Like BP’s brand promise of being “beyond petroleum,” like GE’s “imagination at work” portrayal of solving the world’s problems, like Wells Fargo trumpeting its new ethical standards, Trump linked his own brand inextricably with the wall. Like those companies, he hadn’t thoroughly thought through what a commitment it meant, what expectations he would have to fulfill if elected, and how exactly he’d be able to deliver something he had no unilateral power to deliver.
And now, like Col. James Bowie and frontiersman Davy Crockett at the Alamo, Trump must fight this fight to the death. At the moment, despite criminal investigations, convictions and guilty pleas swirling around him and negative news coverage off the charts, 89 percent of Republicans still approve of the president’s performance, according to a recent Gallup poll. They are sticking with him for now, but they expect a wall. Failure, which seems inevitable, will be reputationally fatal.
In the corporate world, there is often an event forcing stakeholders to see reality for what it is and realize that their expectations will not be met. For BP, it was the Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill that killed 11 people in 2010. At GE, imagination gave way to reality as expensive acquisitions, poor performance and rising interest rates showed that management couldn’t actually deliver on its promises. At Wells Fargo, it was, well, one thing after another.
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