The rapid descent of Tiger and Toyota
Recently, we’ve witnessed remarkable ‘falls from grace’ of two giants who had previously enjoyed superb reputations – Tiger Woods and Toyota. Reputation, roughly defined, is the sum total of all your work – creativity, outreach, public relations, communications, actions, everything. Reputation is why people buy from you in the case of Toyota, and why they buy the products and services you recommend, in Tiger’s case.
In our new book* we refer to reputation as the ‘New Bottom Line’. This doesn’t mean, of course, that reputation has replaced the need for bottom-line profits. Rather, it highlights the all-important fact that yesterday’s profits are in no way a guarantee for tomorrow’s profits. Your ability to earn a profit tomorrow, and through the coming years, is dependent upon your reputation.
As Tiger and Toyota have found out the hard way, reputations are earned over time by hard work and careful planning – but oh, how quickly they can be damaged.
- We’ll be making a more formal launch of our book soon, although our publisher Greenwood Press and Amazon are already taking pre-orders!
