Building the "Non Evil" enterprise

TLDR; Not being evil boils down to spending on strong PR & Legal team and taking care of opinion makers. It has nothing to do with the actuality of "being evil"

You must have heard this politically correct and seemingly original thought from tonnes of places. Today i will try and understand what it means.

For starters Being Evil and Being Perceived as Evil are two different things. The Being Evil is an act, which has the intent attached. Being perceived as evil is a perception which can easily change. This leads to my first point.

There are No evil companies, Either illegal ones or the ones with bad PR

If a company is illegal, we don't need to define that via a slogan, Right! I mean laws will eventually catch up and they will go behind bars. Generally Evil in mediaspeak is used as a label for companies which are working within the realm of law, growing steadily, and nothing can be done about them.

So i assume we are trying to say something else. Most of the times when it looks like a company is evil, they are just

- Using Illegal methods - So they are illegal.(Enron)

- Being Short Sighted - Negligent or Irresponsible but not illegal( Coca-Cola)

- Being Used as scapegoats for broader reasons - (Vodafone)

Expanding on the two later points

Perceived Evil = Being Short Sighted.

Perceived Evil has one Hit-man, that is Media.

Perceived evil has one Source - That is Change in times. Change in times creates two kinds of chasms

- Forward Vs. Conservative Debates - Leading to a discussion on freedom of speech. This is where something is acceptable by a minority of population but largely unacceptable by the majority of population.

- Law Vs. Actual practice -  This means that the early adopters have moved on to different needs, which need different laws. This again opens up a debate on whats good and whats not good. For instance the latest issue on Kishore Biyani terming the marketplace model by flipkart and amazon as outside the law. Some of it is actually to bring pressure on other times gain traction. Lets see how it works below

What do winning companies do? Here are the global popular trend.

It may seem easy, but PR is a nasty beast to manage, costly, and a very high stakes game. So its not for the faint hearted.

- Hot political issue - The rule of thumb for finding an issue is that it should deal with quality of life rather than life itself. Soft issues.LGBT debate is ideal, other issues are net neutrality, Women empowerment, racial bias etc. Ever heard any company shouting hoarse on gun control, capital punishment or abortion related issues? No one ever stopped their services on these issues?

- Fight inside a known geography (i.e. US etc.)- More than half of the countries in the world have outlawed same sex marriages. You don't see salesforce criticising or stopping their services on these issues in those countries. They know their licence will be cancelled and they will be sent home. Which brings me to the third point

- Keep an eye on money (i.e.. Brand, Which means share prices+valuation), If you start losing, get out of the debate fast -

So for instance if you look at the LGBT related issues that keep coming up, Most of the world population is against it. And smart companies like salesforce, milk it to the best.

I don't mean it in a negative way. A company's primary responsibility is to the shareholders and if getting embroiled in a political controversy for your so called "beliefs" gets you sympathy votes and free media coverage saving tonnes of money. Go for it. Provided you can manage the issue with good PR.

The upside is that you will win the fight and repeal the law, the downside is that you will lose the debate, but still come out as an upstanding forward looking company fighting for its convictions.

- Create Stakeholders for your corporate image - internal and external fanatics to fight for your image 

This can be done in 2 ways, one costs money, other doesn't

Free Method- Internal PR + Good policies - Corp comm etc. - We will call it transparency for simplicity. Now perceived transparency can come in very handy in trust building for really good management. In most of the big global brands, every media attack is internally explained with a mailer to employees to generate a balanced perspective. A part of it also means taking care of your employees. Building them up. This seed investment if large enough, explodes on the internet and creates a tiered MLM kind of fan base. Employees are people too. Also employees become ex-employees, and loyalty built this way has long term dividends.

Employees feel good about themselves, are satisfied & work harder.

Costly method - External PR+ Freebies  - paid by company

Here are the elements of cost >> Most of it is in personal gratification looking like care.

- Spend on media - Free stuff + Luxury treatment. For instance a conference for selected opinion makers from media where you give out 2 weeks salary worth of goodies. Gets them on your side, and keeps others interested.

- Spend on employees - Costly freebies and HR policies. This has good ROI as it gives you loyal + hard working employees = Double output + Low poaching + Stakeholders in success.

AGENTS of the SHIELD

Would love to hear your views..

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[Disclaimer: The views expressed here are my own and don't reflect views of any organization i am currently with or might have been associated with]