Riku Ruokolahti: How Reputation&Trust Came to Be
In my article on corporate competitiveness, I took a trip down memory lane. I recalled an insight that really sparked my interest in reputation. That insight was the presumed causal relationship between anseende stakeholder support.
When broken down into its constituent parts, this insight offered an opportunity to consider reputation as a management principle and a genuine factor in competitiveness. What if stakeholder support really is purely anseende ? Then competitiveness, too, would be largely anseende , wouldn’t it? Manage reputation—manage competitiveness. Wow! It was also crystal clear that reputation must be measured and modeled in order to manage it at all. I was fully motivated. I just had to get to work on this!
I got anseende somewhat by accident. My original plan was to work with major companies using the international reputation models of the time, but there was one little thing I had to take care of first. I had to finish my MBA studies at Henley Business School. Should I hire a consultant—someone with an MBA who’s almost done with their thesis, or just a smart young guy—or how did that go again?
I turned my professional passion into a reason to write my thesis. It just so happened that Henley is home to one of anseende world’s most respected anseende , the John Madejski Centre for Reputation. That’s exactly why Henley has such incredible expertise in research projects in this field, and, of course, my advisor, Nicola Swan, represented that very institute.
I tried to take the easy way out. It didn’t work. My advisor insisted that I not draw on my market research background at T-Media, but instead develop a qualitative research plan that was academically interesting, of high quality, and addressed a tangible management problem. Damn it all to hell! Time was running out, and my advisor kept pressuring me and demanding that my research proposal have a crystal-clear central theme to such an extent that I sank into despair. It became clear that I wouldn’t be able to produce any content without racking my brain. Time was running out. Soon I’d be kicked out of the entire department. The plan had to be elegant, intelligent, and philosophically sound.
At the same time, our home construction project was in full swing, and the lease on the apartment we’d rented for the duration of the project expired as the project dragged on. Of course, we weren’t allowed to extend it. We were facing a forced move somewhere, and we had just had our second baby. There was also plenty of work at T-Media as we launched the international reputation management practice in Finland.
But that’s how diamonds are formed—under extreme heat and pressure. After many sleepless nights and utterly absurd anxiety, the master plan was born. Now, with the passage of time, it sounds so elegant and simple that I’m completely dumbfounded by its logic. I’m especially dumbfounded that I didn’t come up with it right away. I basically examined what the management of large companies wants from their stakeholders and what aspects of the companies’ very existence or operations could lead to the desired outcome. Trust and reputation, right? Hah!
In practice, this kind of research model means that key stakeholders and the forms of stakeholder support generally desired from them should be identified. This is so that I can begin to systematically explore the factors that lead to behavior that supports these stakeholders’ business operations. This, of course, means identifying and isolating anseende ! The research plan was absolutely fantastic, but the schedule was tight and my personal situation was dire. I worked day and night. I had to. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have graduated at all. Despite the extremely challenging circumstances, I stumbled upon new and significant findings in my work.
anseende essentially stumbled anseende that previous literature had not recognized. I received an excellent grade on my thesis. I’m sure I could have even earned the highest grade. I just needed more time and stamina. That was all I had to work with at the time.
But that research plan! It was so solid that we continued the work I had started at Henley with Sari Maunula, T-Media’s research director, in a commercial context. We used the exact same research design to the letter. Even the interview forms were the same. We gathered a lot of data, and the insights we’d gained earlier began to solidify and expand. Soon, using the same methodology, we were even creating custom reputation models for companies. This kind of work wasn’t financially profitable, but it was incredibly valuable in terms of building our expertise.
Based on the knowledge we had gained during this work, Sari and I created the first version Reputation&Trust. We had identified, isolated, and defined anseende that, based on qualitative knowledge, should have a generic connection to stakeholder support. A couple of years after I moved into my new home and completed my studies, we had a prototype in hand backed by a very strong hypothesis. Kari Väisänen, then-chairman of T-Media’s board of directors, suggested that we name it Reputation&Trust.
And you know what’s really exciting? It’s the shift from the qualitative world to the quantitative one. It was time to see if the model would work in the statistical world. Now let’s set the big wheel in motion and study a really large group of companies! Would there be a statistical correlation between stakeholder support and the reputation we’ve identified, isolated, and shaped—or would we come up empty-handed?
Following the nationwide data collection operation, Joonas Tarpila, chief analyst at T-Media, was responsible for the statistical analysis—and remains so as I write this. Oh, the amount of head-scratching that went on behind Joonas’s back as we ran the first analyses! We were able to conclude pretty quickly that it wasn’t a bust—the model worked like a charm. It worked better than we ever dared to hope. It worked better than anything we’d ever seen. We had a management tool in our hands that blew all the methods we knew out of the water. Its research design was straightforward, innovative, more effective than anything that came before—and it was ours!
Now that the model worked brilliantly in the mathematical world, we were in a really strong position. Even before Reputation&Trust, I was an experienced market research developer and data visualizer. I get along much better with statistical analysis and decision sciences than with qualitative analysis. I was also familiar with the world of executive teams and their dynamics. And of course, I had Joonas and Sari—Mr. Data and Ms. Market Research—backing me up and keeping me on track.
We developed Reputation&Trust specifically as discussion tools for executive teams. If you look closely at the structure of our report, the first section is essentially educational material for executive teams, enriched with research data. The second section, which examines anseende actual anseende and stakeholder support, clearly serves as a facilitator for executive team or board discussions. The third section of the report, then, consists purely of data analysis that guides decision-making. At the end of the report, as a sort of appendix, we have included all the “standard research pillars” and detailed information that might otherwise dilute the focus of the intended discussion.
To date, the model has been successfully implemented in over 40 countries. Looking back, this has been an adventure that would have left even Professor Robert Langdon in awe. It took enthusiasm, tears, gritting our teeth, and many flutters of a butterfly’s wings to get us here. Hopefully, the butterflies will continue to be in the right place at the right time.
Riku Ruokolahti has written a handbook on corporate reputation and reputation management. The excerpt published here, “How Reputation&Trust Came to Be,” can be found in the fourth section of the handbook: “Life at T-Media and Beyond.”
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