Brand Reputation. Building and sustaining it.

Is your business built to last?

The primary responsibility of any leadership team is to build and sustain the brand reputation for the organisation or the institution that they lead.

If the leadership team is dominated by a single personality, as CEO or President, then the brand reputation is strongly tied to that personality and it becomes harder to build, sustain, and protect it, if that personality damages the brand or leads the organisation in a direction contrary to the expectations of loyal employees, customers, business associates, and other stakeholders including shareholders, regulators, and taxpayers.

Consider the impact on the reputations and brand loyalty of the organisations led by President Trump, Elon Musk, and Jeff Bezos compared to those led by Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, or Warren Buffet. The long-term sustained successful growth over decades for those companies is largely based on the consistent and constant respect for the brand identity and reputation of the organisation presented to the world.

Warren Buffet and Charlie Munger at Bershire Hathaway

For building and sustaining your own brand reputation, it is even more useful to consider those companies that are not led by widely recognized public figures whose personality dominates the brand.

Built to Last – Successful Habits of Visionary Companies, by Jim Collins and Jerry Porras, is an excellent reference to study the eighteen companies they identified that had outstanding performance over decades, relative to their competitors in the same industries. Their list includes 3M, American Express, Citicorp, Boeing, Disney, Ford, GE, HP, IBM, J&J, Marriott, Merck, Nordstrom, P&G, Sony and Wal-Mart. The book was written in 1994 and the companies selected all started before 1950 and survived through multiple product lifecycles and several generations of leadership.

You might no longer agree with the list of most successful companies in their industries, but the book was updated until 2004 without changes to the list of visionary companies. Among modern technology companies, you’ll have to create your own list of model companies. Perhaps including Apple and Microsoft, but not Tesla or Amazon.  

And what about your own business. Does it have visionary leadership? Is it built to last?

Be better. Do better.

Be an Enlightened Entrepreneur.

Your Uncle Ralph,

Del Chatterson

Learn more about Enlightened Entrepreneurship at: LearningEntrepreneurship.com 

For more of Uncle Ralph's advice for Entrepreneurs read Don't Do It the Hard Way & The Complete Do-It-Yourself Guide to Business Plans.

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