Guest Blogger: William R.
Mansfield, Founder, Mansfield Institute for Public Policy and Social Change,
Inc.
According to the quintessential entertainer,
P.T. Barnum, founder of “the Greatest Show on Earth” and other modest productions,
you could fool all of the people all of the time . . . but only with their full
and willing consent. Many people are, in
fact, surprised to learn that “America’s Showman” was not only a model of
personal rectitude, always keeping his word, but insisted on strict honesty in
all business dealings.
Even when legally released from the obligation
to repay creditors — following a bankruptcy that resulted from the dishonesty
of his partners — he made certain every cent was paid back. People paid him to be fooled, they did not
pay him to be a thief.
In modern parlance, P.T. Barnum had a good
“brand.” When you went to a Barnum show
or visited the Barnum Museum, you got what you paid for. If you were deceived, it was honest
deceit. No one said you really had to
believe that was a genuine South Sea mermaid, or that Jumbo was the biggest
elephant that ever lived.
On the other hand, if P.T. Barnum owed you five
dollars, you could bank on the fact that he would pay you five dollars — if he
had it. If he didn’t have it, he had
proved several times over that he would not rest until he did, and he had
handed it over to you, payment in full, with interest.
As Barnum well
knew, nothing is more important than your brand. Ultimately, your brand is what defines you,
regardless of the work you do. You don’t
have to be a great entertainer or even a celebrity, but you do have to be a
“mensch” — a man or grown-up adult who accepts responsibility for what he is
and what he does.
It doesn’t matter
whether you are a faceless employee of a worldwide corporation or a one-person
business working off your kitchen table out of your home. It should be your top priority to build,
protect, and represent your brand to the best of your ability in every
interaction you have with others. The
essence of building a strong brand is simply this: keeping your promises and
creating great experiences for others.
When you are in
business, in a sense you have as many brands as you have customers and people
who have an impression of you. If those
impressions are bad, or if you don’t keep your promises, then your brand is
weak. You might not even realize what
you’re doing to weaken your brand — your character and reputation in business —
when you:
·
Transfer a customer four times to different
departments and she never has her problem solved.
·
Charge a customer extra for something they
thought was included in the original price.
·
Replace a defective product but no one
apologizes to the customer for his trouble.
·
Put a telephone customer on hold for over a
minute.
·
Have a website that is confusing and hard to
navigate.
·
Fail to greet by name a repeat customer of many
years who comes into your store.
Trivial? Perhaps, but these are the sorts of things
that add up.
What surprises many people, however, is that,
while your individual brand is important, it pales to insignificance in
comparison with your social or institutional brand — how people view your
organization or company. As the saying
goes, “Birds of a feather flock together.”
If you are associated with a group that has a bad brand or reputation,
people are just going to assume that you either buy in to the bad principles of
that group completely, or are too weak or lazy to fight free of it or reform
it.
The fact is, human beings are what Aristotle
called “political animals.” That is, we
are a possibly unique combination in the universe of individual and social
creature. We are each of us his or her
own person, of course, absolutely unique, but we are also members of society,
and bound by the same rules as everyone else, no matter how special we may be .
. . or think we are.
That means we
must not only be personally individually virtuous ourselves — maintain a good
brand individually — we must also see to it that our institutions are socially
virtuous: maintain a good brand socially.
In other words, we as individuals must do what is best for ourselves . .
. but it must always be within the context of what is also best for other
individuals, groups, and society at large.
That’s a pretty
tall order. How do we do it?
First, by making
sure we are personally oriented toward what the ancient philosophers called
“virtue” — human-ness, being a mensch.
That’s at the individual level.
 |
| Institutions must be justly structured. |
At the social
level, we must ensure as far as we can that our institutions are justly
structured so as to encourage individual virtue. If something in the structuring of our
institutions offends against human dignity or inhibits the sovereignty of the
individual in a way not required by the demands of the common good, then we
have a responsibility. That is to
organize with others and reform our institutions so that they no longer interfere
with personal virtue, and promote a positive brand for the organization.
Thus, while
nothing can really replace personal responsibility in such matters, there are a
few things that every institution must do if it is to fulfill the role for
which it was designed:
·
It should have a clearly defined mission
statement. If you don’t know why the
organization exists, why does the organization exist?
·
It should have a clear vision statement. If you don’t know where are you going, how do
you know where you are going?
·
There should be a set of core values that define
that specific institution. If you don’t
know what the institution is, how do you know what it is?
·
There should be a code of ethics. If you don’t know how people are supposed to
behave, don’t be surprised if they behave badly.
Is that all
that’s necessary? Of course not. No institution or organization is ever
perfect. The people within the
organization must keep constant watch to ensure that not only they, but the
institution itself stays on course, and be prepared at all times to organize to
repair whatever goes wrong so everyone can get back to the important task of
carrying out the mission of the organization.
#30#
