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The Crisis of Trust in Companies and Beyond

The constant drip of admissions from J.P. Morgan Chase as the cost of the “London whale” rises and both dishonesty and folly is revealed comes in tandem with the latest round from Penn State. Former FBI Director Louis Freeh’s report unsparingly flays the leadership of that tarnished institution for a fundamental lack of concern for boys whose lives were being destroyed as individuals from janitors to the president were too interested in themselves to bother.

And in both cases, the people who knew and chose to look the other way now find that once you sow the wind, it’s the whirlwind that comes back.

Branding is not simply a game for consultants; it connects at a deep level the integrity and values of an organization with how it is viewed by the public and its customers and how it connects in turn with their values. One of the profound impacts of social media has been to begin to lay bare these and other connections in ways that go far beyond the occasional probes and revelations of press and whistle-blowers as transparency comes to be routinized rather than an exceptional experience.

At bottom therefore the issue is not about “brand” as a manipulable commodity to be burnished but integrity as a deep set of values that drive an organization by lining up its proclaimed sense of itself with how it really is and who its people are.

The issue for Penn State as for J.P.Morgan is whether what has been lost will be able to be recovered. What we already know is that this will not come soon or easy. We know how it is with the reputation of an individual. While corporations (for-profit and non) are persons only in a technical sense, their reputations are every bit as central to how the wider world sees them – and will be prepared to do business with them.

And (to pick up our much-blogged theme of social and the C-Suite) social media has only just begun to begin to open every one of our organizations and their commitments and their practices to Freeh-report style merciless scrutiny.

The Real Loss For JPMorgan Chase: Their Integrity.

When and How if you’re Marketing with Twitter

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If you missed this report a week or so ago, it’s worth a visit. A Salesforce unit looked at around 300 Twitter accounts managed for major brands. Important to note that, since while many of us use Twitter to promote our businesses, this effort seems to have looked at more overtly promotional tweeting (the kind I never see as I don’t follow brands!).

There are straightforward lessons about keeping under 100 characters, including links, making sure your links work (sigh); and interesting remarks on when best to tweet – at busy times, and especially at weekends (when it seems most major brands don’t bother much).

Grist to the mill of those of us who have been repeating that major companies aren’t serious about social, and the tips on timing and length are helpful even if they are not of universal application (so if you are selling sleeping pills . . .). And the approach some of us taking to mingling professional content with quips, snarks, and general-purpose observations (not to mention cat pics); and who tweet far more than is here recommended; is not really in view.

Back to a point I keep making. This really is early days – in digital in general, in social in particular, and in Twitter especially, which is the key social medium. I suspect I shall return to these points soon . . . .

WHY TWITTER MATTERS: Tomorrow’s Knowledge Network

http://t.co/GBi0mbyp

Sorry, Marketers, You’re Doing Twitter Wrong [REPORT].

The Law of Digital Instability

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The collapse of RIM’s sales and postponement of its latest model, hard on the heels of what have seemed to be less than adroit management changes, underline a principle that seems obvious enough even though it is generally being ignored.

Digital-age companies, to the extent that their technologies are digitally powered, and to the extent that they essentially are built around one technology, are inherently unstable and liable to rapid collapse.

This directly follows from the profoundly disruptive impact of Moore’s Law over relatively short periods of time.

But it is not widely noted. Which is why during IBM’s centennial year there was speculation about which great contemporary companies would be around in a century. Which is why the valuation of companies such as Facebook is so high – and that applies also to Google, for example, even though it has a much lower P/E ratio. Both Facebook and Google, despite their best best efforts (especially on Google’s part) are essentially one-tech digitally-driven companies – with, which is of course a separate point, one dominant business model and product.

It’s the Law of Digital Instability. The sooner we build it into our valuations, the better. And the sooner companies in its grip realize (as Google gives evidence of realizing) how risky is their position over time, the more likely they will find ways to broaden their product/tech/biz mode base.

IS FACEBOOK DOOMED? https://futureofbiz.org/2012/06/04/is-facebook-doomed/

RIM earnings: BlackBerry maker plans to slash 5,000 jobs, new devices delayed until 2013 | FP Tech Desk | Financial Post.

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The Crisis of Trust in Companies and Beyond

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