It always hurts when organizations lie.

Lying hurts the organization, the employees, the organization’s partners, the organization’s prospects, and most importantly, lying hurts the organization’s constituents.

When an organization does something that sparks a”‘reputation crisis”, the absolute worst way to respond is to lie.

As the reputation crisis of the Susan J. Komen Foundation continues, everyone is watching how Komen’s corporate “explanation” is unfolding. Well, it’s actually not unfolding, it’s imploding and exploding at the same time. Each iteration of their explanation is more desperate and more tone deaf than the last, as they embellish their lies.

Some of their “explanations” are so far away from their original claims that you can feel sure that they are on-the-spot fabrications. But I digress.

It’s not the poor quality of the lying, but the fact that Komen continues to lie at all, that is hurting the organization and damaging its reputation.

In a reputation crisis, it never ever helps to lie. Here’s why:

10 Reasons Why The Komen Foundation Should Stop Lying

1. When your organization lies, the lies offend the intelligence of your constituents.

“Whaddya think, we’re stupid? ” they ask. Your audience can read the leaked memos in The Atlantic or the NYT, they can read the reports of people and organizations who’ve been lobbying you to go anti-choice for years, and they can read the public statements of your executives.

Your constituents and the larger audience can actually see the lies, right there in print. To assume they won’t see you contradict yourself treats them as stupid.

2. When your organization lies, it disrespects your constituents’ relationships with you.

By lying, you are telling your constituents that they are not important enough, that your relationship with them is not important enough, and their support is not important enough, to be respected with the truth.

3. When your organization lies, it’s proof positive that your organization is itself profoundly stupid.

What, you can’t find the real explanation for your own behavior? The real criteria for your own decisions? The real values that shape your priorities? If you can’t explain your behavior with a real understanding of their sources, you’re a stupid (as in, dumb) organization.

4. When your organization lies, it makes people wonder what else you’re lying about.

Organizations that lie don’t do it once and a while, just on special occasions. They do it over and over. It’s only a matter of time before your other lies are uncovered.

5.. When your organization lies, it reinforces all the emotional dynamics of denial.

You can’t avoid the anxiety, guilt, embarrassment or shame that are part and parcel of lies. Even if you think no one else sees the lies (see #1, above), you know you’re lying. That eats away at whatever’s left of your organization’s heart, and corrodes what’s left of your integrity.

6. When your organization lies, the activity devoted to lying distracts you from more effective damage control.

You’re too busy lying to acknowledge the pain you’re causing. Even if you are, for a time, unwilling to admit the breadth of your responsibility, the very least you can do is say you’re sorry to the people you’re hurting. But, while you’re busy lying to Andrea Mitchell, you’re wasting the very opportunity you could use to apologize to your constituents.

7. When your organization lies, it embarrasses your employees.

Your employees know the truth. Do you want them all to resign in protest, or even worse, to continue working for a company they can no longer respect? When employees can’t respect your organization, they won’t do anything more than they must. That’s a great way to push your organization to fail.

8. When your organization lies, you block your organization off from any opportunity to learn from the initial mistake.

You and your organization get wrapped up in ‘cognitive distortion’. You don’t hear the truth about others’ reactions to your betrayal, so you miss chances to hear helpful feedback. You don’t learn about your constituents and their concerns, you don’t learn how to handle a crisis, and you won’t learn about yourselves.

9. When your organization lies, your leaders look incompetent.

Because they are.

10. When your organization lies, it makes it hard for you ever to be forgiven, by anyone.

Only those with super-human spirituality can easily rise above a crushing blow of betrayal (see #2, above) to forgive you and give your organization another chance. The rest of your constituents will take a long time to come around, if ever. And in the meantime, they won’t be supporting you.

Finally, there’s a bonus reason why your organization should stop lying.

Bonus Reason #11. When your organization lies, it makes it hard for anyone to ever trust your organization again.

Even if your organization reverses the decision that caused exposed the problem in the first place,

Nothing gets fixed until you tell the truth, to your constituents and to yourselves.

images:
Waling into walls, on Flickr. Some rights reserved by marc dalio
Life’s a bitch, on Flickr. Some rights reserved by pfala

To craft a corporate reputation that seems authentic, claims about the organization’s character must be anchored in real features of the organization.

It’s the organization’s job to demonstrate a link between reputation claims and real features, and it’s the PR professional’s job to explain a link between claims and real features.

(This post is drawn from recent conversation with students in the class, “Introduction to PR Strategies & Tactics”, part of the Integrated Marketing Communications Program at the Medill School of Journalism, Northwestern University.)

Any PR professional knows that his or her #1 job is to craft a strong, positive reputation for the organization. A strong, positive reputation creates value for all stakeholders, including the organization, its partners, clients, investors, employees, and customers.

The challenge for Public Relations professionals seems to be all about coordinating the efforts of different influencers – all the stakeholders that make claims about an organization.

The corporate entity and its divisions, individual members, product related marketing activities, and the chatter of the larger interested community (formerly known as ‘audiences’) all have something to say about “who” the organization is. It often seems that the focus for a PR professional is to coordinate and organize all these messages from all these influencers so that the sum total conveys the desired image of the organization.

The Real Challenge of the Public Relations Professional

The real challenge of a PR professional is something different. The real challenge is literally to explain how the reputation is real.

Why? Any organization’s stakeholders all know that the PR department is out there intentionally trying to make the organization look good. Stakeholders know that the PR professional’s job is to promote desirable images of an organization. And, they know that these desirable images are not necessary real.

Thus, the more important job of a PR professional is helping to craft an organizational reputation that is real — a reputation that is coherent, coordinated, and positive, yes, and also — a reputation that directly reflects who the organization really is.

Authentic reputations come from actual organizational features.

Stakeholders need to believe that claims about the organization come not from the mind of some clever spinmeister (aka you, the PR professional), but instead from the organization itself.

So, the PR professional’s effort should focus on explaining how the organization’s reputation is anchored in the organization’s features.

To anchor a reputation claim, the PR professional need to explain and share a cause & effect relationship between the claim and its organizational source.

Cause – Effect explanations should address questions like:

When a reputation can be traced back to the organization’s actual features, stakeholders have a reason to believe that the reputation is real.

Every organization needs to establish optimal distinctiveness – a competitive position within your field, where you are similar enough to other organizations to be seen as legitimate, but different enough that you’re seen as having something unique to offer.  But, optimal distinctiveness is more than being in a competitive place in your field.

Optimal distinctiveness means having a competitive position of similarity and difference that is anchored in the organization’s identity.

While optimal distinctiveness depends on knowing of your competition, it also depends on knowing your organization and what’s built in to who you are. When an organization can link its competitive positioning in the marketplace to the very features that define the organization for its members, its claims to distinctiveness are authentic.

Establishing Optimal Distinctiveness: Positioning plus Anchoring

Establishing optimal distinctiveness requires your organization to work in two directions. You must:

1. Position your organization in the marketplace
by comparing your organization to other organizations to see where you stand out, and then matching this to customer needs

2. Anchor your organizations position in your organization’s identity,
by recognizing and understanding unique characteristics that are indigenous to the organization itself, and linking these to claims of distinctiveness

Positioning: Your Place vs. Your Competition

Most people assume that you can find optimal distinctiveness simply through the process of positioning. Positioning is a marketing activity where you orchestrate perceptions of what your organization has to offer so that you occupy a valued place in the customer’s mind relative to competitive offerings. A product, service or organization can be positioned on the basis of an attribute or benefit, a user niche, class, price, quality, purpose, etc.

Positioning traditionally focuses on finding an attractive place in a competitive field. We consider what other organizations offer and what customers & clients want, and use this external information to find a definition or image for our organization that is attractive, competitive, and unique. We aim to be the one and only organization able to offer what we offer.

Positioning is not enough for optimal distinctiveness, though, because an organization needs to be able to substantiate its claims to be unique. The organization has to be able to explain where its uniqueness comes from and demonstrate that this uniqueness has a sustainable source in the organization’s core character. It has to anchor its claims in real features of the organization.

Anchoring: Grounding Optimal Distinctiveness in Organizational Identity

“Who you are” as an organization is your organizational identity. Organizational identity is the set of core, enduring and distinct attributes that define an organization for its members. The ‘core’ and ‘enduring’ elements refer to the idea that these attributes are foundational to the organization and more important than other attributes. The ‘distinctive’ element refers to the idea that this set of attributes defines one and only one organization.

To anchor any claims to be distinctive, an organization has to look deeper into itself to answer the question:

“What is indigenous to this organization that explains what we do, what we value, and what our goals are?”

These indigenous features could appear in the organization’s past, in its history, the founders’ personalities, mythical stories, and narratives. These features can appear in the present as organizational practices, routines, and capabilities, and as the organization’s perception of its best collective self. And, these features can appear in the future, in the form of the organization’s vision or aspirational ideal self.

When an organization is able to anchor its claims to be one way or another in actual features of its organizational identity, it demonstrates to its stakeholders that these claims are authentic—they have an actual source in the organization. They aren’t made up, or invented just so that the organization looks good. They are real. Anchoring claims of distinctiveness to the organization’s identity also demonstrates that this distinctiveness is sustainable. The organization controls the source of this distinctiveness and can continue to produce the same distinctiveness over and over.

Navel-gazing vs. Anchoring

Many managers think that crafting their organization’s market position is all they need to do to set their organization apart from others, to be distinctive, and to be competitive. Managers feel reasonably comfortable spending time on positioning, since everyone knows that marketing is important.

However, many managers think that focusing internally, on the organization’s indigenous characteristics, is not worth their time. It’s too touchy-feely, too much ‘navel gazing’, too much reflection.

What these managers fail to understand is that positioning an organization without anchoring that position in the organization’s actual identity ends up creating a façade—and an untrustworthy one at that.

A distinctive, competitive position in the marketplace is only “optimal” if it is authentic. To establish optimal distinctiveness, the organization’s market position must must be anchored in the organization’s core, enduring and distinctive identity.

By anchoring your organization’s position in the the marketplace in your organization’s identity, you establish an optimal distinctiveness that allows your organization to adapt to its different competitive contexts while upholding, confirming and sustaining who it is and what really makes it powerful.

See also: Can an organization be too different?: The Strategic Value of Optimal Distinctiveness

Images from Flickr: Dandelion collage from robynejay Dandelion from Anja Jonsson

As much as I love academic writing, conducting studies and developing theories, all of this work shares one acute problem – it takes forever to get from first draft to print.

My just-published journal article with Adelaide King took about 8 years from idea to print, while the germinal paper on Organizational Identity & Identification with Jane Dutton and Janet Dukerich took a bit longer than 5 years.

When you’re working on ideas to contribute to ‘the literature’, that cycle time of 3, 4, or 8 years is awful, but still somehow bearable. In part, it’s bearable because in the interim you are sharing working paper versions with colleagues, influencing their thinking and developing your own. And, it is made bearable by knowing that not so much is changing (except the theory & knowledge itself) that makes you worry that the ideas are becoming obsolete.

Not so, though, with writing directed towards practitioners. The passage of time really matters. The time lag between idea and print is even worse when you are writing about a fast-moving phenomenon… like social media, for example. Practitioners could actually put to use the ideas that are shared in academic research, if only they have access to them (which they don’t until the ideas are in print).

This is all a big wind-up to say: Here’s a draft of a chapter I wrote 14 months ago, that won’t be published in hard copy until this spring. (That would be a total cycle time of 18-20 months– fast in the world of academics, but glacial for practitioners.) A better, more perfect version will appear in print, but in the meantime here are some ideas to enjoy– if they are not already obsolete!

Send me back your comments, suggestions, etc.

Re-creating Reputation Through Authentic Interaction: Using Social Media to Connect with Individual Stakeholders

Abstract

Organizations have a new opportunity for creating dialogues with individual stakeholders in which organizations can demonstrate their authenticity and earn a positive reputation. Social media tools, with their interactivity, constant stream of data, and easy sharing, make two-way symmetrical communication between individuals and organizations technically possible. And, strategies for making the organization socially present (i.e., more human) (Biocca, Harms, & Burgoon, 2003) online put the ultimate goal of authentic communication within reach of organizations.

To take advantage of these opportunities, organizations and reputation management practitioners will need to reconsider the roles of distinct, distributed interactions and individual stakeholders on creating reputation. Organization scholars will want to reconsider the relational approach to stakeholder management, and develop cross-disciplinary research to combine investigations of computer-mediated interaction with our evolving understanding of reputation management.

December 2009.
Forthcoming as a chapter in an edited book on Corporate Reputation, in Spring 2011.

ReCreating Reputation Harquail

(it does eventually download)

Do you ever have a good idea, but find yourself unable to execute it fully because the technology simply isn’t available? And, then, just a few short years later the technology appears and you squeal “Where Have You Been All My LIFE!”?

I’ve been having that relationship with the concept of hashtags.

A hashtag is a keyword, indicated by a hash symbol # that anchors the keyword to other information (in the manner of a bookmark) and allows that information to be searched and found by other people. Hashtags are metadata — data about data– that help us recall, locate, filter, and aggregate more granular data. The hashtag #favoritejaneaustenquotes helps you find any tweet in which someone mentions– you guessed it– her favorite Jane Austen quote.

With hashtags, you can find blog posts, tweets, and all manner of online data related to the idea captured by the hashtag. You can see who’s talking about something, what they are saying, and what it means to them.

Hashtags make conversations searchable — in real time, and historically. Hashtags also help us find other people who are interested in the same ideas.

Hashtags cohere conversations on social networks (like twitter) since people can locate, watch, and contribute to conversations by using the relevant hashtag(s). (A great example of the is #prstudchat – a weekly conversation for students of public relations.)

What are Hashtags really for?

Back in November of 2009, Baratunde Thurston shared a funny and provocative presentation at the Web 2.0 NY Expo: “There’s a #Hashtag for That.” Baratunde was riffing on the fun people have creating satirical hashtags and corresponding Twitter accounts (e.g., @swineflu, #swineflu) and using these as memes to provoke creativity,  commentary and conversation across Twitter.

When I watched Baratunde’s talk, I wondered:

– What if we each had our own hashtag? Not a satirical one, but an authentic hashtag?
– What if we created and routinely used a hashtags to capture and communicate who we were, and what we cared about?
– What if we intentionally used these hashtags to communicate not only to other people, but also back to ourselves?

In addition to being meta-data that tell us what’s going on where, hashtags can also work at the personal, cognitive level.   Online in the digital world, hashtags can work like mantras — like those words we choose each January to help us focus our goals for the year. As simple short reminders, hashtags can help us focus our efforts. Hashtags can help our selves pay attention. Hashtags can remind us what is important.

How can we use hashtags as tools for our “selves”?

We can also use hashtags as more than reminders of features, ideas, topics, attributes, sentiments and/or actions. We can actually use hashtags to create meaning, individually and collectively. Here’s how.

Hashtags Help Us Name “It”.
When you give a feature, idea, topic, attribute, sentiment and/or action an name, you make that thing visible to yourself and others. You show yourself and others that the concept exists. You create meaning by naming something previously unnamed.

For example, there’s an experience/sentiment that I have often, that doesn’t have a name. I’m currently on the hunt for a descriptive & evocative hashtag to capture it.
“It”, right now, is “ the experience of having linked/pinged/interacted digitally with ____, so that I now have an energy surge of purpose and support. “ Now that I’ve described this experience, you can recognize it. But if I could name it by hashtagging it, we could do even more with the concept.

Hashtags Help Us Claim It.
When we use a hashtag, we can make that thing our own. We can use the hashtag to note for ourselves (and others) every time that we’re feeling it, doing it, sending it, verbing it. And, when we attach a hashtag to our communications and our actions, we help people understand what we are experiencing, what we are trying to convey, and that this matters to us.

Hashtags Help Us Fame It.
When we use a hashtag, we not only name (capture) and claim (attach to us) a concept, we are also then able to promote that idea. We can share the idea, we can propagate the idea, and we can meme the idea.

You may not have thought of “the experience of having linked/pinged/interacted digitally with ____, so that I now have an energy surge of purpose and support” but as soon as I have a good hashtag and use it, you can spread that idea wherever you want. Because we’ll all be able to recognize it and share it.

Being a Hashtag

Naming, claiming and faming are all good — but they do not quite make the idea a part of you. To do that you actually have to “be” the hashtag. You have to take the whole idea one step further into your self.

To “Be” a Hashtag you have to activate it– you have to make that idea real in your words and your actions.

We may actively try to be or do something that’s important to us, without getting the kind of response we hope for. Even though we think actions speak louder than words, those actions aren’t always easy to interpret. When you use a hashtag next to an action, you give other people the meta-data to understand what you are doing.

• Why do you keep tweeting about getting women on tech panels?
  Because you are all about #morevoices.
• What are these ten quotes about honesty?
  You are reminding yourself (and us) that you’re working to be your #trueself.
• Why have you just sent a #ThursdayTxs to that follower?
  Because you care about being @thoughtful, and you are showing this in your action.

In your relationships with others, being a hashtag makes your actions easier to interpret. You are more effective (especially with people who don’t know you well), because people know how to see you. You are more trustworthy, because people can see what you do and what you mean, and they know they can count on you for this.

Even more important, being a hashtag helps you enact that quality, that idea, more often. And the more often you enact it, the more it becomes a part of you. The more you “be” it, the more you become it.

I had a very busy session online this afternoon between a school play and a conference call, where for forty minutes or so I was tweeting and emailing four different tweeple about three different projects. With each interaction, I was _having_ “it”:   “the experience of having linked/pinged/interacted digitally with ____, so that I now have an energy surge of purpose and support”.

But even better I was _being_ “it” — I was giving it back. I was intentionally responding to my colleagues in a way that sent “the energy of purpose and support” out to them and right back to me. And it was great.

And it was “me” — doing what’s important to me.

Now, if only I could find a hashtag for that.

Images:What the Heck is a #Hashtag & 3 Steps to Set Up Your Own Hashtag, Hashtag Heart by Drew Olanoff on Flickr

Personal branding is inescapable.¹

A person simply cannot participate in online forums, much less in their full career, without deliberately or unintentionally crafting and framing the way that they are seen by others.

However, while personal branding is inescapable, it isn’t easy to make it work in our favor.

Personal branding is fraught with choices and tensions, and these challenges are different for girls.

For women of every race, ethnicity, and orientation, each personal branding decision requires us to navigate the crosscurrents of societal pressures and personal authenticity. Each woman needs to negotiate which social expectations she’ll meet, and which ones she will resist, as she strives to create and defend a personal brand that expresses her unique identity.

Every social media platform constrains the ways that you can represent ‘who you are’.

Personal Branding starts with presenting yourself online, in public spaces, on public platforms, for other people to see you. Most professional social media platforms–those internal to the organization, those connected to particular communities, and even those where you might participate as your own “self” – select and constrain the information you are able to display.

Software platforms are built to reflect value-laden decisions about what sorts of information matters, how much information is important, how that information with be displayed, and to what degree the presentation of this information can be personalized. These choices reflect what’s best for the software platform, not what’s best for your personal brand.

On these social platforms, we craft our personal brands though a series of decisions about – naming, - claiming, – displaying, and - disclosing ‘who we are’.

For women, each of these decisions requires us to navigate that gray space between buying into or resisting social expectations for what she is allowed to be and how she is allowed to claim her unique identity.

Naming

Let’s start with a really easy personal branding decision: What name are you going to use?

• Will you use a formal name, a nickname or a handle? Will you choose a name that reflects your life-partnership status, or one that is independent of your relationship status?

• If you are married, are you going to use your birth name or your married name? Are you going to hold on to your pre-marital online history by retaining your name? Will you try to keep your professional and personal lives separate online by using different surnames?

• If you are in a relationship that is not recognized by the laws in your state, will you try to signal with your name that you have a life partner? Or, will you use a name that helps you keep this part of your life?  Are you going to try to hyphenate your last name, and then hope that the software platforms you need to use will actually accommodate a name with more than 16 characters, that includes a hyphen?

Along with the decision itself, are you ready to negotiate the expectations about your career commitment and your priorities that people infer from the decision you make around your name choice?

Claiming

Online, we need to claim what we know, how we know it, and what we can do so that people know how to categorize us. We need to describe ourselves with terms that represent our defining characteristics, our experience, our accomplishments, and our abilities. For women, claiming presents three challenges– claiming our expertise, finding labels  that fit that expertise, and finding labels that don’t invite the ‘wrong’ interpretation.

When you label your attributes, your skills, and your accomplishments, your goal is to establish credibility. Taking credit may or may not be harder for women, but certainly appearing credible by striking an acceptable tone as you describe your achievements and accomplishments is harder for women.

• What terms feel accurate and comfortable for you to use to describe yourself and your expertise? How do you choose terms that strike the right note without seeming presumptuous? What words and phrases are appropriate for women?

• Are you ready to deal with the ways that some people will respond if you emphasize a particular credential, or when you take credit for an accomplishment in a way that they think is inappropriate for women?

Formal titles and credentials can often be received differently when they are offered by a woman and not a man.

Here’s an example from my own experience. I’ve noticed that a few times when I’ve commented on other blogs and mentioned my PhD, or referred to my scholarship (as in, research published in peer-reviewed scientific journals), men who disagree with me have challenged my academic bona fides by making snarky references to my PhD or putting the work “scholarship” in ironic quotation marks. I haven’t seen men dismiss other men in the same way.

The credential ‘bounces’ differently when offered by a woman than when offered by a man. Just ask Senator Boxer, or Dr. Jill Biden.

Displaying

Peole consume online information visually, so “optics” matter a lot. What kind of visual design and images will you offer to establish people’s first impressions?

Head shots, profile pictures, and twitter avatars capture one particular visual image of who you are. The picture you choose not only (usually) reveals your gender, but also reveals your age, ‘attractiveness‘, and gender performance. So, choosing your headshot is a big deal.

• Will you wear makeup or not? Will you have your hair natural or will you get your hair processed? Will you retouch your photo or leave the wrinkles blemishes visible? Will you try to look older or younger? What will you wear?

• Will you have a professional take your head shots or will you just crop an informal snapshot? What gaze will you choose? Will you smile or look serious?

• (Note: Regardless of your sex, unless your screen name or handle includes the word ‘diva’, I don’t think your avatar should project a ‘come hither’ vibe. Just sayin’.)

Are you trying to look competent or warm? Personable or professional? Claim or avoid the ‘feminine’? These choices matter.

You also create your brand through the visual appearance of your online space, with fonts, themes and colors.

• Will you chose fonts, colors and themes that communicate that you are female? Will you present a conventional expression of femininity with a pink or purple website with curvy fonts? Or, will your site be red & black, blue & grey, sans serif and androgynous?

All Cover, Not Much Book

The first three steps of personal branding — naming, claiming, and displaying– focus on creating a first impression. These steps of personal branding emphasize the simple surface more that the complex depth of a person.

Coincidentally, these steps heighten two ongoing tensions that many women struggle with:
1) being subject to the scrutiny of the male gaze, and
2) being valued for how she looks rather than who she really is.
Consider that simply being told that men are observing her can prompt a woman to “narrow her social presence” and to say less about herself.

Just as women experience pressure to meet external, often unrealistic (and usually performance-irrelevant) appearance standards in physical work spaces, they also experience that pressure online. This pressure is not imaginary or all in their heads; women actually get unsolicited feedback on their pictures and self-descriptions based on whether and how their appearance conforms to some people’s standards. All you have to do is read the comments on blog post by an outspoken woman, and without even scrolling a third of the way down, you’ll see some reference to her appearance. It won’t be complimentary.

Personal disclosure

To craft an appealing brand, we’re told to share more personal information about ourselves– to tell personal stories, to share emotions, to be honest about our opinions. Personal disclosure helps people “get to know who we really are”.

However, personal disclosure can also make us vulnerable.

Online, personal disclosures are interpreted differently and are often less safe for women than for men. For example, when a man mentions on Twitter or Facebook that he’s home for the day with a sick child, people send him pats on the back. In contrast, many women won’t even mention if this is happening for them, since the very bit of disclosure that gets a man applause for being a good dad garners for a woman the concern that she’s less professional or less committed to her work.

Some people take the opportunity to offer unsolicited feedback on whether, why and how a person’s disclosure is valuable, and to pass judgment on that person publicly, through blog comments, “likes”, and responses.

Personal disclosure opens us up to other people’s scrutiny, where they can evaluate us on dimensions that are unrelated to our professional ability.

For many of us women who’ve been working in the professional world for while, much of our effort to develop our reputations and to build our “personal brands” has meant breaking free of the templates created by stereotypes. Most of us have been creating our reputations over time, through multimodal interactions, histories of action & reaction, long-standing professional relationships, and more. These are overstuffed with information about us and offering people experiences of us from which they can infer and construe who we are, and get a fuller sense of our authentic selves.

But even so, seemingly superficial choices about how we present ourselves online still seem to matter. We women have to create a place for ourselves and each other in a professional world that is not excited about having us participate as professionals – especially not in our most authentic, anti-stereotypical, self- expressions.

All this is not to dismiss the ways that personal branding is a challenge for boys, but rather to help us appreciate that:

Given the demands of presenting oneself in a socially-approved way versus as our most authentic selves, it’s different for girls.

See also:
Don’t Let Personal Branding Stifle your Authentic Voice
Defend Your Personal Brand. Barbara Boxer shows how.
Authentic Twitter: Are exclamation points unprofessional?
¹ Note, I’m not a wholehearted fan of personal branding.

Mystery and the Modern Woman,
Confessions of a 36 year-old woman, by Tara Hunt on horsepigcow

Images:
Hello My Name Is silver pendant, by pollysimon on Etsy
Princess Silhouette Cameo Vinyl Decal tweetheartwallart on Etsy
Girl Name Definition Adjectives PlanetWallArt on Etsy
Handmade paper flower by danamazing on Etsy
Stamp of Approval, by Circa Ceramics on Etsy

Smarts. Fire. Audacity. Technical chops. Focus. Strong network. Innovative product ideas. That’s what venture capitalists look for when they are selecting which entrepreneurs to support and which businesses to fund.

Unfortunately, VCs tend to see these characteristics most often when the entrepreneurs themselves are “white, male, under 30, nerds, with no social life who dropped out of Harvard or Stanford).”

VCs look for shortcuts to sift through too many entrepreneurs with too many ideas. They want fast ways to identify and pounce on the next big things, the next Foursquare, Twitter or Boxee.

VCs look for trends. Much like entrepreneurs, who use pattern recognition to identify business opportunities, VCs need to spot trends in complex, seemingly unrelated areas and uncover links between them. Unfortunately, it seems that many VCs overuse the pattern of ‘young, white, male dropout nerds‘ and fail to see other important trends that would actually help them identify new opportunities that are presented by female entrepreneurs.

Female entrepreneurs, especially in the digital space, don’t fit the traditional pattern of what a “digital entrepreneur” looks like. Instead, female digital entrepreneurs have their own patterns.

Here’s a pattern that I just noticed last week:

1. A female entrepreneur,
2. Working in partnership with another female entrepreneur,
3. Where they both have MBAs from Harvard, and
4. Are developing a digitalized product/service in the fashion industry.

Four pairs of entrepreneurs who establish this pattern are:

• Laura Kofoid and Grace Tsao-Woo of Laudi Vidni
• Hayley Barna and Katia Beauchamp of BirchBox
• Alexis Maybank and Alexandra Wilkis Wilson of Gilt Groupe
• Jennifer Hyman and Jennifer Fleiss of Rent the Runway

Two Women + Two Harvard MBAs + Digital Fashion = Great Investment Opportunity

All four businesses are consumer oriented, web based, fashion retailing, giving busy women (and men) the chance to buy fashionable, stylish, of the minute items easily. Not coincidentally, all four pairs met during their MBA programs at Harvard Business School.

Although I’ve known about Laudi Vidni and  Gilt Groupe for a while, I didn’t notice a pattern until I saw a story on BirchBox and that same day had a friend recommend Rent the Runway. It may be that you have to be a woman of a certain age with a soupcon of interest in fashion to be involved in the potential consumer space and thus notice these trends. If that’s true, then it’s another data point suggesting that we need more women in VC firms. VC firms need people who are likely note these trends because they are living the same lives as the potential customers.

Three data points is a trend… and four data points suggest an opportunity to me. I wonder, is anyone seeing what I’m seeing?

Patterns aren’t perfect proxies.

Even if VCs were to use this new pattern of Two Women + Two Harvard MBAs + Digital Fashion = Great Investment Opportunity, they’d still miss some compelling women entrepreneurs working solo on their start-ups without another (female or male) partner. VCs would miss entrepreneurs like Tereza Nemessanyi, founder and CEO of Honestly Now Inc. Nemessanyi has an MBA from Wharton, and her start-up touches on but is not focused on fashion. These VCs would also miss entrepreneurs like Michelle Madhok of SheFinds.com and MomFinds.com. Madhok got her masters’ from Northwestern, and comes from a print media background.

There are many audacious entrepreneurs with compelling business ideas who, as persons, don’t fit the pattern of being ‘young, white, male dropout nerds’. Truly sharp venture capitalists strive to be ahead of the pack, and they need to recognize trends sooner than anyone else.

So, while the “two-white-guys-in-a-garage stereotype remains the romantic ideal”, it’s time to open up what we’re looking for so that we can recognize new patterns.

Maybe the new ideal should be “Two Women + Two Harvard MBAs + Digital Fashion.”

You can start by looking for “Two well dressed women in Section B.”

See also:

Doerr and Moritz Stir VCs in One-On-One Showdown, WSJ (source of Doerr’s now-legendary white male nerd quote)
Lack of female entrepreneurs – a VC gender problem, by Vivek Wadhwa
How to Find a Tech Cofounder from 12MonthsToLaunch
Authentic From the Start-Up: 4 Tips from Cindy Gallop and IfWeRanTheWorld

Note: Pattern recognition is not the same as stereotyping. “Pattern recognition is the process through which specific persons perceive complex and seemingly unrelated events as constituting identifiable patterns… recognizing links between apparently unrelated trends, changes and events” to identify a business idea. (R. A. Baron, 2006. Opportunity Recognition as Pattern Recognition: How entrepreneurs connect the dots to identify new business opportunities, Academy of Management Perspectives, pp. 104-119.)

Here’s a mini-exam for you.

College ranking systems are:

A. A great way to sell magazines and get your publication’s name in the news
B. A scam that preys on the social and economic insecurities of educational organizations
C. A somewhat-helpful guide to prospective students
D. A process that is entirely gamed by the organizations that are being ranked
E. A problematic way to assess the meaningful distinctiveness of any institution
F. All of the above

If you chose F, go to the straight to the next question.

Everyone from Forbes to Business Week to US News & World Reports to The Economist to the Princeton Review has been ranking colleges, and graduate programs. Every year when these rankings come out we hear all about all the ways in which they are flawed.

When we step back and look at the whole picture, it makes me wonder whether the distinctions that these ranking make as they compare schools are very meaningful. Are these just a way to show various differences among schools? Or, are these authentic distinctions along meaningful criteria?

Do these rankings tell us anything meaningful about the organizations that are ranked?

Rankings vs. Meaningful Differences

These ranking systems tend to emphasize the financial assets of the institution, the academic potential of the student body, the school’s popularity among 17 and 18 year olds, and the perceived prestige and/or elitism of the institution. Every year they seem to add more and different measures, as though the sheer amount of data in the survey can make the distinctions among schools more meaningful.

Increasing the number of different measures makes the rankings more useful to some potential students (and their parents), to the degree that the rankings incorporate components that are important to the student. Some students do want to compare the the number of varsity sports teams from one school to another.

But in terms of telling us what those colleges are like, what defines them, what makes them significant, these long rows of numbers don’t tell us much at all.

As Jo Ellen Parker, President of Sweet Briar College, explains:

Rankings lists can produce strange conjunctions. On the Forbes.com list this year #87 is Sweet Briar, and #88 is Johns Hopkins University. While I have no doubt that Forbes’ methodology genuinely produced these results, it strikes me that these two excellent institutions are so different in nature and situation that their appearance side by side is almost startling. (emphasis mine)

Comparing Johns Hopkins and Sweet Briar overall is rather like comparing, well, a laptop and an autoclave. Both might be highly rated, but they’re far from interchangeable.

As Parker points out, these schools are ranked close together and rated as being pretty similar, when in fact they are not really alike at all.

Metrics about inputs (e.g., % applicants from USA) and metrics about component parts (e.g., university endowments) don’t necessarily convey information about an organization’s important qualities.  The schools’ average SAT scores and number of varsity sports teams does not help us understand either school’s core identity, what defines that school and its community, and what values that school holds dear.

Meaningful Differences: Identity and Core Values

In contrast to mainstream ranking strategies (e.g., those employed by Forbes, Business Week, US News & World Reports, etc.) and in contrast to the ethos behind these rankings is the approach taken by Washington Monthly. Washington Monthly focuses not on the prestige or elitism of the institution, but on how well these schools serve the public interest.

Washington Monthly ranks schools … “based on their contribution to the public good in three broad categories:

• Social Mobility (recruiting and graduating low-income students),

• Research (producing cutting-edge scholarship and PhDs), and

• Service (encouraging students to give something back to their country).”

Why measure these outcomes?

By measuring these outcomes, Washington Monthly is sharing data about how committed these schools are to the values that underlie these outcomes. That, in turn, tells us something about the qualities of the school itself.

For example, knowing that Bryn Mawr College ranks 7th this year in the percentage of undergraduates who go on to get PhDs tells us more about the intellectual caliber of the experience at this college than its 49% acceptance rate (USNWR).

But even more important, Washington Monthly rankings measure what kinds of transformations these institutions are able to create for the students who join them and graduate from them.

Organizational Identity and Transformations

You can get terrific insights about an organization by looking at what happens with/to the people who join it.  Washington Monthly’s rankings tell us something about the organization’s positive approach to diversity, its orientation towards learning, and its orientation towards contributing to the world. These rankings give us a sense of what values inform the community, and what values will be emphasized by the members.

Of course, not every school values diversity, learning, and contributing to the world, not every school makes these values part of their core identity, and not every high school senior wants their college experience to emphasize these values.  But Washington Monthly’s survey offers meaningful information to these schools and students– by showing them (and others) which schools choose not to emphasize these values.

It’s always difficult to compare lots organizations simultaneously on criteria as idiosyncratic as their identities.  Each institution’s identity is unique, and so you’re always comparing apples to oranges and to strawberries. Still, there are some comparisons that are meaningful– comparisons based transformations (outputs) that reflect values, and metrics that demonstrate values.

I’m a supporter of LGBTQx rights and of organizational diversity.

As an individual, I’m not likely to do much to boycott Target in response to Target’s $150,00 contribution to an anti-gay, pro-bigotry gubernatorial candidate.

But, if I were Target’s business customer, business supplier, stakeholder, or other important large stakeholder, I would make a bit deal out of withdrawing my support for Target to protest Target’s anti-gay action.

How do I make sense of these competing beliefs?

These two types of boycotting action have dramatically different effects on the ‘target’s’ bottom line and overall reputation. Damaging an organization’s reputation is more effective at provoking change than trying to hurt their bottom line.

Why Consumer Boycotting is Less Effective

As an individual consumer, my $200 in back to school spending isn’t much… and if I took it from Target, I’d only end up spending it at somewhere perhaps even less socially responsible (no way, Wal-Mart). So, on an individual level, my boycotting doesn’t have much of an impact on Target.

And, gathering up enough consumer to boycott target to make a difference is quite difficult.

Even with Facebook organizing and online petitions, it’s hard to aggregate individual consumers all across the nation and argue that the boycott and not the economy is what’s hurting Target’s same-store revenues.

First, for a ‘call to boycott’ to be effective at mobilizing individual consumers, the situation that prompts the boycott has to be visible, severe and egregious.

Despite the way that Target’s political donations have offended me and my P-Flag/LGBTQx community, many in Target’s consumer base are not all that aware of Target’s anti-gay action. And, of those who are aware, not all think that a $150,000 donation to a pro-bigotry candidate is severe enough to provoke a boycott. After all, Target has a long track record of supporting their LGBTQx employees … many consumers might see this action as a one time mistake.

And, even when you get individual customers to support the boycott in principle, once they get to the store they often fail to follow through in practice.

It’s hard to organize a consumer boycott that has an impact on a corporation’s actions. However, the situation is much different for institutional stakeholders.

Why Institutional Boycotting is More Effective

Most people assume that boycott actions taken by institutions, like other businesses, associations, and universities, have more of an impact because they aggregate (and thus maximize) the financial pain inflicted by a boycott.

And, they assume that institutional actions by stakeholders influence organization’s actions by influence the organization’s leadership. For example, shareholder action can pressure the business’s leadership to change policies and procedures.

However, the big reason that Institutional actions are more effective is because these actions are more likely to damage the ‘target’ organization’s public reputation.

As sociologist Brayden King explains,

“Boycotts don’t tend to work in the way people think, by hurting the bottom line”. … The big driver tends to be “the threat to a company’s reputation.” “Boycotts are essentially impression management tools. Actions by large organizations and institutions get more media attention.

For example, Washington University publicly withdrew from the “Target After Hours Shopping Event,” a nationwide program to draw college freshmen firstyears into Target Stores. This action was not only publicized in the Wash U student newspaper and on many blogs, but also the story has (to date) been retweeted over 1,000 times.

And, media outlets took note when three socially responsible investment firms issued a press release about introducing corporate governance resolutions directing Target to re-examine its political contributions and spending processes. While these resolutions will likely influence Target’s long-term behavior, the press release immediately influenced Target’s reputation– for the worse.

Because protests like boycotts matter because they make issues part of the public agenda and consciousness, public actions by institutions that influence damage on the target organization’s reputation are what make a difference.

The fact that institutional action is more effective than individual action doesn’t mean that individual action is useless– it means, instead, that individual consumers should consider activities other than/ in addition to withholding their own purchases.

What Individuals Can Do to Make a Difference

Consider that many Target customers don’t know anything about Target’s support of an anti-gay candidate… Anything you can do to raise public awareness can have an impact on these consumers and their sense of Target’s reputation.

Public actions to raise awareness that you might consider:

• Create an in-store protest. (see this great video of a protest inside a Target, at Queerty.com.) Remember, you have no right to free speech on private property– and inside the store is private property– as long as you respect their property and leave when asked, you can still create a bit of a ruckus.
• Create an outside-of-store protest.
• Picket in front of a Target store.
• Put fliers on cars parked in Target’s lot.
• Place signs on the road up to the Target entrance.
• Picket at Target-sponsored events.
• Send letters and photos to your town newspaper.
• Write about Target on your blog.
• Wear a pro-marriage equality T Shirt as you shop in Wal-Mart or Staples

If your organization has an opportunity to work with Target, use that opportunity for your own activism.

This may mean ending the relationship (like Washington U. did). Or, it could mean using this relationship to influence your Target contacts. (Just be sure to post on your corporate blog: “We’re partnering with Target to help educate Target about LGBT issues and Human Rights”.)

Go ahead and boycott - just don’t imagine that it makes that much of a difference to Target right now. Although individual boycotting may make you feel better, don’t stop there.

Instead, take different kinds of actions, actions that keep the issue in the public’s consciousness and work to damage the “Target” organization’s reputation.

See Also:

Target Misses the Mark on Diversity: Corporate Donation equals Corporate Homophobia
ColorLines: How To Make a Boycott MatterSFWeekly: Target Targeted By Angry S.F. Supervisor Candidates
NYC Protest 8/19/10 – Target Event @ The Standard Hotel (image
The 10 Day Boycott: A S.M.A.R.T. response to Whole Foods’ CEO Mackey

It’s not often that I get to follow up a post about an organization’s disappointing actions with a post celebrating that very organization’s next step. Given how easy it is to pay attention to and be outraged by the bad actions, it is all the more important to devote some energy to positive resolutions– so share this post!

Have you seen these headlines?

M·A·C to Donate its Global Profits from the M·A·C Rodarte Makeup Collection to Benefit Newly Created Women and Girls of Juarez Initiative

M·A·C and Rodarte apologize to the victims and their families in Juarez, the people of Mexico, the Mexican Government and concerned global citizens

MAC Cosmetics, the company that generated so much ill will with its thoughtless choice to name a cosmetics collection after the epicenter of femicide, Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, has made a full apology.

MAC’s ultimate response addresses all five of the key components of successful apology (as outlined by John Kador, and summarized here):

• Recognize the offense
• Take responsibility
• Show remorse
• Make restitution
• Prevent repetition

MAC’s apology is effective because it contains all five of these components. But MAC’s apology goes even further:   MAC’s apology is authentic.

MAC’s Authentic Apology for the Ciudad Juarez Collection

MAC’s apology is authentic because MAC took went two steps beyond what’s “effective”:

1. MAC linked their apology to their collective identity and purpose, and

2. MAC designed into their organization an ongoing process of attention to and restitution for their offense.

Look at this excerpt from MAC’s apology:

“We are deeply sorry and apologize to everyone we offended, especially the victims, the women and girls of Juarez and their families. We have heard the response of concerned global citizens loud and clear and are doing our very best to right our wrong. The essence of M·A·C is to give back and care for the community and our initial handling of this makeup collection was not reflective of M·A·C’s values. M·A·C and Rodarte are committed to using these learnings to raise awareness on this important issue and to leverage our unique platform to help the women and girls of Juarez,” said M·A·C President John Demsey.

MAC’s Authentic Apology is linked to the organization’s identity

MAC’s official statement uses phrases like these to show a link to “who they are” as a company:

• The essence of MAC is to give back and care for the community
• Our initial handling … was not reflective of MAC’s values
• (We are) Committed to leverage our unique platform

Statements like these demonstrate that MAC understands that their offensive action was not only offensive in general, but also was offensive because it contradicted who MAC claims and wants to be as an organization.

MAC’s statements show that MAC is also apologizing for being inauthentic, and for damaging their stakeholders’ trust in them as an organization.

MAC’s Authentic Apology is built into the organization itself.

MAC has designed into its organization an ongoing process of awareness of and restitution for their offense.

Many blog posts and tweets about MAC’s Juarez Apology focus on just one component of MAC’s apology– their decision to donate all of the profits from the collection to initiatives to reduce violence against women in Ciudad Juarez. This is an important decision, but not as important as the way that MAC is implementing this decision.

MAC is building their restitution into MAC’s existing systems, relationships, and capabilities.

MAC is going to use the same process, the same stakeholder connections and the same expertise that they use to deliver their support for their well-regarded HIV/AIDS initiatives to deliver ongoing support to The Women and Girls of Juarez Initiative.

As the Facebook statement explains:

M·A·C has a longstanding tradition of service in Mexico, supporting important social causes in the country such as HIV prevention and treatment. Since 2002, the M·A·C AIDS Fund has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to local entities, including Fundación Eudes, La Casa de la Sal, A.C., Ser Humano, A.C., Mesón de la Misericordia Divina A.C., Pirana Studio, and Fundación Unidos por un México Vivo.

By building their support for the Women of Juarez into the organization itself, MAC accomplishes two things:

1. MAC makes sure that as an organization, it has a process for staying aware of issues related to violence against women, and

2. MAC makes their support ongoing (rather than just a one shot deal).

These actions demonstrate that MAC actually does care, and has made a commitment to continue to care, about violence against women.

You can expect that MAC’s apology is not superficial, because they themselves have connected their apology and their method of restitution to their core identity. MAC has reflected on its values, acknowledges that it has acted inauthentically with regard to its values, and demonstrated a renewed commitment to these values in their apology process and outcomes.

Let’s celebrate MAC’s authentic apology.

It is shameful that MAC didn’t catch this problem before it happened; it is admirable that they are working towards an authentic apology. An apology that is linked to MAC’s identity and built into MAC’s system is real, and it will make a real difference.

For more of the story of how beauty bloggers pushed MAC to apologize, see Healing Beauty’s posts, starting with  Success! MAC Rodarte to Donate ALL Profits to the Women of Juarez.