Getting Naked
Friday, April 13, 2007
As I've mentioned in earlier posts, I'm headed to New Orleans for most of next week to attend the Word Of Mouth Marketing Association's WOMBAT 3 conference, where I'll be speaking about reputation management. I know, I know. What reputation? Well, the truth of the matter is that every company and organization and person has a reputation. The purpose of the conference is to share ideas, and we're definitely on a path that includes a lot of exciting ideas. Like getting naked.
Settle down. Not that kind of naked. Especially if it's me giving the presentation. Nobody wants to see that (not even me!).
It's about being open, honest and transparent. It's a recurring theme here, I know. There have been years where we weren't open and transparent. I believe that we are pretty honest, at the corporate level. Our response to early Web critics was to ignore them and hope they'd go away. We thought that responding to them with our own Web sites would give them too much credibility and exposure (this was pre-blog).
Later we moved on to providing responses, but on our own properties only. We wanted to address issues (well, maybe not all of them) in a place where people could easily find them after they'd seen what critics have to say. www.QuixtarFacts.com and www.FactsAboutQuixtar.com and www.QuixtarResponse.com are all examples of us providing facts that respond to concerns. Even the IBOAI got into the act with www.ibofacts.com. Our latest direction is dialog. Lots of dialog had been happening on the blog sites of our progressive critics (some still don't blog and don't support any type of dialog).
Robert Scoble and Shel Israel wrote about being open in Naked Conversations. Don Tapscott and David Ticoll wrote about it in The Naked Corporation. The April issue of WIRED magazine included a whole series of articles under the theme "Get Naked and Rule the World." All of them point out that growing reality that there are no secrets. Information is becoming increasingly free and readily available on the Web. In this game, the businesses and organizations to advance to the next level are those that are transparent to those who seek information, adapt to consumer needs by listening to them, and provide a level of participation that was unprecedented before. Do people have a say in how we do business? YES! If we hope they'll participate as an IBO or as a customer, we had better listen to what they're saying.
SO, with Opporunity Zone, we're getting a little naked. Are we stripped bare yet? Hardly. After all, we're talking about 50 years of organizational culture that needs to be shifted. But, I will say this, within the walls of Quixtar and even down the street at Alticor, people are noticing the Opportunity Zone and I think there's a genuine interest in getting nekkid. Some will still be concerned about whether we reveal too much or that we will get into legal trouble or that we will look bad. Well, I don't worry too much about looking bad, because we already haven't looked that great to a lot of people out there. I think people understand there are certain legal things we can't discuss because they're live issues, but we should talk freely about the issues we can.
So, get naked! Out yourself before you're outed. If people find out stuff about you or your business from someone else, they'll assume you were holding out on them. Our business IS an incredible opportunity for others and DOES offer incredible products that can make a real difference in people's lives. There's nothing to hide about that!