2018 Thunderbird Opinions Most Admired Companies Survey
People Can’t Make Up Their Minds About Twitter, Google, and Lululemon. Namaste
The Thunderbird survey of most admired companies in the Global 500 revealed people can’t decide if they admire Google or Twitter.
THE MOST DUBIOUS:
The Thunderbird Most Admired Companies survey also discovered a category of companies we refer to “dubious.” These are the middle child of the corporate reputation family.
Dubious reflects a rating of neither admired nor unadmired. It isn’t a good place for a chief executive to lead from and the only recovery program includes radically changing leadership style or, in some cases, the leader.
Given a choice, dubious is inferior to not being admired. Because the least admired are impelled to change to survive. Think of a heart attack. A patient recognizes the problem and immediately signs up for a fitness program, which puts them on a path to recovery. With dubious companies, policies go unchanged and management is usually insensitive or in denial about the underlying problem. Boards of directors don’t have the intel to enforce change or discipline, and there is no consensus for a change in leadership. The future is less certain too — a sudden crisis will eat up political capital like a colony of termites gnawing on wood.
Our most dubious companies include Google, Twitter, and Lululemon, all stock market starlets. The ratings are trend lines not market indicators, although they may be predictors. Dubious ratings reveal a dissatisfaction with the way the company is being managed, not necessarily with the product.
In the case of Cisco and Adobe, the ratings suggest a different problem. Old tech isn’t seen as an innovator. That may be unfair to those companies that have robust lab and incubator programs, but no one is aware of them. Admiration is not a truth meter, it is an opinion poll that plays out over time.
KEY FINDINGS:
- A score of 50 admire votes and 50 undecided votes equals 100% ambiguity.
- With dubious ratings of 86% and 56%, Twitter and Google are hi tech with hi uncertainty.
- 8 of 10 most dubious companies are American (one is Canadian and one is Japanese).
- 7 of 10 most dubious are in hi tech, demonstrating that the tech titans are under scrutiny.
- Interestingly, of people undecided about Google, the quality they admire most in a company is high integrity.
- Dubious ratings may reflect recruitment challenges. 100% of people that are undecided about Twitter would want to work for a company if they admired it.
- 100% of people that are undecided about Twitter say the things they admire most in a companyt are innovation and visionary leadership.
- 83.3% of people that are undecided about Lululemon, would invest in a company if they admired it.
- 80% of people that are undecided about Sony admire visionary leadership above all.
THE WORLD’S MOST AMBIGUOUS COMPANIES
