The cost nobody is counting.

Edition 05 of 'Reputation Means Business' looks at what happens when the trust people used to place in brands shifts onto the leaders carrying them, and why nobody owns what that costs the business.

People trust brands less than they used to. That eroding trust has not disappeared, it has shifted onto the individuals behind them even more, whose personal reputation now carries a decision that used to belong to the company name. Which makes it strange how few organisations treat their leaders' reputation as something to actually run strategically.

Ask who owns the strategy behind what your leadership team is known for, and what the plan is to make that visible to the market. In most organisations, including ones with excellent marketing and communications teams, the honest answer is nobody.

Someone schedules the LinkedIn post that happens to feature a leader. Someone pitches a press quote because a new study came out. Someone agrees to a speaking slot because they got the invitation. All of it happens, and none of it is working from the same plan, because there is not one.

That gap has a cost that is hard to see.

It is a significant one, even though it never appears as an item on a quarterly report. It shows up in revenue targets missed, in growth stalling or harder than it should be, in every number the board actually looks at, just never with a line item attached. 

It shows in missed opportunities. The pitch you did not know was happening because your leaders' name was not even considered. The deal that goes to a competitor whose CEO was simply better known. The top candidate who could have made a difference taking the other offer because they had actually seen that leadership in action. 

Multiply a handful of fragmented, disconnected activities across an entire leadership team and beyond, and what you get is a lot of effort producing very little for the exact numbers everyone is trying to grow. 

Yet no one owns it.

In the meantime, somebody is still carrying it, alone. The leader who thinks about how they come across on top of actually running the business, because nobody else is doing that part for them but they know it would help them win business. The rising leader building visibility on their own time, unsure whether it reads as ambition or overreach, because there is no one telling them either way. 

It used to matter less. Nobody outside the industry looked that closely, and inside it, everyone already knew who was who. That stopped being true the moment AI made a polished bio and a confident pitch available to anyone. 

Sounding credible is no longer worth much, because everyone can do it now. What is still worth something is the trust that existed before the meeting was even scheduled, and that is precisely the thing nobody in most organisations has claimed.

It does not have to stay that way.

The organisations that get this right are not doing more than everyone else. They have simply decided, in advance, what each leader should be known for and who needs to know it before the next deal or hire depends on it, the same way they decided on a sales strategy instead of waiting to see what happens. 

Ask the question at your next leadership meeting. Somebody will probably say marketing. Somebody else will say comms. Give it a minute, and watch the room realise nobody actually has an answer.