Episode #158 — Stephen Hahn on Measuring Reputation in a Turbulent World

- Welcome to The Crocs. Join one of the world's top communicators, Mike Fernandez, and guests, as they take you behind the scenes of the news of the day and explore the crocs of stories that are shaping business, politics, and our daily lives. - Welcome to The Crocs of the Story, and welcome to our first episode in 2026, and our 158th overall. We thank all of you for joining us and making this podcast one of the most listened to about the subject of communications, where we attempt to explore the forces shaping communications in business and institutions, politics, and culture. If you've been paying much attention to the world around us, you know that organizations of all stripes today are navigating almost dizzying array of pressures, economic uncertainty, political volatility, shifting consumer expectations, technological disruption, and a media environment that never sleeps. In moments like these, reputation isn't just a nice to have. It becomes a strategic asset, or a strategic risk. To help us make sense of this increasingly complex landscape, I'm delighted to welcome someone who has spent an entire career at the intersection of data, trust, and corporate leadership. Steven Hahn, Chief Reputation and Strategy Officer at the Reptract Company. Reptract is widely recognized as the standard for measuring and managing corporate reputation. And I should note, teams I've had have used have wrapped track over the years, and earlier in the company's history, I had the privilege of doing work directly with one of its founders, Charles Fombrun, who's several work I should have seen next to me today, a book entitled Reputation Realizing Value from the Corporate Image. I think it was published back in 1996, and it really helped to define the field of reputation measurement. Steven Hahn himself has been a leading voice in reputation intelligence, corporate responsibility, and stakeholder trust, advising Fortune 500 companies, shaping industry frameworks, and helping organizations, understand not just what their reputation is, but why it is and what to do about it. He's been featured in major media and is a frequent commentator on the evolving expectations facing companies and leaders. Steven, welcome to the crux of the story. - Hello, Mike, great to be on the show. Thank you for having me and obviously to talk about a very important and emerging topic around the premise of reputation. So looking forward to our conversation. - Well, thank you. And really appreciate the many contributions you've made to the field through the years. You know, companies today face what feels like a never ending list of issues, economic, political, social, technological. Why does Reptrak focus so squarely on reputation as the organizing lens for navigating all this? - Well, it's a loaded question because obviously the premise is reputation matters and it's really important and CEOs have come to recognize that their ability to better manage it can yield competitive advantage. Not because people feel good about what the company stands for but more importantly because it drives human behavior. It drives a degree to which you choose to support the company or not. Think about getting your next job. Who do you choose to work for? You choose to work for the company that has the best reputation is going to allow you to achieve your career goals. Think about purchasing the next car. What car do you buy? Probably one that's most reputable. The same can be true of how you pick bank accounts, how you make stock picks, how you decide for trust and overall different degrees to which you choose to support or not. Various companies is defined by reputation. So we choose to prioritize that because it matters. It allows us to provide unique counsel and perspective and most importantly, it gives us the seat of the boardroom table to help steer the destiny of companies because in many ways as your reputation goes, so does your company. - Yeah, follow up to that. One of the questions it comes up a lot is reputation to what end? I take that snapshot, I look at where I'm at, but how do you help leaders connect reputation? The means, if you will, to the business goal, the ends. - Yeah, the magic in what we do is based on the core premise that perceptions drive behavior. And in that regard, how you view a company based on everything you've learned about it. In many ways, everything you've seen and heard influences your decision and the choices you make. So in many ways, we think about it this way. Your reputation is the ultimate consequence of everything you do and say. So what I express, how I deliver it to the world, what I stand for, other things impact my mind and form an opinion. And that opinion is what we call reputation because it's discounted by the reality of experiences you've had. So we think about your brand as the promise you intend to keep, by definition, your reputation is a proxy. What if that promise was fulfilled? - In that regard, companies who think about reputation of the means end are focusing on reputation with the endeavor to drive their desired business results. If they want to sell more products and services, they want to engend them more loyalty. They want to carry favor and drive positive advocacy. If they want to attract the best talent, the answer is driven by reputation and is a direct consequence between how you'll view reputably and the degree of support you attribute to any given company. - Yeah. - So reputation can be fragile. A natural disaster, a lawsuit, regulatory change. Even a single comment from a political leader can shift public perception almost overnight. How do you counsel companies to prepare for that kind of volatility? - It's very difficult, right? Because in many ways, your reputation's like a full context ball. And in today's world with the digital disruption that really occurred over the last decade, you're literally one negative tweed away from the crisis. Think about that, it can happen instantaneously. So you've got to think about the crisis and what might transpire, but to prepare for the crisis, if you wait for it to happen, it's almost too late. So you have to start thinking ahead of the curve and practice what we call proactive issues management. So what are the things that we can prioritize ahead of the curve knowing that a crisis may not happen that can better prepare us for that eventuality? So we counsel our clients to build what we call an emotional buffer. What is that? It's building good will, it's building good reputation in advance so that when a crisis might happen, it doesn't feel so bad. Why? Because you've owned the positive equity, you've built that emotional connection, and the more connection you can drive in advance, the more forgiving people become of when the eventualities happen. And specifically in many ways, what we want to build is what we call benefit of the doubt. And in your heart and mind, almost stack the odds in your own favor to say, as a company, we stand for the following things, we believe in the following things, we are driven by a sense of purpose, and we engender that good will, as and when that potential crisis, as and when that problem does happen, you've got to better challenge again to the other side because you've addressed the issue ahead of the curve and not waited until the crisis to happen. Yes, there are still things you can do in terms of crisis management so you can almost in the mode of crisis, take certain actions to help mitigate the impact, but you're far better off thinking more long-term ahead of the crisis and preparing the emotional equity that you can build into your branding, your company, so that you can ride the crisis through the other side, and be better prepared for any eventuality that might occur. A little bit of a bank account kind of process here. So you put it up into the bank and you've got enough to weather a rainy day. Exactly, we call it an emotional buffer, right? An emotional buffer that can insulate you against the potential for race, and in many ways can become a shield that can drown out some of the negative noise that otherwise might play in your mind. So think about it that way. If you build the emotional buffer within a reason, you can enhance the odds of riding any potential crisis that might occur. What you can't do is avoid the crisis from happening because unfortunately stuff does happen in reality, right? But racial buffer, you've increased the odds of success. You've talked about, you know, this can be a little bit of a full contact sport. And we're living in a different time and different place than ever before, I think, in the sense that we're always on. Things are perhaps more contentious and more polarized than ever before. What makes reputation management harder today, let's say that it was five or 10 years ago? Is it just that or is there other things that complicate it? Yeah, definitely other things that complicate it because in many ways expectations of stakeholders have risen, right? So the more you create, the harder it is to meet the burden of proof that, hey, we really are a good corporate citizen. We're really trying to make the world a better place to live. So what do you say and what can you speak to? What can you point to based on the burden of proof to show that is indeed the reality? You know, secondly, we've seen an explosion of data. We tend to prioritize what we call structured data that's born out of online surveys, continuous research, abilities to tap into this sort of driving change of sentiment over time. So doing it continuously is really, really important. But in many ways, it's also been the emergence of unstructured data. Think about AI and the impact it's had on the world. Think about language learning models. Think about bots. Think about customer reviews. All these incendiary sentiment drivers in many ways signals that tie back your reputation now makes life very complicated. And what you need to decide as a company is what is your compass? What is your north star by which I'm going to navigate a reputation? We kind of hope it's a rep track. But obviously there are other types of measurement system out there. Once you have that north star, once you have that baseline that compass by which you manage your company, you can now be more effective in making decisions because you can now decipher what we call the signals versus the consequences. Multiquance is reputation. The signals are things like expression of brand, perceptions of ESG, commitment to a sense of purpose, of course your day-to-day sort of delivery system of your whole brand experience. All these signals signals that can be terribly changes trajectory reputation. By long to have a north star by which to judge your assessment and how you perform, you're already in a better place in leaving it to this pure randomness of what my main difference by when you have a multitude of data sources. And it's like a clarity as to what you define as the determining metric. You talked about compass and we're going to talk a little bit about the product that has that name. But help us first. Reptrack measures, I believe it's seven core drivers in its practice. For listeners who may not be familiar, what are those drivers? So let me break it down for you. Obviously there's products and services. There's probably single most important driver of a reputation that's obviously pertinent within reason every given company. But then there are other things that more attribute to the perception of the enterprise. So number two would be innovation. Number three workplace. Four citizenship, five conduct, six leadership, and seven overall performance. So these things together contribute to 100% of the weight of reputation. What varies is the degree to which they're important to different stakeholders, different countries, different industries, even different cohorts. All these things materially change the trajectory of reputation. So your ability to navigate your reputation is dependent on the understanding of which other seven drivers do I need to best activate? And more importantly, how do I perform this my peer competitors? So what pushes that one to be more important than the other? You said that it can differ by industry. It can differ by other factors. Are there thundering else to know as at least sort of take this journey? Yeah. I'm going to hold myself back and geek in that pace of a 20-- No, it's all right. Be affordable. But what in line is you've got a reputation score. The reputation score is a measure of emotional connection. The degree to which you hire a company and hold a theme, hold it in sense of admiration, over a sense of trust. No, a sense of deep-seated feeling. Those four things together come to form what we call the reputation score, which in many ways is the dependent variable. And otherwise, the leading indicator of your reputation is success. And what you can do is now link that measurement of the reputation score back to the seven drivers and use calculus or statistics put differently to derive the degree of importance. So I can now understand which of those seven drivers are most likely to have the biggest impact on driving them a reputation, more importantly, what do I speak to activate relative to yielding competitive advantage because reputation is always relative. Yes. Relative to other companies. Do you compare it against your relative to other industries, relative to different stakeholders, even relative to different countries around the world? Well, it's funny about the industries. I can remember trying to get my arms around this at a stage when I was working for a financial services company. And it was at a time when as a company, we were getting some really tough issues. And I brought up some industry data. And financial services at the time was like third or fourth from the bottom. And the bottom two at the time were pharmaceutical companies and energy companies. Actually, I think it was specifically oil companies. And so people used to say, so what do you think? And I said, thank God for oil companies and pharmaceutical companies. But to your point, at the end of the day, what really does matter, yes, what happens in an industry can affect you as an individual company. But what matters within the context of an industry is how do you fare against your peers, against your competitors? Totally. Because at the end of the day, that is your point of reference. So we go into the realm of farmer you're comparing one pharmaceutical company versus the other. And you're using those seven drivers as we've defined to assess and it's almost deciphered. Which one do you most likely support? And agree on understanding, for example, that conduct might be more important in the pharmaceutical industry, whereas leadership might be more important in tech or products and services might be more important in consumer discretionary. Having that perspective helps you align with what narratives or I need to build, it's going to allow me to successfully meet that burden approved because taking the right action is one thing, but knowing what to speak to and how to speak to is another. Because the carnal sin, if I can use that, is doing the right-- It shows the crux. Yeah. Charlie, you're doing the right thing, but nobody knows about it. It doesn't really help you, right? So you get your story out there. So you don't get accused of gray washing or purpose washing. How do you uniquely differentiate your message versus to pay competitors who's not just another me to a story? It's no easy task. It requires never sophistication understanding. And here's a point of reference I would provide. It's not based on what you think is the right thing to do. It's based on what your stakeholders expect. Absolutely. And that's the whole new perspective. And that really is that the cractor of RepTrak is providing those expectations of what the stakeholders need to hear about is a pretty good chance of what you should be messaging to in terms of the new priority storytelling. RepTrak recently launched its Compass platform. What does Compass do? And how does it change the way companies can understand and act on reputation data? Sure. I mean, I will, of course, say it's game-changing, which I believe it is. Think about it this way. It's a data visualization tool that allows you to, with a high degree of confidence, navigate all those complexities of reputation. Look, at our core, we're a reputation advisory firm. We're kind of Sherpas in helping clients navigate their reputation in storytelling. Well, like every good Sherpas, you need a Compass. You need an instrument, a GPS positioning system by which to navigate all the uncertainties to provide a source of truth that will help you understand. Here's what actions I need to take. And in terms of how we differentiate ourselves and engender the support we're looking for, here's how we tell a story in a way that resonates and is highly compelling. And there's no mean feat given the changing dynamics of the world and all the complexities of all the different storytelling. Knowing we're clarity of what story to tell already begins to give you competitive advantage when you stack the odds of success relative to your peer competitive landscape. So help me with what's different from Compass, from what you previously provided to the marketplace. And maybe still, how does it differentiate itself versus other competitors in the marketplace? So it's always on in regard that it's a continuous measurement system, which is really, really important. There's one that's taking in data that's on the internet. It's taking in data in the news. Well, primarily it's taking in data that's structured based on an understanding of how companies perceive you or how stakeholder should say versus companies. And also importantly, what action would that now inspire? So it's an intuitive, easy to use, highly configurable data visualization system that allows you to, in real time, access to data and make judgment calls and decisions. And the way the data is served out in package and structured for your benefit. You don't need to be a rocket scientist and knowing how to use it. There's no spreadsheets. There's now PowerPoints. It's all delivered through a technology solution that allows you to undermine access to your data and make real-time decisions about. So how do I outsmart the competition? And most importantly, how do I now would a degree of confidence internally go in front of the board and have board ready insight to say categorically, this is what we need to do. If we take this following action and we message to the story, we'll drive the following business KPI so it brings a real credibility in terms of board ready insights that is second to none in sense of driving confidence based on 20 years of data. And the statistical integrity of the RETFAP model, which we know has been pressured to improve it over time. As you've studied this, and obviously, you've looked at lots of companies. You've looked at lots of industries. What do you see as some of the more common blind spots that leaders have when it comes to understanding their reputation, risks, and opportunities for that matter? Well, I'm going to be polite in how I answer the question. Because there are a lot of blind spots. But probably the biggest blind spot is they actively manage their reputation, but they don't measure it. So I didn't know you've been successful when you've said that a series of programs in play, you've invested $250 million in the Olympic sponsorship, or you may come in to support the soccer world cut with the intent of driving high levels of behavior and driving stronger perceptions. But you have no means of measurement in place. Well, that's a blind spot, right? I mean, you can't actively manage what you don't measure, which is an old-- What gets measured gets done, right? Exactly, exactly. In that regard. So that probably would be blind spot number one. But secondly, there's an naivety in the sense that we just need to measure a reputation once, see how we're doing, and take action. Well, no, it has to be continuous in today's world. You asked the early question about what's changed. The speed of reputation shifts in dynamic techniques of reputation shifts. It's just increasing an incredible pace. So if you're only measuring once a year, maybe this is not enough. Maybe you should be doing it continuously, because the best way to stay ahead of the curve is to be able to assess anything else is important to your company, a continuous measurement of reputation. Would you look at your sales numbers once a year, or look at your stock price value once a quarter? Probably not. You're looking daily, if not, by the nanosecond. So why would reputation be any different? So there's the two biggest blind spots is one, companies that don't measure reputation at all, or have a proxy in place that is suboptimal, and two, are doing it periodically versus continuously, because without continuous measurement, how do you know the whole story? It'd be very difficult to make judgment calls. Yeah, the other thing that I think some in a role, like a chief communications officer, sometimes chief marketing officer, I think one of the challenges they have is they're seeing there's a limited budget, and they go ahead and they look at measuring specific activity or measuring a specific project. Maybe they're building something, it requires permitting, it requires community support, and so they do survey research, classic survey research of one kind or another, as opposed to doing the kind of reputation research that is done by Rupptrak, how do you tell an executive at a company the importance of either doing both or how do they balance these things, I guess? Yeah, usually doing both is typically the answer. One can augment the other of position correctly, and here's a sort of interesting misloma. The more you customize your research, the less predictable it becomes, because it becomes more unique to your company, your perspective, your stakeholders, your countries, and with your brain. And so in many ways, you're missing the trick by not standardizing your solution. And the thing that's a big part of what makes Rupptrak unique is the ability to normatively compare apples to apples across different audiences by using a standardized approach to research. And that regard, and they now becomes predictive, because you can now track it over 25 years of study almost, and look at millions and millions of different data points across thousands of companies, across scores of different countries, and say, my score on reputation lens is a 64. What does 64 mean? Well, normatively, it's based on an average score. Well, that now tells you, provides context of how you perform. If you base your whole primary space on custom research, it's just a number. There's no basis for comparison. So that's an important part of what I think makes Rupptrak different and makes any piece of research different is that if you have dependency and normative basis of understanding, it makes all the other things you're doing now more predictive. Because you can link the two and assess what are the things that move the needle in terms of our primary research. And now I'll link you back to the standard model of reputation. You have a whole new level of insight and understanding that allows you to do a causation between the actions you take. And the impact he's had on the company's role. Yeah, now, underpinning all of this, too, is what we would call classic market research, right? You're literally asking questions of individuals. My guess is increasingly you're depending that you're doing more of that research online. How has that changed the game for you and for the modeling? Yeah, it's changing the game in a regard. You have to ask yourself the question, what is the so-called R-squared or in other words, the predictive nature of the data you capture? The question, can you link it to the business outcomes that I'm trying to trigger? The KPIs that manage your company? Because if you can't do that, maybe the information has a little less useful. So that's how the game is trained is that you've got a link reputation as a means end to the business KPIs that matter. But it's all interesting phenomenon. And maybe we don't want to go too deep into it for the purposes today. But this whole premise of what many companies are calling synthetic data. Yes. What is that? It's basically taking augmented data sets based on language learning models to assess and predict how people will respond, but based on the kind of creation of sort of cloned personality types, archetypes, segments, wherever you want to call them. We can't based on real research, but a close enough that provided a proxy of understanding for how you perform. So we're going to see a lot more of that occurring in the future. It's not there yet as a practice synthetic data still needs early days. But it's definitely an interesting avenue of exploration. And certainly one we're very carefully looking at to understand the full impact and potential of our clients in our business. Yeah, very interesting. When we talk more broadly about reputation, are there industries that have become more reputationally challenged in recent years? And what might be driving them? Yeah, I think let's be honest, the reputation challenges have increased for every given industry. There's no one that gets three parts anymore. There was a time and a place where you all you had to do would be in the consumer durables or consumer discretionary or media entertainment field. And you just got a strong reputation because you're doing things that people like to buy and consume. And for those days of change, I think every industry has its own unique challenges. Ironically, the leak table you mentioned earlier, who were the bottom four, haven't changed that much over the time. Still some of the ranking industries, including insurance, financial services, energy, mining, they do less well. Why? Because prejudice. Just how country does thing up in your mind that somehow they're doing damage to society, they're losing the world, they're digging holes in places that shouldn't be mined. But that's just a reality of their industry. So the burden and proof is on them. In fact, ironically, companies performing those industries actually try harder than most other industries to win positive sentiment. It's just because that burden of proof is so high that it just becomes more challenging and it just takes more time and effort. And no companies without consequence of making mistakes and no industry is without prejudice. But just some industries, just because of re-nature, what they do, it just makes it harder. And as a career professional, those are the kind of challenges they love, working with bigger-on-and-guest companies to help them understand what stories can we tell to win the hearts of minds of the consumers you serve. Working with a bank, how can we make up for something else that the past even gone back to the Great Recession? And we intend to trust those are the most challenging but most interesting opportunities when it comes to winning and reputation. - Yeah, on the flip side, are there companies or industry sectors that have done a particularly good job of recovering or strengthening their reputations and what might we learn from those? - Yeah, I mean, airlines have had a bumpy ride, I mean, excuse the pun, but they've had some reputation turbulence over the last three to four years. Many airlines are on the road to recovery and understood that a great customer experience is a big part of what drives reputation, but also in a sense, I was taking a position on things pertaining to the environment and it's a good citizenship, equally important. But I often like to refer to LEGO as a priming sample as probably the most repeatable company in the world and how do we know? Every year we conduct the global rep track 100 study and the last couple of years in the world, they've ranked as number one. And what can we learn from LEGO? A couple of things. Number one, LEGO's book of reputation is founded on purpose, it's very clear in the sense of it, sort of wants to identify with the builders of tomorrow, people who have a sense of curiosity, they like learning through play, they have a sense of deep passion for just imagination and LEGO fulfills that need. You know, secondly, it's very strong of the seven drivers I mentioned earlier on products and services. In fact, it's redefined itself on what it means by product and services. So one regard, it has sort of the LEGO bricks, but also has the retail experience of the LEGO stores, the LEGO theme parks, even now the LEGO movies, the LEGO Halloween costumes. I mean, you know, it's a very pervasive brand that's always become the new Disney in many ways so that a brand of people just love because of what it stands for, and it's a sense of imagination. But none of that happened by accident. It's all part of a very carefully crafted reputation program that goes back a number of years, driven by leadership, and it's a complete buy into the entire leadership team, to a reputation as a concept by LEGO. So to me, it's probably the primary example is the most repeatable company in the world, but it wasn't by lack of a chance, it was by carefully done actions and in a highly sophisticated corporate communications program. So what can a non-toy company, if you will, run from that exercise? Well, you know, you're going to think about what is important in terms of the priorities the stakeholder you serve and very early on, understanding that innovation, the sense of imagination, was very important to LEGO. So in that regard, what can you do? Your company's standpoint to celebrate that, endeavor, whether it's new products and solutions and adapting quickly to change in the banking and financial services industry, or going to market when you drive in terms of farmer, or something else, that sense of prioritization around products and services is critically important. So I think I said earlier, it's probably the most important driver for most companies. And you can't win a reputation arguing the loan based on products and services, but having it right certainly is a big advantage. But this is, secondly, I think the advent of the evolving role in leadership is really important to any given company. There was a time when you'd let the CEO out during earning season, say a few things, maybe the new product launch when you lock them back up in the boardroom and never let them out for good behavior. Again, those data change yours. The CEO has to be more visible. In many ways, the tip of the spear in terms of the moral compass of the company. And in many ways, the champion of what you stand for. So you know, product and service, leadership, then conduct in terms of being very ethical and transparent. Again, you can't be opaque in today's environment. So those of you just, some examples that lessons like that doesn't matter what industry you're in. You can learn as much about the industry and what you operate, but actually sometimes learn more about studying the reputation of other industries and how you can take advantage of some of the actions that they've been taking. So when you walk into a company for the first time, what signals tell you whether reputation is being treated as an asset, as a strategic asset, or as an afterthought? Well, pretty good starting point is if they take a meeting, because that will tell you that right. So that's something that we could go. But certainly, you know, there's still some ambiguity in the world on the difference between brand new reputation. If they have a clear understanding of the difference. So, and then of course, you know, having clarity around what stakeholders are important. Because it's never just about the public affairs, sort of informed, general public kind of perspective for reputation. That's certainly a big part of it, and the court of public opinion is important within reason to any given company. But having a clear understanding of who those stakeholders are that matter from your investors to the media, to influencers, to, you know, you name it, customers, there's many different stakeholders. So thinking about reputation through the context of a multi-stakeholder solution, tells you me that the client is more advanced and more sophisticated than those are just saying, what's my reputation? How we fix it? That's probably a lower order conversation. Yeah. Let me rewind the clock a few years, maybe a decade. Back then, you and I were talking on panels and whatnot about the importance of corporate responsibility. ESG, sustainability and ethics. And how they shape reputation, given more recent political pressures surrounding ESG, has the thesis changed about the importance of these particular elements and their impact on corporate reputation. And in the data you analyze and assess for your clients, has there been any shift in influence or importance of these elements? Yeah, wow. This is a pretty intriguing topic. And think about the original premise for corporate social responsibility. It was really more about the sort of circle triple bottom line, which was people who had profit. And arguably, 10 years ago, the pendulum swung too far away towards people in planet and forgot about the profit part. And along the way, a few CEOs got into trouble because they made purpose such a priority, they forgot about running the business day today, which is never a good thing. I think in the entry on what's happening, there's a lot of these issues via corporate social responsibility wise or ESG wise or whatever you want to call that endeavor. It's become highly politicized. So depending on what side of the political eye you'll see it, whether you're more right-wing or more conservative or a public in. This is more left-wing, more democratic, sometimes more socialistic. You'll have a different view of these issues. And that will now directly impact how you perceive companies. In some regards, talking about sustainability could be viewed as good or some regards could be viewed as bad, depending on what you are in the political spectrum. So that's what's changed is that you have to now really tread carefully. And if you put the pendulum back in the middle, it's balancing all of the above. It's what are you doing to make the world a better place to live, but with a context of integrity or a heightened sense of responsibility and a commitment to a sense of purpose? While understanding, you're going to make money. You go around the business, and you're going to make all the decisions by balancing all those things together sort of synergistically. So they haven't gone away as issues. But what you call them is important. I'm not sure what the right label is anymore, but maybe it's something back to corporate responsibility wise or sustainability wise or equality wise, which everyone can rally behind. But also how you choose to message it is equally important because a misfiring on a message causes a political fire storm when you get yourself into a pickle and you can think about brands in the last two, three years that have encountered that issue, where they've set up with good intentions to embrace a program with corporate responsibility, but they message it in their own way. And they've got pushback. Now it became a bigger problem than talking, not talking about it at all. So you're just going to tread carefully. You've got to be mindful. But importantly, to our earlier point, you've got to tell the story through the lens of the stakeholders you serve, not in the way you think it's ripe in the way that they need to hear about it. That's a whole new and different perspective you need to take into consideration. Absolutely. And then the end, I think part of it is how we deal with that word sustainability. Because it's also about the sustainability of the enterprise as well as sustainability writ large. I always harken back. I'm an oddball. I'm sitting here with a master's degree in accounting. And believe it or not, I had to take a course called accounting theory. And in accounting theory, they talk about the going-concern concept. And the going-concern concept is essentially about sustainability. We have financial statements as a way to sustain the company over time or the entity over time. Or we believe that we're going to sustain to see another day. So we need those metrics by which to measure as to whether or not we're profitable and whether or not we're doing the right things as a company to exist and sustain far into the future. You broaden that lens out a little bit more. And it needs to be inclusive of the environment you're operating. Yeah, totally. In many ways, you think about sustainability. You're helping your employees, your investors, and the communities you serve to equally thrive. You can absolutely take the popular three things. So it's not just about the-- make the environment sustainable. That's still important. And it's never-- it's never been unimportant. But as you say, redefining what sustainability means has a broader definition. And again, if you take the stakeholder view, you'll have a better understanding of what sustainability means to them. That's a pretty good clue of what you should be talking about. Now, I know that underline your compass model, you're leaning in a bit into AI adoption. But out of curiosity, how should companies think about reputation in the context of AI? And some of the issues around that, right? Data privacy, emerging. And the impact of some emerging technologies. Yeah, I don't think you have a choice with AI other than to embrace it, to understand it, but carefully in how you choose to use it. And the latter part being probably the most important today. Now, we've done a couple of things. We've introduced a whole new way of measuring which AI is a touch point, right? So in many ways, AI is both a amplifier and an inhibitor of your company's reputation, depending on the narrative and how you show up. So it takes all the media inputs, take to all the cited comments that people have made about you publicly. Everything has ever been written about you in terms of online digital content. All those things manifest as a part of an advanced search function today. I think people call it loosely speaking, AI sort of advice engine optimization or other sort of generalized terms. But what they basically mean by that is, AI's a touch point can materially change your perception in your reputation so you need to be able to understand how to manage it and how you show up. But also secondly, we've sort of invented a new way of looking at stakeholders. And in fact, have defined AI as a stakeholder. Imagine that, right? Oh, you know, influencers are a stakeholder. So as always, AI gen search is stakeholder. And so we've been out of the still way of with a high degree of confidence, assessing the AI and spider narrative around your business and compared the reputation score into seven drivers using language learning models and comparing it to our sort of first party data based on our perception based research. What's interesting, the relationship that exists between those two things, if you're a reputation based on perceptions and your AI as a stakeholder analysis can understand how the perceptions are likely to be impacted, you can now almost manage ahead of the curve some of the risks that might pertain to your company. So in many ways, your AI story is an undercurrent to your potential change your reputation. So if you can make that favorable, you can yield competitive advantage. But when it starts to trend negative, companies like Tesla have seen this in abundance, that you're going to take very quick and decisive action because they've left unchecked, could be a major problem for your company. So AI is both a threat, but also a significant opportunity, depending on how you choose to manage it, and how to expect to your reputational programs. - Very good, thanks, Stephen. In closing, what are the few essential things that CEOs should do to strengthen and future proof, if you will, the reputation of their companies over the next several years? - Yeah, this was not the easiest question to answer 'cause there's so many things we could cite. So I'm trying to stay down to a couple of things, but just coming off the back of the conversation, we just had around AI. Maybe there's a lesson number one, is always remember that reputations are always based on humanity, based on humans and human perceptions, and it's an eye beholder, and where it really resides is here. - Yeah. - Some minds are the people you serve. So don't really start with that. Don't get caught up in chasing the signals. Focus on the consequence, the reputation is of we as we said earlier, the ultimate consequence, and the thing you should choose to prioritize. So that'll be number one. And also the number two, which is, think about reputation based on a multi-stakeholder view. You always have to take a 360 degree perspective. So if you want to truly assist your reputation, you can't be single-threaded and just look at one stakeholder, right? Oh, let's make sure our customers feel good about us. But what about your employees? What about your investors? What about primary care practitioners and other more vertical types of stakeholder audiences that you serve? So think about that 360 degree perspective, and think about reputation, not just as a full-contact spot, but a whole sort of multi-stakeholder series of activities that allow you to in the marketplace. Third one I'd say probably is just an summation, I would say, as I've touched on this a couple of times earlier, don't think about reputation based on the point of time. Think about it as based on the continuous moving cycle of events. So your ability to harness the power reputation is predicated on your ability to measure it continuously. If you do that, you yield competitive advantage wide because you can now draw a causation between what transpired, what actions you took, and the impact it had in driving the business. So think about an integrated perspective, contingency measures, if you do those three things, you already be ahead of the curve. Great. Stephen Hahn, many thanks for joining us on the Crux of the Story podcast. You've reminded us that reputation is not a soft concept. It's a measurable strategic asset that shapes whether stakeholders trust you, support you, and ultimately choose you over other options. You also underscore that reputation is built on consistent performance across seven core drivers and that organizations need to act on what stakeholders actually feel, not what leaders assume they feel. Thank you again, Stephen. Thank you, bye and great to see you again, take care. Great to see you. And many thanks to all of you who are listening. This podcast is brought to you from the Kennedy Greenhouse Studio at the University of South Carolina School of Journalism and Mass Communication. We look forward to being with you next time. We will explore yet another crux of the story. Thanks for listening to The Crux, a production of the School of Journalism and Mass Communications and Association with the Kennedy Greenhouse Studio at the University of South Carolina. You can find our episodes on SoundCloud, iTunes, and Spotify or by visiting our website, the cruxpodcast.org. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)