The era of Apple - reputation and branding

In 2002, when iPod was introduced, Apple rocked the world of music. According to Apple, One million of iPod was sold by June 2003. From then on, Apple started to build itself as a innovative and elegant brand.
I am not entirely sure, but I think that Apple built their brand and value proposition through building a strong reputation that align with their brand value.

First of all, they were not doing good financially until the invention of iPod, which not only save the company but also started their road to become the most innovative company in this decade. After generations of newly designed iPod, Apple introduced iPhones and iPads in the following years. The rolling out of each generation of their product broadcasted and reinforced the idea and perception of being innovative in consumers' minds. They built up their reputation year by year, device by device. And when Apple has the reputation of being a innovative company that create easy to use and beautifully design product. It automatically built the brand in the same way. So when people are talking about which company is innovative and has the easiest product to use, Apple would come up to their minds.

Apple brands itself by doing what they believe and advertise their values. They truly believe that making electronic device that is easy to use can make a huge impact on people's lives, and they work hard to make that happen. A side from that, they did not just do the work but also advertise their ideas. Whenever a new product come out, Apple always post a video on their website, usually feature their senior VP of design Jonathan Ive, explaining the ideas and values behind the design.

So I think the concept of branding and having a reputation can be really closely related since both of them reflect the value stand behind the products or services that the company provide.

Reputation

I want to talk about one of my experiences where I have strong reputations of mastering certain skills.

I have been working on a project since August this year in a team of six people. In the beginning, none of us know each other since the project group was assigned by directors. So the first phase was getting to know each other. After two or three weeks of teamwork, we started to actually get to know each other's personality a little bit. 

I started building my reputation as a good data analyst and presenter by getting my part of work done with high quality. So team members started to notice that my work were usually presented with concise and clear charts that demonstrate the result of my data analysis in a sharp way. Even though I did not know their thoughts back then, but I would guess that they started to deem me as a person who like play with data and charts, which was the first step of building a reputation. 

As the project went on, I worked with one or two teammates on some tasks together where my ability to utilize certain data-processing software were observed closely and learned by one or two teammates. I started to gain trust.  turned the data synthesizing part of our mutual tasks to me before he even try to do that because he know that I can do the job nicely. So in this phase, my ability was built up in the small circle in my team. Therefore, my reputation built up a little bit more than its in the beginning. 

And most recently, when I work on some research for the project on my own, some of my teammates turned to me to solve some of their data-processing problems. So by now, my ability is recognized in this entire group. I reached the highest reputation level I can be.

I think what I did to built and maintain my reputation was merely three things: completing my tasks with high quality; Actively reaching out to help other team members with their problem;  Answering questions and offering help when teammates turned to me with their questions. 

For me, at least in this case, I never thought about abandon my reputation for anything. I think it is simply because I can not think of any possible payoff or gain for me to cash in my reputation. I think my reputation brings me joy and fulfillment.

Added on Nov/17:
The project was to find and justify the best practices a Fortune 1000 company should take in order to improve brand awareness among general public and recruiting performance. The consulting project is paid by the company. So this was a very meaningful and serious project. We have a very strict timeline to complete the project. So it is very organized. We have team meetings and client calls every week to make sure our direction of research is align with the client's need.

Having such reputation makes me able to take on more data analysis responsibilities that I am good at. I believe by giving tasks to the most suitable person is a great way to increase efficiency and effectiveness. And I look forward to being promoted to project manager in the future.

Principal-Agent

I thought hard but I am not sure if any of my experience can be considered as a  triangle principal-agent situation. I think the most similar case would be the consulting project I am working on. In this case, the agent is project manager, and two principles are the consulting organization (or say project manager's supervisor) and the client.

In my consulting team, there are one senior manager, one project manager and five consultants including me. We work for a Chicago based company.  Our contact of the company is the director of a division at the firm. In order to keep pour in high quality effort toward the project and meet client's need, client is obligated to have at least a call with us each week.

But after the first client call in the beginning week, there was a family emergency in our clients family. Senior managers try to contact our client by emails and phone calls, but the clients were not responding. And at the same time, the senior manager also want the project keep going, which means that both the project manager and us need to produce same amount of research as normal. But it got harder and harder for us to do since we need more information from our client as our research went deeper. Project manager in this case, was upset because he was not able to get hold of the client for 5 weeks. With the overwhelming pressure of having a satisfying mid point presentation for our client without the feedback, PM really did everything he could to contact our client. So the PM was stuck in the middle of the pressure zone. In one side, the organization or SM need PM and us produce a high-quality midpoint presentation, but in the other side, PM also face the pressure of not able to communicate with our client and find out its need.

So the entire tension that PM had was ended by receiving client's response this week. Luckily, the client was really interested after we briefed him what we've been doing. So it did not ends in bad way. I know that this case was not really the perfect case to discuss the principle-agent model. But it is the closest one I got.