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With the Société Générale and Northern Rock sagas, it is a good time to be in the business of advising errant companies on how to restore their lost reputations. Leslie Gaines-Ross (left), chief reputation strategist at PR firm Weber Shandwick, has just written a book on the subject entitled Corporate Reputation, 12 Steps to Safeguarding and Recovering Reputation. She braved Monday’s storm to give me her opinion on how ceos should apologise when they or their organisations make mistakes, while also addressing topics such as whether or not a company should engage with hostile bloggers. Listen to the 8-minute audio interview here.
Continuing with the theme of SocGen and angry bloggers, the French bank features in a rant from tompeters!, the management guru we knew as Tom Peters in a more conventionally punctuated age. Writing from his farm in Tinmouth, Vermont, tom has just used his blog to have a pop at Daniel Bouton, the bullet-headed SocGen chairman who is somehow still hanging on to his job after the Kerviel affair. It’s part of a broader tirade about executive pay. Other ceos who feel his wrath include Boeing boss Jim McNerney and Fidelity’s Peter Lynch. This is tom’s understated conclusion:
I don’t want The Law to muzzle exec pay. But I would like common sense to prevail, or at least make the occasional appearance. The 500 Fortune 500 CEOs are no more flawless, genius, etc., than my dog Dodger, who, trust me, via his own sort of Excellence, can reverse the tide and part the waters by producing a fart that carries on the wind from Tinmouth VT all the way to Wall Street.
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