Trust and the Mysterious Corporation
By Dan Bross, Senior Director of Corporate Citizenship at Microsoft
Most image and reputation experts agree that trust is a positive driver of image and reputation, and trust is earned.
If trust is in fact earned, how can a corporation earn trust if it is a mystery? I am not talking about the products or services a corporation provides – corporations whose products remain a mystery usually aren’t in business very long. No – I am talking about a corporation’s mission, values, heart, soul, and North Star.
Recently, I was asked to speak on the topic of “Why Corporate America is Not the Villain” to a group of corporate public and government affairs professionals at the National Association of Manufacturer (NAM)annual public affairs conference on April 1 in Aventura, Florida (Microsoft is a NAM member). The organizers asked me and the two other panelists to offer thoughts and comments on why there is a serious disconnect between the general public and corporate America. Why is there so much corporate bashing? Why do studies indicate that trust in corporations remain near an all-time low? In addition to talking about the “why,” we were also asked to share our insights on what corporations should be doing to improve their public image.
Clearly, the facts speak for themselves - corporations are not villains. Villains don’t create and provide jobs. Villains don’t support communities. Villains don’t provide benefits to their employees, grow the U.S. economy, and manufacture and provide products and services consumers need. The list goes on.
In my view, any backlash against corporations is largely rooted in a lack of trust. People can’t be expected to trust an organization that they don’t know.
My message to the audience at the conference was that corporations should not only be talking about the great products they develop and manufacture and the services that they provide, but they should be talking about what they stand for. What is their North Star? Their mission? At Microsoft, our mission and values are to help people and businesses throughout the world realize their full potential. We talk about our mission and values internally and externally and it defines who we are.
However, talking about what you stand for and the values that guide you is not enough. Corporate mission statements and values must come to life every day through the way a company operates. At Microsoft, we are committed to continued innovation, not only our products and services, but in how we operate. We are continually reviewing our business operations and working to improve them to fulfill our mission and live our values.
In today’s always connected world, a corporation’s image and reputation can go from highly positive to highly negative over the course of a few hours. While problems will of course arise and crises develop, a corporation that has not defined themselves runs the risk of being defined by the crisis.
The “corporate mystery” discussion continued the next day in Washington, D.C., at the annual meeting of the Council of Institutional Investors. The Council is a nonprofit, nonpartisan association of pension funds and other employee benefit funds, foundations and endowments with combined assets that exceed $3 trillion, and a leading voice for good corporate governance and strong shareowner rights. The meeting featured a long list of impressive speakers, including David Rubenstein, co-founder and managing director of the Carlyle Group; Meg Whitman, president and CEO of Hewlett-Packard; Eric Schneideman, Attorney General of New York State, and SEC Commissioner Troy Paredes . While theytalked about a host of corporate governance issues, including proxy access, majority vote, and say on pay, the common thread and theme running through each presentation was the issue of trust.
To quote Attorney General Schneideman, “The lifeblood of American industry is trust.”