR”. Following the latest extraordinary calamities – a financial crisis followed by a social and political one – reputation risks and benefits have become everybody’s preoccupation again.
Such a “swing” just stresses that reputation is definitely an asset but a very, very paradoxical asset:
One should be able to work with it correctly.
One can develop it painstakingly and lose it practically in no time.
One may not work at it at all and become a “star” by a twist of fate.
But, like our great football coach Lobanovsky said, “The system beats the rate”. And I will add that a first-rate system (in our case, systematic work at reputation) monetizes itself really well transforming the public opinion into the effective coin. And long-term competitiveness. Thus, the legendary Sony that invariably belongs to the TOP-100 most respected companies in the world scrambled out of losses only in 2013, for the first time over the last five years: it finished last fiscal year in the black and restored 60% of its capital position that was lost in 2005-2013.
According to experts (reputation managers, marketing consultants, economists), in respect ratings “consumer” corporate brands gave way to groundbreakers whose price is not so firmly fixed to profitability – only to expectations. And expectations are advance trust, the result of correct reputation.
When people say “high business reputation” I secretly smile. There can be no high, low, wide, or narrow reputation. There is one that helps you to achieve your aims in your life (including your business). And there is one that stands in your way.
That is one can be a disgusting person but an efficient businessperson who everybody is ready to work with. Or a very, very good person who cannot do their business properly but who is assisted by their partners because he/she is so unique.
One of my personal discoveries in the recent years is the antifragile theory by Nassim Taleb, an outstanding thinker of our times. The theory is a more scientific “life story” of the Black Swans, that is some events too dangerous for stability: entrepreneurs’ ups and downs of enormous force. Hence, the fragile arises in the situation of negative symmetry – when a pain caused by losing assets of a particular value is greater than a pleasure of acquiring a matching asset. Correspondingly, positive asymmetry is the situation opposite to the mentioned above – it gives rise to antifragility.
Thus, correct reputation is bound to be antifragile and excessive. Its forging starts with assessing a reputation risk but not its benefit. Because the reputation is to be excessive and have an anti-crisis safety bag, be run by the system based on hyper-compensation (be ready for the worst and consider the best a just reward). Only in this case it will be antifragile. Fragile reputation breaks during the very first crisis, antifragile reputation can stand practically all cataclysms and only grows stronger approaching the target one asymptotically.
The extent to which you will be able to solve this complex task depends on whether you follow an organic or a mechanical way. That is whether you grow reputation like a living organism or build it like an inanimate mechanism.
The trust of audiences important for us is built or destroyed by our words or actions and each of these acts of being is reputation-forging. It means that in a situation of stability when you might be quietly working without “promoting yourself”, you should take care of the impression you make: pay heed to the media, take part in events, reflect on reputation consequences of your statements and actions. The paradox consists in doing the same things in a situation of crisis. When a sandstorm starts, a caravan introduces safeguards to protect cameleers and camels. But if guidance is right, it does not go out of its way.
Information as a Double-Edged Sword
We can leave reputation fragile or try to make it antifragile. But we have to take into consideration the fact that it is established not in a vacuum but in a saturated space full of signal sources and information flows. And information is antifragile in its nature – everything that is kept secret is much more interesting than available data. That is why we should not go over the top seeking antifragility. Criticism (provided it is reasonable) is often the best way to increase reputation assets. Bill Gates’ harsh criticizing welfare initiatives of Google aimed at providing the Internet to poor regions in Africa did not influence stakeholders’ trust. But it generated additional interest.
The same refers to the epidemic of fakes that has swept the world recently. An innocent but inconsistent with our target reputation fake irritates, a libelous campaign makes blood boil. But with all natural dislike of ill fame, repelling information attacks successfully only improves one’s reputation. Especially if they are accepted as a given: the information space in the age of the Internet cannot be controlled by private individuals even if they are very powerful (at least single-handedly). So it means that instead of trying to empty the ocean with a spoon one should learn to swim in it.
To Be or to Be Heard to Be
Today it is generally believed that the Ukrainian society has reached a new level of civic awareness; that deceitful and hypocritical politicians of the old school as well as socially irresponsible businessmen will not abuse the society’s trust any more, will not be successful and make money off it. Alas, I would like to tell you that catharsis has taken place, we have cleared ourselves and now it is enough to be a decent successful person to have good reputation. But it will be a bald-faced lie. Because neither the white noise of econometric models and “Pelevin’s” black noise of manipulative PR technologies have disappeared for good. Their density has just increased. Under these conditions it is easier to be heard to be than to be. Yet, not more effective. Because the seeming and artificial is always fragile and only the natural displays an antifragile quality.
Besides, intoxicating the society with these noises makes us see the world in a new light, not like we did in the crisis-free time. To be calmer, to try to be indifferent to being assessed by others. Taleb has a good new notion. People who deal with their reputation in the wrong way, who react to criticism nervously are named by him “bumps-that-depend-on-words”. Life won’t end tomorrow morning (even under conditions of quasi-hostilities). It means we should welcome its challenges as an opportunity to secure antifragility getting the best of changeability and diversity of the information space.
http://forbes.net.ua/woman/1372808-tri-vozrasta-reputacii