…nor in your (leading¹) measures of success.

Short post time…

Context: I regularly participate in reflective conversations with people. I often ask them to ponder the question “what is the purpose of your organisation (or part thereof)?” and I’m struck by how often the response includes something about “our reputation”² (as in gaining, bolstering, or protecting it).

And so, to repeat the title of this post, your reputation has absolutely NO place in a purpose statement³, nor any system of measurement against this.

Here’s my reasoning…

Definition of ‘Reputation’:

“The opinion that people have about what someone or something is like, based on what has happened in the past.” (Oxford Dictionary)

Synonyms include fame, prestige and notoriety.

Your reputation is, quite obviously, an outcome, a result…the score. (#lagging)

In my view…

…you should set aside your reputation and simply focus (laser-like) on whether (and how well) you are helping those you exist to serve (#leading).

To confuse cause and effect:

If you go down the simplistic concept of ‘reputation as king’, it will cause ‘the system’ to protect itself, ahead of – and instead of – those that it ought to care for.

You risk falling off a cliff into chaos when the consequences of mistakes* and their reputational cover up eventually ‘get out’ (as they inevitably do) and come back to maul you.

Conversely, if you continually strive to effectively meet your customers’ needs, then your reputation will easily look after itself.

*Sh!t happens

Whilst every organisation should be constantly striving to meet their customers’ needs, we should be absolutely clear that it is absurd to think that everything can always work out perfectly.

What matters is not that something went wrong, but what ‘the system’ does about it!

And it ought to:

• address the problem (i.e. resolve it);
• reflect on the system that allowed and/or enabled it to happen; and
• constantly make improvements, towards ‘purpose’ (and hopefully dissolve the problem).

To run a purpose-seeking organisation, you need a culture of open-ness and acceptance of ‘what is’. This is a pre-requisite to the seeking bit.

 

An obsession with ‘how we look’!

The problem with being obsessed about how we look is that this becomes the de facto purpose.

If (or, more accurately, when) something ‘goes wrong’, then a reputational response will likely lead into a downward spiral – a reinforcing feedback loop – with overlay upon overlay of actions and inactions to avoid (so-called) ‘reputational harm’⁴.

This is a trap.

 

In summary: Reputation is just a result – a by-product of how well you are meeting the customer defined purpose.

Getting purpose and reputation ‘the wrong way around’ will be akin to tying both shoe laces together and tumbling ‘arse over tit’.

Footnotes

1. See (section 4 of) measurement guide for definition of leading vs. lagging.

2. …or derivations of this, such as “We are trusted to…”. Your reputation (which, by extension, determines whether you are trusted) is purely a result – it is ‘read only’.

3. On purpose statements: I am referring here to any/every conversation about purpose rather than just the ‘wall poster’ corporate strapline. See note 1 of my previous post Mork & POSIWID if you’d like to read what I think about these 🙂

4. Reputational harm: I’m always amused when I read the copious ‘expert advice’ out there about how to avoid reputational harm…when the answer is so simple: clarity and constancy of purpose, not reputation!

5. I note that there are several public sector reputation indexes/ league tables. To repeat the point: These are the result (lagging) – there is no information within these as to how to improve. For this, you’d need to be ‘at the coal face’, understanding how well you are meeting your customer purpose.