Comments on: How reputation measurement will transform professional services

By: Ross Dawson

Ross Dawson — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 18:04:23 +0000

Thanks all for the interesting comments!
Yes this is immensely hard to measure, for many reasons including that reputation is context-specific. But the reward of doing this makes it well worth trying, and I think we’ll get a long way over the next decade.
It’s definitely interesting that transparency increases professionalism (in the long run), so the very nature of what it is to be a professional will change…

By: Jeff Bullas

Jeff Bullas — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 17:29:32 +0000

Hi Ross
Great insights in the post, I certainly think that we certainly are seeing the rise of the “Personal Brand” which has been enabled by the web.
The importance of blogs to facilitate this cannot be underestimated
Cheers
Jeff

By: Sameer Patel

Sameer Patel — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 16:06:56 +0000

Spot on, Ross
And its a good thing. There’s unfortunately a reasonable amount of arrogance and condescending talk and behavior in the professional services arena. And most can’t contain these characteristics as they converse in social forums and networks.
As resumes move from a traditional one page word document or linkedin profile to well, Google Search, across the entire social graph, it easy to size up a compete reputation profile.
As the tools get better, more accurate and pervasive, I hope we put the professionalism back in into professional services.

By: Duncan Stuart

Duncan Stuart — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 16:01:33 +0000

Interesting comments about reputation and its increasing importance. A more complex subject to measure than most realise – reputation isn’t a uni-dimensional quality – and the internet has made reputations more volatile than ever.
Our clients weren’t much interested in the subject until – ba daaa! – the Tiger Woods story hit the fan last month. Now its a hot topic! Even REPUTATION has a reputaiton.
Duncan Stuart

By: Lucie Newcomb

Lucie Newcomb — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 15:55:57 +0000

Thanks for the forward thinking here, Ross, since those of us in Services-based businesses know the cornerstone of our success is Trust and the growing “discipline” of reputation management has interesting implications, both for us and for our clients. – Maybe, one day, our trustworthiness (reliability, integrity, etc.), as well as our expertise, will be beholden to some sort of certification process…which may well result in us being declared certifiable, given the likely amount of “hoops”, instead! For now, I’m sticking with my open, straight-shooter approach (aka transparency and managed expectations) as the best path to win-win and mutually productive long-term relationships.
Thanks for this thought-provoking post and all good wishes for continued success.