It has been a crazy few weeks — traveling to Berlin, San Francisco and Istanbul. But I am back in the USA. So here are a few observations about things I’ve read and learned that I wanted to share:
1. Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu just issued a new report on reputation risk. Reputation risk was the top strategic risk among 300 global C-suite executives surveyed. The survey found 40% of respondents listed reputation as their top risk concern today, with their business model second at 32% and economic trends/competition third at 27%. In 2010, reputation risk was at 26% so we can see that it has moved to the very top of the C-suite agenda. Henry Ristuccia, global leader of governance, risk and compliance at Deloitte had this to say (love this quote): “Reputation risk is going to always be the meta of all risks…how you manage the underlying factors that could affect the organization’s reputation or brand…how resilient are the people, the culture?” The meta of all risks!
2. In Istanbul, I spoke about Reputation Warfare, the theme of my Harvard Business Review article. The occasion was the 2nd International Reputation Management Conference at Kadir Has University. It was very impressive because there are not many reputation management conferences in this world (Reputation Institute holds one annually) and here I was in Istanbul. Very forward-looking of the university. The summer protests in Turkey at Gezi Park was an interesting backdrop to my discussion on using social media as an opportunity to defend one’s reputation in addition to the risk. Additionally, there was discussion about how the protests had affected the reputation of the country. Tourism took a hit in July but from the looks of it, it was pretty healthy this week. I am going to keep a watch out for how Turkey repairs its reputation and what types of reputation recovery strategies are employed. All very interesting and doable. I also experienced some of the Turkish hospitality that they are so well-known for.
3. Just this past week, I read two articles on how Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan are repairing their reputations. All in one week. Clearly this is a topic that has grown exponentially and particularly in the financial sector. The Economist article on Goldman Sachs was fascinating because it described the scenario setting that is being used to train vice presidents to better understand their responsibilities to the firm when faced with ambiguous and complex challenges to doing business today. The case study is preceded by a film that is described this way: “…an emotive documentary on the history of Goldman Sachs, filled with interviews of luminaries and former executives, each hammering home the virtues that supposedly make the firm distinctive—teamwork, personal accountability and the legendary exhortation by Gus Levy, a former leader of the firm, to be ‘long-term greedy’, by which he meant it should forgo short-term profits if they came at the expense of client relationships.” I mentioned in a previous post how Goldman Sachs is super-engaging in training which included their CEO from the start. In addition, incentives have been revampedd and tied more to collaboration and teamwork. The WSJ article on JPMorgan’s CEO Jamie Dimon focuses on how he is converying “business as usual” as he faces an imminent federal lawsuit, another revealing reputation recovery strategy. He has been touring midsize cities such as Cleveland, Oklahoma City and St. Louis meeting with local businesses and community leaders that are supported by JPMorgan’s philantrophy. According to the article, Dimon’s message are fine-tuned, upbeat and focused on the customer.