"You Gain Respect in Drops, But Can Lose It in Gallons"

Came across this wonderful, thought-provoking article by Ian Read, Chairman and CEO of Pfizer, on Linkedin copied in its entirety below. The italics in the first para are mine as it contains advice useful for all of us.

February 19, 2014

Reputation, built on our past, shapes our present and future. A good reputation can open many doors; a bad reputation can close many more. A good reputation generates respect. A bad reputation breeds suspicion.Few things in one’s professional life are as important as building and protecting a good reputation. It determines recommendations we receive, or not, for jobs and work of all kinds. It helps define our place in our chosen field and in the organizations where we work. It’s central to any assistance or consideration we might seek when we find ourselves in a difficult situation.
The same is true for your company, no matter how big or small. Consider, for example, that if you need a plumber, you’re far more likely to call a local plumbing company based on its reputation than on the skills of its plumbers, even as that reputation is built over time on its employees’ work.
No Substitute
Our trust in a business is based largely on its reputation; and we respect that company, or not, accordingly. No amount of talk can substitute for the work they do and how they do that work. In fact, a company makes its reputation and earns respect across an array of actions and public interactions, by its employees and by the enterprise as a whole.
At Pfizer — with 165 years of history and more than 77,000 employees serving millions of healthcare providers and customers in 175 markets globally — the challenges and stakes are made all the greater by the nature of our business, which is to bring innovative therapies to patients to improve their lives. To this end, Pfizer invests billions of dollars annually in research and development, manages the attendant high levels of risk that see fewer than 1 in 10,000 compounds we discover making it to market and operates in one of the most highly regulated of industries. It’s a tall order of scientific risk management we perform each day; and the stakes, defined by the health of those who take our products, couldn’t be higher.

License to Operate
All of this means that many people — including not only regulators but also legislators and their constituents — have a say in how we can conduct our business. At the same time, many have a great and sometimes emotionally charged interest in what our business produces, what we charge for our products and how we sell them, among other topics. And all of this together shines a brighter light on our business than most others, which makes our reputation all the more important to us. In fact, everything from government reimbursement for our medicines to protection of our intellectual property to our ability to continue innovating in our labs depends on our reputation. Indeed, our virtual license to operate depends on this. It depends on earning the respect of our regulators, legislators, healthcare professionals, patients, R&D partners and of our employees, current and future.
This is why we made “earning greater respect from society” one of our four business imperatives not long after I was named CEO of Pfizer in late 2010.
Without this respect and the consideration that comes with it we could not sustain our business, with its innumerable collaborative dependencies and its central place in an area of life so important to us all, our health. Making reputation and respect all the more important to us is knowing that we gain it in drops, but lose it in gallons.
Actions Define Reputation
Understanding can enhance respect. We see this in our own lives when we’ve had a chance to talk with someone we previously had known only from a distance. Our respect for the person and our view of his or her reputation can go up or down, depending on whether we understand the person better in the end. The same is true for companies, which is why we work hard at Pfizer to connect with our stakeholders and make our positions as clear as possible.
But what’s most important is action. What people do matters far more to us than what they say. And the same is true for companies. We are judged, ultimately, by our actions. In the end, actions make, or break, our reputations.
So, ensuring that the work and actions of each individual in an organization are properly focused and that the enterprise acts accordingly is the most critical aspect of building a good institutional reputation and earning respect. And this places the responsibility squarely where it belongs in any organization: on the shoulders of its leaders, managers and employees, on the individuals who together are the company.
What people do matters far more than what they say. The same is true for a company.
Photo: Thinkstock