Bring the outside in and focus on building relationships and trust
In the Oxford Dictionary, risk is defined as: ‘a situation involving exposure to danger or loss’. A little earlier in its pages, the dictionary defines reputation as: ‘the beliefs or opinions that are generally held about someone or something’.
We all know that what is generally believed about any enterprise is the result of thousands upon thousands of actions – all the positive things an organization does over years and years, all the things it says about itself, and all the things that others say about it. Every day, as any organization goes about its business, interacting with perhaps millions of people, there is a risk of being exposed to situations that could lead to danger or loss.
A good reputation is an intangible asset of immense financial worth – so much so that loss of reputation is now considered by the leaders I interviewed as their single greatest risk. As we have seen already, this risk is constantly on their minds. It is why they recognize the need to build cultures with strong values frameworks, which enable their employees to do the right thing in the heat of the moment. It is why they stress the importance of relentlessly communicating those values, probably one of the most important things they have to do.
They worry about the reputational damage that can be done when employees ‘do the wrong thing’ and a crisis erupts. As Fields Wicker-Miurin, co-founder of Leaders’ Quest, says: ‘What comes out in a crisis is how well a leader has done their job before the crisis – how well they instilled the right culture and behaviours in their organization.’
Most leaders now regard trust as the hidden asset on their balance sheets, worth – in some cases – billions. Richard Lambert, former director-general of the CBI, said he had spoken to business people the length and breadth of Britain after the financial crisis. He found they were deeply mindful that reputation and trust are now more important than ever. ‘We live in an age of transparency, and leaders must ask themselves before every business decision: will this pass the Sunday Times test? We have to be more willing to look in the mirror and apply conscience, not just be compliant, if we are to win back trust.’
Trust matters inside the company as much as it does with external relations. Teams just cannot be effective without trust. Julie Dent, chair of Torbay and Southern Devon Health and Care NHS Trust, says: ‘Trust is the essence of a human relationship. Trust in public life or working life is every bit as important as in your personal life. If you can’t trust people then it is very difficult to do a good job. I remember during one of my jobs, when I felt very uneasy with my own team, I went off to a university to do a leadership course. We were doing a semi-outward bound trust-building exercise where I had to climb a ladder and then fall backwards allowing my team to catch me. I realized that I trusted this group that I had been with for just 48 hours, but I didn’t trust the team that I was working with back home. It was in that moment I realized that it was time for me to go. These days I ask myself the key question: “Do these people trust me enough to do the ladder test with me?”’
Sir Stuart Rose, chairman of Ocado, stresses: ‘For a business leader, building reputation and trust is the day job, which makes communication the day job too.’
John Connolly, immediate past senior partner and CEO of Deloitte, says: ‘Leaders have always placed emphasis on their own and their organizations’ reputations. Unfortunately, we are now in an environment where leaders are concerned that reputations can too easily, and perhaps sometimes unfairly, be damaged – and that damage can be permanent. When you live in a world where one mistake will be allowed to eliminate everything good you’ve ever done, and destroy the trust you need to operate, even if it is a relatively minor mistake, the consequence is that leaders not only become more risk aware, they become risk averse as well. And that can lead to little or no progress, for part of leadership is about pushing hard in order to progress.’
Baroness Hogg has been chair of the Financial Reporting Council, the regulator and standard setter responsible for corporate governance and financial reporting as well as the audit, accounting and actuarial professions in the UK, since May 2010. She is also senior independent director of BG Group plc, lead independent director of HM Treasury, a director of the John Lewis Partnership, a member of the Takeover Panel, senior adviser to the Financial Services Authority and a member of the prime minister’s Business Ambassador Network.
‘The problem is that there are lots of people who think that their brands exist within their control when actually their brands exist in the minds of their customers. There is a divergence between the internal brand and the external brand and that’s always troublesome. You lack authenticity if your internal brand and how other people see you from outside are not the same. Closing that gap is critical.’
Loss of your ‘licence to operate’
So, leaders know that trust matters, and they especially know that trust matters most in a crisis. More than half of the CEOs I spoke to volunteered the example of Tony Hayward, the CEO who had to resign as the head of oil company BP because of the Gulf of Mexico oil leak crisis. They cited this as the ultimate example of how quickly trust can be lost and your licence to operate revoked (see Chapter 14).
At the heart of what they are all saying, though, is the idea that their very future is pegged to the strength of the relationships they have with all the people upon whom their success depends. Those relationships are not only precious but also increasingly fragile. The reason is because relationships change, and in a world transforming at the speed of thought, power has spilled out of the corridors of government and big business and onto the street. Here, people have become less deferential and much more demanding.
Why? It is because they have greater access to information and to each other. That means they have much more choice – and they’re getting smarter. Not only are they smarter, but they are also faster than most companies are to respond. To them, trust is as critical as delivery, and they sit in judgement of every act and every utterance of leaders.
These people represent what I call ‘the court of public opinion’, and in this court, judgements are handed out rapidly – and ruthlessly. If they don’t like what they see or hear, if they lose trust in a company or brand, they can walk out of this relationship and into another, just like that.
Managing the intangible asset of relationships
The worst risk is therefore not in the loss of reputation, but rather in the consequences of a bad reputation – the destruction of relationships. So you could argue that managing reputation is actually about managing the risks around the intangible asset of relationships – for it is upon these relationships that the future of the company depends.
For this reason, I kept hearing from the leaders I interviewed that they regularly ensure they bring the views of external stakeholders into their organization to help focus on what needs to be done, and then use those views to drive the right conversations, with their people, about how to improve. They focus on closing the gap between the external perception of the brand and the internal one.
Phil Bentley, managing director of British Gas, demonstrated how he was doing this in Chapter 2 – where we looked at how he had set up a system that allowed him to be alert to what people outside the organization were saying, so that he could respond in an instant. He was willing to enter into dialogue with his consumers, in order to earn their trust and turn them into advocates of his business.
A report published by the United Kingdom Department of Trade and Industry in 2001, but still hugely valuable today, is entitled ‘Creating value from your intangible assets’. The conclusions outlined were drawn from the general question: ‘What have you got that is valuable that is not included in the balance sheet?’
The report identified seven areas of intangible value for leaders:
• relationships;
• leadership and communication;
• culture and values;
• reputation and trust;
• knowledge;
• skills and competencies;
• processes and systems.
In this book, we have been paying attention to the first four intangible assets.
On relationships, the report has this to say: ‘Only by developing an effective strategy for managing and maintaining excellent relationships with all its key stakeholders can a company hope to achieve its full potential. A successful company is one that looks constantly to build on its existing relationships, be they external (customers, suppliers or anyone else whose ideas and cooperation may assist in meeting goals and solving problems) or internal (different functions and their teams working together to seize opportunities and create value).
‘Understanding how to identify, develop, organize and sustain an appropriate network of relationships that bring new ways of working, ideas and opportunities plays a key role in the quest for competitive advantage.’
In particular, the report highlighted the need for organizations to improve the quality of dialogue with stakeholders: ‘For your company to reach its full potential in this area, it is essential that you not only consider how you can develop and improve your current relationships, but that you also carefully consider how you can develop and improve the relationships necessary for your future success.’
The virtuous circle in relationships
I believe there is a powerful virtuous circle in bringing the outside in. If you are in dialogue with your stakeholders, and bringing their perspectives and ideas into your teams, it means you will be much better informed – and only in high-quality relationships can you get great feedback. Not just feedback on how you are perceived or what might be going wrong, but also ideas about what you can do to make a difference.
That, in turn, leads to better debates inside the company and, ultimately, to better decisions. Those better decisions enable better performance. In turn, a better performance has a positive impact on relationships and reputation.
Whether we work in the commercial sector, the public sector or the third sector, we are all subject to the same governing law, which is that good relationships are the engines of success. Leaders must ensure they are monitoring those relationships, understanding how people feel, feeding that insight back into the organization, influencing the decision making, and ensuring there are strong, two-way communication processes in place that sustain healthy and supportive relationships.
Sir Richard Leese, leader of Manchester City Council, says that one of the keys to success for the Council has been focusing on how people feel. ‘Most external commentators would say that Manchester has been a relative success story over the last 10 to 15 years. When we are asked what we think the biggest achievements over that period of time have been, I say that it has been giving the people of Manchester their pride and self confidence back.
‘Putting how they felt at the top of our agenda enabled us to achieve so much. We would regularly ask our customers what was making them tick, how they were feeling about our services, how they felt about their neighbours and the neighbourhood they lived in. Bringing those external perspectives into our decision making, and focusing on how people felt was liberating.’
For relationships to thrive there has to be trust. Yet trust is bust, we keep hearing. Or, at the very least, it is in intensive care. And in a world that has been reset by the widespread impact of the recession and the financial crisis, it cannot be business as usual. The cost of a loss of trust to business, to governments and to charities will be huge, for one crucially important reason: Trust can earn us real money. And a lack of trust can cost us even more.
If you are trusted, you can bring products to market faster, more cheaply than your competitors. You can win that pound from a member of the public for your charity more easily. You can bring about change and deliver public services more effectively and with greater cooperation and even collaboration. It is like being paid a massive dividend.
If you are not trusted, you will face an uphill battle – more regulatory hurdles, more time, more effort – and a heavy tax is imposed on the organization. (The British Chambers of Commerce recently estimated that the cost of regulations introduced by the Labour government after 1998 amounted to £77 billion – a staggering amount.)
So, in every sense, trust means money. I am convinced that leaders who put the winning of trust at the heart of their corporate strategies will gain competitive advantage. Are leaders more aware of the value of trust? Absolutely. Every leader I have spoken to talks to the value of trust.
Trust is the hidden asset on company balance sheets.
Philip Green, former CEO of water company United Utilities, says: ‘You can’t run a big business without having trust and reputation high on the agenda. For a big corporate, your reputation is one of your most important assets – more so in companies like retailers, utilities and financial institutions, where trust is at the heart of the proposition.’
Just a decade ago, business leaders were still, overall, trusted. But corporate disasters like Enron and the banking crisis, allied to media more likely to scrutinize and popularize business stories, and a savvier, better connected, more empowered public, have changed everything. Members of the public have raised their expectations of organizations – and are far more demanding, more suspicious and less inclined to trust.
Watch out for the reputation gap
A brand is a promise – of quality or service – and in today’s world, consumers are going to express themselves widely when they are disappointed. The risk of instant recrimination and widespread viral criticism is ever present when businesses fall into the reputation gap – the gap between what they promise and what they deliver.
Some brand experts say that a brand can represent up to one-third of a company’s value, because the brand is equally a promise to shareholders of growth and profits to come. But when consumers doubt these promises, they throw doubt and risk into future profits. And that can have a major impact on your share price if you are a publicly listed company, or on the willingness of your financier to keep providing you with cash.
Faced with such compelling reasons to act, one would think that leaders would be doing far more about making trust an explicit objective, constantly measured and improved. I heard many leaders talk about the importance of trust, but few could say they had made it an explicit objective. Only a few measured it. Why?
Most don’t know how to think about measuring a ‘soft’ intangible factor like trust. The problem is, if it remains that way, then leaders won’t know how to get their arms around it and work to improve levels of trust. Trust, to many leaders, is a word hard to define and therefore difficult to measure.
I first became intrigued by this when I worked with a well-known fast food business in the UK. They were in the midst of a publicity storm about how unhealthy their product was, and tried to respond by bringing healthier foods into their high street restaurants.
They commissioned research into how they were seen by the public and, in particular, how they were trusted. The research showed that levels of trust in their brand were plummeting. Yet strangely, sales were going up! How did that work? The answer lay in the fact that they had failed to distinguish what the public meant when they talked about trust. Did the public trust the leaders of the business to ‘do the right thing’ about obesity and unhealthy eating? No. Did that matter? No. Why? Because the public trusted them to deliver a high-quality product in their restaurants, and that mattered more.
I have come to believe there are at least three dimensions to trust. David Kenning, psychoanalyst and strategic adviser to the public relations and communications group Bell Pottinger, says: ‘The three dimensions of trust are: trust of judgement; trust of will or motive; and trust of delivery or competence.’
Trust of judgement represents recognition of another’s experience, wisdom or insight, explains David. ‘Without trust of judgement, we would be in a perpetual state of confusion, suspicion and paranoia. The two most important questions in this regard are: Is this person or organization giving me their honest opinion? And what’s their track record of getting things right?’
The second kind of trust, says David, is trust of will or motive, and is quite different. ‘This is where we trust someone to look out for us without taking advantage or seeking personal gain. When applied to a corporation it entails integrity and transparency and a genuine, demonstrable consideration for the customer’s interest and point of view. We should never underestimate our unconscious desire to project this kind of trust onto government, employers or our favourite brands. In doing so, we make ourselves vulnerable. A failure of trust of judgement may elicit feelings of frustration, disappointment or anger. But a failure of trust of will or motive will elicit much deeper feelings of betrayal, disgust and even paranoia, since its loss can be crushing.’
The third kind of trust, says David, has to do with trust of delivery or competence – namely the trust we acquire through experience that certain people, brands or organizations can be relied upon to do what they have said they will do. ‘This is more robust than trust of judgement in that – up to a point – we can be more forgiving if things go wrong. A good track record counts against occasional mistakes becoming permanent trust breakers.’
Why leaders need to inject more character into their communication
My view is that trust instils confidence in people – and that confidence is born of a positive view of a leader’s character and competence. Character is about their integrity and motives. Competence is about their skills and track record of delivering on their promises. After nearly 40 years in communications, I feel safe saying that most organizations are usually pretty good about talking to their skills, results and track record. Whether through advertising, public relations or sponsorship, leaders are well versed in talking about the value of their products or services, and the benefits they bring to their stakeholders.
But in this reset world, where it is now so much more about character and trust, I feel equally safe saying leaders are far less practised when it comes to making explicit what they stand for, how they see the world and what values they will draw on when making their decisions. In other words, leaders are not very good when it comes to communicating ‘character’, which has come to matter so much more.
In this new world, authenticity is now the Holy Grail. However, it is only when you make your values and beliefs more clear that people will be able to judge whether you are being authentic. Not everyone will agree with your values or your view of the world, but at least they will know where you are coming from, and that will stand you in good stead, for people will be able to trust that you will consistently behave in a certain way, and know what to expect. (For more on this subject, see Chapter 11.)
This places an imperative on leaders to frame trust in economic terms, and focus on making the building of trust an explicit organizational objective. Trust must become like any other goal – it must be focused on, measured and improved. When the dividends of trust can be quantified, this enables a compelling case for building trust.
The health warning on building trust
There is, however, a health warning on building trust, says David Kenning. ‘As companies strive to create an emotional connection between themselves and their stakeholders (and as a result, enjoy commercial benefits of greater loyalty and advocacy), this leads to a more personal and private relationship between the company and its customer, staff and partners.
‘Stakeholders trust the company – and its brands – to embody and uphold their own values and ethics, and also to make decisions in an emotional rather than commercial way. When this doesn’t happen, people feel badly let down. The sense of betrayal can be very intense – and the bad publicity much more damaging.’
Leaders need to be sure that they can keep the promises they make and need to have plans in place to manage situations that arise from an actual – or perceived – breach of that trust. Trust impacts on us all day, every day, and underpins every relationship, for which, after all, leaders are supposed to be responsible.
This means leaders should spend far more time on values-based communications – and focus on what the organization they represent stands for and believes in. They should encourage more conversations and show their willingness to be more transparent. They should ensure more direct communications with their publics through the marvels of digital communications and the internet, and have less reliance on reaching them through the media.
Sir Nicholas Young has been chief executive of the British Red Cross since July 2001. The charity delivers emergency response in the UK and around the world, community care services which meet the needs of vulnerable people in UK neighbourhoods, refugees and asylum seekers, and provides education in life-saving skills. He feels that trust has become more important and has required organizations to raise their game when it comes to communicating.
‘Communicating with all our stakeholders just gets ever more important. It’s a very competitive world. There are something like 200,000 charities in the UK. The top 500 of those are all much better at communicating now than they used to be. It’s ever more important for us to communicate about what we believe, what we do, about the difference we make, the impact we have, and what it is that your giving pound will achieve. That’s not only specific communication about particular projects or challenges, but also about our brand. That has to include an element of trust, of credibility, of authority or integrity.
‘People have to trust us. Our beneficiaries have to trust us to get them the relief and the rescue that they need. Our donors obviously have to trust us, because we’re using their generously given donations, to meet needs around the world. Governments and health authorities need to trust us, because we help them with our task of caring for the population. In the UK it’s absolutely vital people have that sense of trust and confidence in us. They have to believe in our ethic, trust our judgement and know we can do what we say we can do.’
How to unlock the value in relationships
How much value is locked away in our key relationships – these most precious, but intangible, of assets? Could more value be released if we managed this asset more systematically? As we have seen, the increasing volatility in relationships has serious implications, what with so much of a company’s value lying in the state of those relationships.
Stripped right down, the role of any leader is to ensure they achieve the mission – and that usually means ensuring their enterprise makes profits, returns value to shareholders or investors, and can do so on a sustainable basis. In a charity, one of the roles of leadership is to secure the funding that enables the organization to continue to service the needs of its end users, whoever they might be. If relationships are bad, leaders will struggle to deliver either of those goals, and certainly compromise their chances of sustainable success. If those relationships become really bad, leaders can end their own careers and even put an end to the organizations they lead.
On the other hand, great relationships represent a real competitive edge, and help to deliver a better performance… which delivers better results… which delivers a better reputation… which delivers greater value. Yet how many companies today actively audit the state of their relationships, as well as their reputation, and then institute plans to address the issues raised by their stakeholders?
Most of the organizations I spoke with did actively engage with stakeholders this way, but, more widely, experience tells me that all too few organizations really spend time on and absolutely know how their stakeholders feel and think. When leaders don’t listen to their stakeholders, they can’t respond to their concerns, and failure to change becomes the reason for loss of reputation.
If listed companies did conduct relationship audits, they could get more recognition of their intangible assets and uncover pearls of insight, which could help in driving up their share price and releasing even greater shareholder value. Such audits might also be of far greater value than conventional audits. These audits need to include one super-critical question of each key relationship: ‘What would it take to improve our relationship?’
The answers will enable management to know what action to take, and to cost those actions against likely returns on their investment. Once the right actions are identified, management can communicate what they are doing, why it is important, and what benefits the company and its stakeholders will derive. It is this that builds trust and credibility. The opposite is achieved by promises made but not met.
Financial audits are all about past performance. Relationship audits are the predictors of future performance.
Thinking about which relationships are key is a good starting place. Which people are most important in your court of public opinion, and why? Mapping out these relationships becomes a strategic process, which enables better insight, action and better performance.
When leaders manage reputation in this way, they significantly improve their chances of successful change, because they are more aware of the real issues. They are far more likely to deliver a transformed organization – listening better, acting faster, improving performance and building better relationships, by the day. When they bring the outside in, and help employees to understand – to really understand – how their stakeholders feel, employees ‘feel’ the need to change. They are inspired.
The leaders I spoke with all brought the outside in, in a variety of ways, always with a mind to taking action as a result of what they heard. They loved customers’ stories – good and bad – because they gave them a chance to do something.
Tuning in to the court of public opinion
Sir Stuart Rose argues that because we live in a world which is so fast-moving, ‘you have to have your antennae permanently switched on 24 hours a day and they have got to be literally quivering.
‘Let’s just say David Beckham came out of a party in LA last night with a white tie on, customers of Marks & Spencer would expect stores to have white ties in pretty quickly. Equally, leaders inside have to know what is going on in the food arena. Is healthy the agenda? Is sustainability the agenda? Is carbon footprint the agenda?
‘So, it is keeping an eye on that and making sure that we are absolutely in tune with what the consumer expects of us. There is a constant rumbling and we measured that very carefully, and brought it into the company. In addition, we listened to what NGOs were saying, whether it was pressure groups on Burma or Madagascan vanilla or whatever. Be sure there are hundreds of pressure groups, so you have to keep listening.’
When you listen and bring the outside in, it presents you with opportunities too. Sir Stuart explains: ‘Not too long ago there were a couple of smart girls who happened to be quite well endowed, who complained that Marks & Spencer were charging a premium of a couple of quid extra to a girl with a double D cup bra. We were! It costs more to make a double D cup bra because of the required engineering.
‘These girls talked about this on their Facebook page and within minutes had something like 10,000 followers. M&S had a 27 per cent share of women’s lingerie in the UK and I could smell that this was going to go the wrong way. I got our marketing director, Steve Sharp, in and said that we were going to take the tax off the bras and give the girls a discount for a couple of weeks. He came up with this wonderful advert.’
At this point Sir Stuart breaks off to find the advert and hold it up for me. The full-page ad, placed in national newspapers, showed a photo of a large-breasted woman, with the words ‘We boobed’ strategically placed. The ad read: ‘It’s true our fantastic-quality larger bras cost more money to make, and we felt it was right to reflect this in the prices we charged. Well, we were wrong, so as of Saturday 9 May, the storm in a D cup is over! Every woman can now experience the difference a well-made quality bra will make.’
Sir Stuart continued: ‘The newspapers all said this is a listening company and our market share went up within about five minutes. In addition, we had 30,000 people on Facebook within two days. So, it pays to be in tune!’
Tom Hughes-Hallett, former CEO of Marie Curie Cancer Care, believes leaders have to go out and experience the external world, if they really want to bring that world back into the organization.
‘After a period here I became extremely frustrated with the way our care and services were being managed. But I knew I was not a nurse, a doctor or a physiotherapist, so who was I to criticize? Perhaps I really did not understand. So I actually became the head of our caring services for a year and came to fundamentally understand that business.
‘It was a good thing to do, because I learned very quickly that it was about clients and customers and we had become too detached from their needs, too professional. It was what the nurse thinks the patient needs rather than what the patient wants, so I turned it on its head. Since that day, we have trebled the amount of care we provide, with fewer staff, and it is the care that the patient wants. It is the thing that I am most proud of in my whole career. I think getting your hands dirty in the business is not something every leader can do but one or other way you had better take a bit of time to find out about it. Go listen.’
Jane Furniss, of the Independent Police Complaints Commission, says you have to bring macro trends into the organization as well. ‘To bring the outside in, you really do have to look at big issues and trends. How does policing respond to this issue? Or how does a complaint system deal with that issue? What is the public feedback on these issues? I would do public focus groups and surveys every other month if we had the money as there is so much we can learn from that kind of feedback which would help us to improve.’
If need be, actually bring the client in
Lord Sharman, past chairman of Aviva, tells the story of when he became senior partner of global accounting firm KPMG. ‘I kept telling people they had to actually put themselves in the shoes of the customer. I didn’t want our people to keep telling our clients what they should think. I spent hours talking about client relationships but nothing worked as effectively as the day I brought a client to our senior partners’ meeting to talk about how he felt as a client of ours.
‘He got up and he said: “Look, I’ve been asked to talk about managing client relationships. You guys all sit there and you think managing client relationships is about taking me to the opera, being nice to me, getting me on side, but you couldn’t be more wrong. I don’t want a nice cuddly bloke looking after my audit. I want a real bastard. I want somebody who’s going to hold my management’s feet to the bloody fire and tell me what’s wrong. So forget the opera.” That stopped my partners dead in their tracks. It’s those sorts of things that you need to do.’
The customer experience brings the vision alive
Paul Polman of Unilever says bringing customers into the organization helps everyone understand the purpose of the company.
‘I was in Egypt just before the crisis of early 2011 and I went into a consumer’s home about an hour outside Cairo. The lady doesn’t have anything. She has sand on the floor. There are a few mattresses, two or three rooms that look dark. She was explaining to us how she works and she said in the morning she does her laundry in one of those petrol barrels that she had made her washing machine. She fetches wood and puts it under the barrel to heat up the water. She goes to the well about three times to bring the water. Then she turns the laundry with a stick, which is all that she has, and puts some powder on top of it and prays that it gets the clothes clean. Then she has to rinse.
‘She has to go back to the well three or four times to rinse. It takes the whole morning. In the afternoon she does the same with the cooking. She has to get the water boiling. More wood. She has to get whatever she’s making for dinner prepared for when her husband comes home at night. He gets angry because the laundry isn’t done properly or the food isn’t done to his liking. Tough life.
‘What people forget is that’s how 90 per cent of the people still live in these areas. So if we can make a little detergent that doesn’t need so much rinsing or that gets her clothes slightly cleaner, or a little cube of Knorr that gives her food more flavour, then we give her more time. We give her more time for her children, or to start a little business. We give her time to invest in education for her children. We give her time to give her husband. That’s what we do and there’s no better way to make that come alive than to bring our purpose alive through customer experiences.’
How to develop quivering antennae
As Sir Stuart Rose says, you have to find a way to develop ‘quivering antennae’. Yet too few companies understand how to use the internet to develop fast ways of getting fresh, free and authentic insights into the way their organizations are perceived, says Nicholine Hayward, Bell Pottinger’s planning director.
‘From search engines to social media, the internet offers an easily accessible repository of authentic insight and intelligence. The insights come not from people sitting in a focus group filling out a questionnaire or standing on a street corner talking to a researcher with a clipboard, but from unguarded conversations and forums, social networks, blogs and searches on Google. I call it the world’s largest, most honest and unselfconscious focus group.
‘By looking at what millions of people are asking for and talking about online, we can see what the public is asking for, in their own time, in their own words, and sitting at their own PC, and we can put this intelligence to work at every stage of a business or marketing strategy. There are so many ways that leaders can learn more effectively to bring the outside in, and using the internet more imaginatively is one of the easiest.’
But what do I do with the insights?
Gaining the right insights is all very well, but the big question becomes: what to do with them. I have frequently been surprised at how little market research really is shared with all employees. When it is, when employees gather to consider the views of customers and work out how to improve those views, exciting innovation can take place at a stunning pace.
To do this, leaders need to engage employees in the right conversations…
• Successful leaders know that relationships are the engines of success, and they keep a close eye on the state of all key relationships.
• They keep their enterprise focused on those relationships as well.
• Define and map your key relationships; and find ways to listen to those people continuously. Develop ‘quivering antennae’ to ensure you stay in tune with how they think and feel.
• Use your own valued external critics, tap into Twitter and the blogosphere, employ newsreaders, market researchers, trend spotters, undertake personal visits to customers’ homes and offices – anything that keeps you grounded in the experience your organization is delivering to the world outside your office walls.
• Bring customers ‘into’ your organization through stories, anecdotes and research – or bring in actual customers, so they have a real voice in your enterprise.
• Help your employees to ‘feel’ how your stakeholders feel; this emotional engagement drives pride and action and improvement.
• You have to live the reputation you want.
• Define the reputation you want – as expressed by every external audience relevant to your organization.
• Use that definition to manage quality inside the organization.
• Mind the reputation gap – the difference between the promise you make to customers and the experience customers or stakeholders actually receive.
• Narrowing that gap, or even managing it away, is the goal, if you want to be trusted.
• Communicate your values and beliefs to external audiences more: if people don’t know you, they won’t trust you.
• You do want to be trusted.
• Make trust a strategic goal, measured and managed as preciously as any other key asset.
• Make the building of trust in all relationships a strategic objective; and understand what you need to be most trusted for.