According to Beloit College’s ‘Mindset’ list many young Americans heading to university this year may think Germany has always been one country, Beethoven is a dog rather than a composer and Banana Republic is a fashion store rather than a politically unstable South American dictatorship.

Times change. If we assume others have a similar world-view to us we may find ourselves faced with blank faces, quizzical looks and wildly different expectations if they don’t – all of which can have a huge adverse impact on how we are perceived, which in turn affects our reputation.

Although increasing numbers of us are embracing social media with the intention of having greater and more immediate connection with our clients and contacts there is a danger that in doing so we may actually distance ourselves, and disconnect from the very people we want to engage with.

Hash-tags, bit.ly and RTs (retweets) may be second-nature to you, but if your clients or customers have no idea what you’re talking about, or feel paralysed and unable to respond, you’re more likely to irritate and annoy, rather than connect and engage.
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I recently received an email from an experienced, and highly respected, professional speaker regarding apparently unethical and unprofessional behaviour from another professional speaker based overseas. The email was to give a ‘heads-up’, so to speak, and let me, and know doubt many others, know of this speaker’s run-in with an event-organiser.

These days, especially with the internet and social media, news travels fast, and bad news travels faster. The speaker/Author industry is relatively small and close-knit. It doesn’t take much to ruin a reputation, and a career, from allegedly unethical behaviour.

Thinking through where you might stand on an issue, and what your response might be, without having to deal with a real, live incident, can be useful for all of speaker/authors. For example:

You’ve agreed to speak at an international convention for no fee to promote your book because being there could provide future speaking and distribution opportunities for you. The marketing materials have been sent out and around 80 people have already booked to hear you speak. Three weeks before the event you are approached to speak at another event on the same morning at a significant fee.

Would you honour your original commitment or bail and take the fee-paying engagement?

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Roger McClay. Photo: Richard Robinson as appeared in the New Zealand Herald 13 March 2010

How could a former government minister, Children’s Commissioner and prominent supporter of several charities think it was ok to swindle charities he worked for out of thousands of dollars? What’s happened to honour in New Zealand?

Roger McClay escaped what could have been a seven year jail term by pleading guilty to fraud charges resulting from knowingly claiming mileage costs from two charities he worked for when he used his MP travel perk to fly at at 90% discount. I wonder what part of ‘dishonourable’, ‘disreputable’ and completely ‘unethical’ he didn’t understand?

It’s a massive breach of trust and McClay should be stripped of the Companion of the Queen’s Service Order he received in 2005.

Although McClay originally denied the allegations and was vigorously defended by the former Chief Executive of Keep New Zealand Beautiful, Barry Lucinsky, McClay’s deceit was brazen and significant.

Even though present at board meetings where the charity’s pretty dire financial position was discussed, McClay continued to submit fraudulent travel claims over several years, whilst using his former MP travel perk to fly at just 10% of the usual cost. (more…)

Will ‘business as usual’ ever return? I doubt it. Although business owners and operators may yearn for the ‘good old days’ before the Global Financial Crisis, the chances of ‘business as usual’ ever returning are diminishing by the day, which in my opinion, is probably no bad thing.

As increasing numbers of us have become more cynical than ever, more critical than ever, and aware that it’s significantly more competitive than ever, the level of trust we have in product and service providers has plummeted. Given the ever-expanding list of failed finance companies, apparently less-than-honourable senior executives and so-called ‘professionals’ that turned out to be anything but, our levels of doubt and mistrust have soared. 

Many of us don’t want businesses to go back to being ‘usual’. What we want is ‘business UN-usual’, particularly in terms of truth and trust. New Zealand business commentator Mark Di Somma’s concept of ‘Peak Trust’ is right on the button. Much like the concept of ‘peak oil’, Di Somma notes “some sectors have reached and passed their highest levels of trust – and that they can now expect trust to be harder to find and to cost much more to generate than it has historically.” (more…)

Each month in ‘Reputationz’ newsletter I highlight what I consider to be 3 reputation winners and 3 reputation losers for the month.

They can be people, companies or even abstract ideas. Some are fairly obvious. Others are off-beat or quirky. You may or may not agree! The lists are purely my opinion.

Check out the lists below and feel free to leave a comment or email me with nominations for the next issue. My pick of Reputation Winners for July 2010:

Reputation Winners

Online retailer Zappos.com for honouring a pricing error on its 6pm.com website that resulted in losses of US$1.6 million when every item was priced at $49.95 for several hours.

Wohr Multipark for creating a ‘personal delivery’, automated under-ground parking system that parks cars just inches apart, enabling public space to be reclaimed for pedestrians.

UK company Hotel Chocolat for generating NZ$7.8 million from chocolate bonds snapped up by its tasting club members. Dividends are to be paid bi-monthly in the form of chocolate.

Reputation Losers

Wellington Regional Hospital for providing up to 16,000 faulty tetanus booster shots over a ten year period as a result an apparently faulty refrigerator.

The Auckland Regional Transport Authority (ARTA) for building railway platforms 15m too short for the 3-car electric trains they are supposed to accommodate from 2013.

Google’s experimental automated voice-recognition service that resulted in subtitles on NZ Prime Minister John Key’s video blog being wrongly, and inappropriately, interpreted

Click the link to view Reputationz newsletter online.

So BP’s CEO, Tony Hayward, is to be sent to Russia. Hardly a career highlight after almost 30 years with the company.

Whilst in no way minimising the loss of lives, livelihoods, environmental and economic consequences, the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion provides a near-perfect case-study of how being ‘out of touch’ with public opinion, and assuming an air of arrogance, can kill reputations, careers and trust.

In spite of the magnitide of the disaster across all fronts, it was essentially small, throw-away comments from Hayward (“I’d like my life back“) and Chairman, Carl-Henric Svanberg (caring about ‘the small people’) that put the nail in the coffin of Hayward’s career. The comments demonstrated how out-of-touch Hayward, and therefore BP, was from those affected by the disaster. Taking part in a regatta didn’t help.

One of the biggest reputation-damagers there is is failing to listen, and track trends. Keeping your finger ‘on the pulse’ of public opinion is critical when trying to influence and maintain a positive reputation. BP, and Hayward,  failed miserably.

Thinking we can control our reputation is a myth. We can’t control it because we can’t control what other people think of us, and what others think of us is our reputation.

In terms of reputation-branding perception is reality. No matter how much BP might have wanted to keep him as CEO, public opinion meant it wasn’t possible if it wants any chance of jettisoning the adverse reputational-baggage now attached to Hayward.

If he considers himself the ‘fall-guy’ within BP he may be right. However, as Winston Churchill once said “The price of greatness is responsiblity”, and responsiblity cannot be abdicated.

According to the ‘Social Media Revolution’ video from Socialnomics, 96% of Generation Y or Millennials (born between 1980 and 2000 or thereabouts) are part of an online social network and yet the fastest growing segment of Facebook is females aged 55-65 years old.

Ashton Kutcher and Britney Spears have more Twitter followers than the entire populations of Sweden, Israel, Switzerland, Ireland, Norway and Panama, and half the mobile internet traffic in the UK is for Facebook. Over 50% of the world’s population is under 30 years old and email is considered old technology by a significant number of them.

We are connecting, communicating and revealing personal and professional details about ourselves more openly than ever before. In the time it takes to read this post around 50 hours of video will be uploaded to YouTube, the world’s second largest search engine.

We tap out information about ourselves at the stroke of a key and yet rarely think about the damage that can be caused to our reputation, both online and off, by posting careless remarks and images.

Even if we don’t write the words ourselves, others are writing about us, and in this digital age of instant upload it’s worth remembering that the camera is always rolling, the microphone is always on, and there’s no such thing as ‘off-the-record’.

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In terms of trust, is ‘business as usual’ what we really want? For many business owners and operators the answer will clearly be ‘yes’.

However, given the ever-expanding list of failed finance companies, apparently less-than-honourabe senior executives and so-called ‘professionals’ that turned out to be anything but, a large number of the people I’m speaking with certainly don’t want business to go back to being ‘usual’. What they want is quite the opposite – ‘business unusual’ – particularly in terms of trust that is, demonstrate some!

Business heretic Mark Di Somma’s blog post ‘Peak Trust’ is very timely and right on the button. Much like the concept of ‘peak oil’, Di Somma notes “some sectors have reached and passed their highest levels of trust – and that they can now expect trust to be harder to find and to cost much more to generate than it has historically.” I agree.

The fact that so many industries and sectors are now having to be regulated, and legally reigned-in, in an effort to weed-out the unscrupulous and dishonest is pretty disheartening.

One would think businesses would put their client or customer first – as so many say they do – and genuinely provide what’s right for the custmer as opposed to what maximises profits for the business. However, for a large swathe of businesses, and individuals within them, this wasn’t, and isn’t, the case.

Philosopher Joseph Hall said “A reputation, once broken, may possibly be repaired, but the world will always keep its eyes on the spot where the crack was”.

Regulation won’t win back high levels of trust. It will simply make it easier for consumers to consider one more variable in deciding who to engage with and use. Although it’s sad, it’s essential in a post-’peak trust’ economy.

Photo: Suzanne Plunkett/Reuters at www.guardian.co.uk

Leadership expert Jasbindar Singh hit the nail on the head when she blogged about the six leadership lessons we can learn from BP CEO Tony Hayward’s behaviour to disaster still occuring in the Gulf of Mexico.

Hayward has attracted much criticism for his apparent inability to demonstrate any kind of genuine empathy for the people, wildlife and general environment affected by BP’s catastrophic oil spill.

Over a million gallons of oil a day are spewing into the ocean and yet Haywood seemed more concerned about himself, openly stating ‘… I’d like my life back …’ before heading away to attend a sailing regatta.

BP Chairman’s remark ‘we care about the small people’ also infuriated peole worldwide, and left BP’s senior executives looking like self-absorbed, spoilt brats concerned solely about the oil and profits being lost to BP, rather than the economic and environmental impacts their rig explosion caused.

CE’s get paid big bucks to handle crises – preferably with integrity. Making excuses and blaming others is behaviour unbecoming of any CEO, especially one whose company was responsible for the level of damage caused. No matter what happens now, BP’s reputation will always be tarnished by the comments Tony Hayward and Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg made, and the way they responded. (more…)

For many businesses, particularly those providing services, more than 85% of business comes from personal referrals and recommendations. Yet many businesses spend thousands of hours, and dollars, trying to acquire new customers, and relatively little time and effort nurturing and retaining their existing ones.

Valuing and retaining your current clients and customers is essential. Not only will you benefit from their continued custom directly, you are also more likely to benefit from any new clients or customers they recommend. And given that it’s 6-7 times more expensive to gain one new client or customer than it is to retain one, retaining your existing clients and customers, and being highly recommendable, can have a huge positive impact on your profitability.

Clients and customers who already trust and respect you:

• are more likely to acknowledge, and value, what you provide and the benefits they gain from dealing with you
• may be more willing to accept your prices, terms and conditions without question or negotiation
• are often more loyal
• require less ’selling to’ and
• are more likely to continue doing business with you, and even increase the amount they spend, as their trust in you increases.

They are also significantly more likely to recommend you to people they know and trust giving you an opportunity to gain new clients whilst reducing your acquisition costs and improving your profitability. (more…)