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Motive Imagery and Corporate Success

Key Thoughts and Considerations

Ive been doing a lot of thinking about the fact that incorporated into this study

arent just the numbers that were trying to dig up, either financial or motive imagery

related, but rather the percent change () of those numbers over time. That made methink about what really meant.

is like an inflection point. It tries to describe in numbers some sort of directionsomething is heading. In our context, if people see that companies are consistently

growing by 50%, 60% every year, then dont they feel confident in where the company is

heading? Maybe not confident, but at least can see where a company is heading.

This could be an interesting argument if we find any association between any one of the

motive imagerys and the various metrics that we are evaluating. It speaks volumes about

the impact of leadership. This is because I have kept all of the CEOs or Chairmen

(whoever wrote the Letter to the Shareholder) consistent over the 3 year period that weare studying. If we find some sort of association, we can therefore also make a pretty

strong argument about how having consistent leadership is key. However, I guess I didntsample those companies that changed their leadership, so it will be impossible to compare

metrics.

Anyway, let me get to the heart of the matter. The fun thing about is that it can bemanipulated in so many different ways. You can virtually extract it out of any two

numbers in the universe. So, I have taken a look at all of the possibilities in which I can

get for the time period encompassing 2004, 2005, and 2006:

As you can see, there are three differentpercentage possibilities that you can get out ofthe combinations 2004, 2005, and 2006. Of these

three possibilities two of the instances account

for a period in time of one year in length (0405& 0506). The other time period (0406) evaluates the time period over two years in

length.

This is excellent news. In trying to predict for the impact of motive imagery on corporatesuccess, due to the fact that there is no precedent, I am unsure as to the time length in

which one measure will impact another. I can speculate right off the top in our case that it

ought to be one year, because an Annual Report typically comes out annually andcontains within it a new statement from the CEO with a new set of motive imagerys.

However, why is this the case? The beauty that lies within the 0406 is that it doesnt

assume this necessarily confined time period. Often times, CEOs will talk about a lot offuture or forward-looking statements, so wouldnt it make sense that their plans would

only come to fruition in some time to come, maybe up to two years.

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This would tell me then that the impacts of motive imagery take a long time to take

affect. But then I started to think about how much time passes between the utterance of

the Letter to the Shareholder and potentially two years down the line. Within that time,there are just an incomprehensible amount of words that the human can hear. I was so

curious that I searched on Google, how many words does a person hear every day.

Unfortunately, there were no results that answered the question directly. As I typically do,I went to Yahoo! Answers to ask the question with no answer on the Internet (if you know

the answer please click on this link).

So, there are so many opportunities for you to hear other words in a daily life, why is it

that these words uttered in the Letter to the Shareholder could possibly be a predictor

for future corporate actions? Its almost preposterous that Id propose such an idea. When

you really think about it, theres nothing that differentiates this utterance from anyother utterance that occurs. Why is it any more special than any other document that a

person would read or hear about a company?

I think an interesting thing to study would be peoples perception of various documentsand how highly they regard them. By asking people to rank various documents, probably

between numbers 1 and 9, 9 being the most significant and 1 being the least significant,you can find out a lot about how people perceive various things that they reading. Things

you read and listen to are very important as they inculcate us with ideas because were

humans are by nature very impressionable.

How does somebody view what they read in the Newspaper versus a Textbook versus a

Book versus a Magazine versus a Financial Report versus an Instruction Manual etc. etc.

You can do this for two separate samples of people. Regular people out in the street, andpeople who work for a company.

You can frame the initial question you ask people in two different ways. First, you cansay: Please rank these documents in terms of importance. That is one way of asking. The

second way could be: Please rank these documents in terms of significance in a corporate

setting.

I think you would be surprised to see that many people hold the Annual Report of a

company in high regard, and contained within that Annual Report is obviously the Letter

to the Shareholder. This indicates to me that even thought people hear so much and havethe chance to hear so many things at all different times, there are instances in which we

listen more closely or a little more deeply. We obviously cant be a slave to all of our

stimuli at all given times.

In order to measure if people were actually listening deeper than usual, a good method

would be to make take some brain scans.

Your thoughts are welcome.

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