Company Culture and Reputation Turn Together

Imagine that you were looking at three gears, all interlinked. The bottom and largest gear might be Corporate Culture, the norms of behavior of people in the organization--how they treat one another and who gets rewarded; the middle gear would be the rewards and punishments in the company; the top gear would be the behaviors and communications, which influence how the organization is perceived, i.e. its reputation. One gear moves the other and so on.

This is the way that culture and reputation are interrelated. Not only does culture determine how people "do things around here", but it also determines who gets hired (the personality types), the training (formal and informal), what managers get promoted, etc. Once an organization's reputation gets established, it influences who is attracted to join the company, and the process goes on and on.

Too many reputation managers simply look to communicating with employees and with the outside. Communications falls on deaf ears when the expectations and experiences make it mute. There are many organizations that espouse one thing and do the other. Good executives are often confused by this. They need only look at the real influence on reputation--their organization's culture.