Trust is a valuable objective of our business relationships, it is the foundation of a sustainable marketplace.

Managing the quantity and quality of relationships and conversations on the web requires a sophistication of competencies. Whilst a combination of metrics, statistics, monitoring software reveal and manage trends, the ultimate arbiter of quality is trust and human engagement.

Social relationship management is about engaging in relevant conversations with clients, customers, prospects and brand champions. Essentially everyone is a customer of someone and the very experience of engaging with a brand be it in the real world or virtually, has a powerful underpinning sourced in experience and trust.

Relationship Management is most commonly associated with Customer Relationship Management (CRM).  The standard understanding of CRM is as a strategic business strategy which relate to techniques and methods for attracting and retaining customers.

According to Henk Akkermans, a co founder of Minase:

‘Most firms, especially in innovation-driven industries, operate as part of one or more supply networks. Here, they have to collaborate with various other organizations, both in a role of supplier and of customer. The speed that is required for this collaboration to be effective requires a great deal of openness about internal activities and future plans. “Transparency” is the word used these days to denote such openness. Unfortunately, there is not a lot of transparency in most supply networks. Information technology, security and language differences are the usual suspects, but the real root cause is a lack of trust, which I have found in a number of industry settings, ranging from electronics to chemicals and aerospace . If you do not trust the other side you will not share your information openly with them.’

The Public Affairs Council is the leading international association for public affairs professionals. Doug Pinkham President of  Public Affairs Council.  says:

‘That’s because openness creates opportunities for dialog with customers, shareholders, employees, local communities and government officials. If you make the effort to engage your critics – and those who may become your critics – you can correct problems before they get out of hand. Listening is the first step toward rebuilding trust.’

Without high-levels of trust, the long-term viability of businesses and organizations are in question. In creating a ‘Standard of Trust’,  Rob Peters is defining the new Trust Index, a core element of measuring relationship capital.  Rob states:

‘In this fast moving digital marketplace, relationship principles by which firms and organizations compete and collaborate are taking an increasingly important role in enabling business success. Today, do most leaders, individuals and organizations have the mindset of “Doing The Right Thing” not just for maximizing profit and revenue, but for optimizing long-term mutually beneficial relationships?’

Understanding the power of a quality relationship management depends a good deal on an awareness of people’s behaviour and preferences. Soliciting from any group, community or department, what motivates, inspires and provides satisfying experiences is key to creating strong bonds and powerful alliances that drive buy in and support, no matter the context.

Currently relationship management, across all it’s various attributions, is poorly understood and even more abysmally executed. If the current understanding of relationship management is simply to monitor and respond to negative commentary on your reputation, your brand, your business or your services, or to follow up and cross sell when the customer or client has fallen off your radar, this is no better than shutting the stable door long after the horse has bolted it. It’s about listening, responding, reciprocating, acknowledging, modeling ethics and values, everywhere you are or your business is active.

The value of building and maintaining a reputation built on the seven principles of human givens (accountability, boundaries, respect, responsibility, honesty, support and trust) means creating cooperative alliances and rewarding relationships. This cannot be short cut, avoided, undeserved or manipulated. We are each being held to account on our behaviours in regard to our commitments and on this we stand or fall in peer assessment.

There is no excuse now, given the quantity and quality of tracking technologies and social media assets, not to create a formidable and very manageable strategy to build and sustain quality relationships and use all positive testimonials, word of mouth recommendations and quality referrals to build personal and professional capital as well as business advantage. To fail to implement such a strategy is to be asleep at the wheel in a fast moving and competitive world.

Going into business with friends has a very poor track record. Frequently, both are lost. It doesn’t have to be that way if you all conduct yourselves as if you were working with any business commitment. Moving from informal to formal is a skill that good relationships can accommodate when everyone understands that there are different rules and boundaries affecting the status of personal and professional interactions. Both states of engagement, formal and informal, can blend and even forge stronger ties when the ability to articulate, compromise and discuss ideas and options are adopted in a balanced and constructive way. These are skills that are powerful attributes for success in both social and professional settings which these are covered in one of our core training modules.

This is a short, sharp reminder that when working with friends in a business situation, move from the informal to the formal, create clear boundaries, commitments and psychological contracts that you would do elsewhere if you seek to succeed in business.

As Donald Trump says ‘ It’s not personal, it’s just business’.

A company’s true character is expressed by its people. The strongest opinions, good, bad and indifferent (yes, apathy is equally considered as an indicator), about a company are shaped by the conversations and actions of all employees. A task force of the Arthur W. Page Society, a select membership organization for senior public relations and corporate communications executives, set out to examine the evolving role of the senior communications executive in 21st century business. The white paper examined the theme called “The Authentic Enterprise,” specifically, the drivers and implications of a rapidly changing context for 21st century business and reported on the results of a survey of chief executive officers on the evolving role of the CCO in light of dramatic changes.

‘Authenticity will be the coin of the realm for successful corporations and for those who lead them’ heralds the report.  Equally, it proclaims that ‘the actions and reputation, which used to be safe-guarded by a cadre of professionalized functions, are now the responsibility of everyone in the enterprise. What used to be controlled within the company’s “four walls” is now spread across multiple partners, communities and individuals aroundthe globe. This implies that companies must think in different ways about the roles of senior management and the responsibilities of all employees.’

According to the report, CEOs believe that the general public has increasingly become a part of the corporate ecosystem and that their top communications executives (who were the sample poll for the study) must effectively engage and incorporate the public into the fold of values-based messaging. They  look for new thinking along two key dimensions:

1. How to collaborate with the public and internal audiences
2. How to clarify and disseminate the company’s values

Personal Credibility
CEOs emphasized personal qualities more than training in describing what it takes for managers and key personnel to succeed at the highest levels,  identifying the following as elements for building credibility:

• Intimate and detailed knowledge of the company
• Strong business knowledge
• Leadership characteristics or experience
• Breadth and depth of internal and external relationships

The CEOs of direct-to-consumer companies not only feel that consumers have taken a new and more in-depth interest in corporations, but that this has substantially increased the importance of reputation and strategic reputation management for their companies. They therefore have a  greater receptivity to communications as a driver of strategy, attributing the need for cohesive communications due to the complicated elements of foreign operations and cultural issues.

There is a strong push among CEOs for communications chiefs to bridge the perceived gap between the “soft skills” of communications and the numbers-based performance idioms of the boardroom. Strategic planning requires unique, fact-based perspectives including:

• Internal and external reputation tracking
• Analyses of company performance before and after events that impact reputation
• Reputation comparables or case studies

The most relevant piece in the article to me articulated that the converging forces of technology, global integration, multiplying stakeholders and the resulting greater need for transparency are the most important communications challenges facing 21st century companies: ‘We are no longer in control of our traditional spheres of professional activity. Indeed, all business functions are at the dawn of an era of radical de-professionalization. Communicators are uniquely positioned to become experts on the new art and science of organizational trust.’

The mandate of The Relationship Capital Institute is to aid and abett the necessary evolution exhibited in the findings so elegantly defined by the Arthur W. Page Society survey.