The Trust Extender: Enlarge the circle of trust by empowering stakeholders to trust and reciprocate trust
Hack:
The Trust Extender: Enlarge the circle of trust by empowering stakeholders to trust and reciprocate trust
Enlarge the circle of trust by orders of magnitude and radically accelerate the trust-building process by empowering people to rely on the information even before they trust each other. Scaling trust is important because it allows one to transcend traditional spheres of influence and control, such as organizational hierarchy and personal relationships.
A paradigm-shifting breakthrough in how management views trust is necessary for this hack to work. Trust is most often viewed in the context of personal relationships, but we know that trust-building confined to personal relations is a limiting paradigm that adversely affects how organizations operate. Relationship building is counterproductive for extending and sustaining trust. Relationships affect people’s objectivity; on one hand, causing them to be overly trusting and less discriminating within relationships, and on the other, to be excessively discriminating and less trusting of others. Relationships can therefore be insular, keeping people within their comfort zone and less open to external influences that spawn innovation. Trust, based solely on relationships, can also be fickle by being overly susceptible to changes in the dynamics of the personalities involved. Thus trust limited to relationships can also stunt an organization’s ability to innovate, because information is not valued equally regardless of its source.
Current models of “trust building” focus on modifying the behavior of individuals, when it is exactly the differences in human behavior that create information diversity and lead to “big ideas.” Francis Fukuyama and other academics have even attributed the trust-building norms of various cultures to their nations’ economic performance, offering a macroeconomic perspective that associates prosperity with a capacity to scale trust. We believe that an open, free flow of ideas, regardless of their source within and between organizations would stimulate significant gains in productivity and employee satisfaction, and lead to discovering hidden organizational dynamics, such as underlying, exclusive power channels.
According to the Conference Board of Canada’s 2009 report, Stakeholder Trust, "Companies that create trust with stakeholders build intangible value and anticipate, innovate, and adapt fast—keys to business survival and maximization of shareholder value."
Our societies are returning to their roots. We now live in a "global village" that calls for a new, yet time-honored, approach for people, businesses and governments to improve their capacity to trust and be trusted. Throughout history trust was rooted in physical communities. Today, our communities span the globe, and persist in ubiquitous digital spaces. Trust messages are now sent and received through a distinct-new, online medium that dramatically alters the dynamics of how trust is created and eroded, and is characterized by unprecedented speed, scope and impact.
We propose the following approach to solving the problem:
- A New Perspective on Trust: Educate managers that they can have a greater impact on business performance by enabling trust in information than only in individuals. Managers, open your minds and revisit your long-standing beliefs about trust by participating in continuing education programs.
- The Dynamics of Trust: Provide case studies that demonstrate how mechanisms that facilitate trust in information not only allow organizations to scale the effects of their trust-building efforts, but also improve trust between people – even strangers. Managers, read case studies and attend workshops to gain insights into new approaches that could help you achieve your trust objectives.
- A Universal Framework for Trust: Demonstrate the use of a universal framework for diagnosing and designing scalable trust and its impact on business performance. Managers, start communicating using a universal lingua franca for trust as your blueprint for evaluating your existing trust models and refining them.
- Institute for Extending Trust: Create a research, education, collaboration and advocacy organization focused on enhancing the capacity of people and organizations worldwide to trust by facilitating innovation in trust-extending business practices that deliver sustainable improvements in business performance. Managers, encourage your organizations to join the Institute for Extending Trust in order to improve their chances of success by learning from the experiences of other innovative organizations on the leading edge of transforming trust-extending practices.
- Delivering Trust Models: Provide expertise and tools for developing information trust models to organizations on the cutting edge of innovation that value idea channels over power channels in order to help them develop trust extending systems that help engage the best and brightest creative talent worldwide in activities that generate unprecedented new value for stakeholders. Managers, seek external expertise and create sandboxes for experimenting with third party tools that support your trust extending initiatives.
We believe that an open, free flow of ideas, regardless of source, could yield huge gains in organizational productivity, employee satisfaction, and engaging neglected organizational dynamics that transcend traditional power channels.
Managers will find that by implementing trust models that depersonalize trust they will reduce conflict and resistance to change, and engage more participants, sooner.
It has broad applicability that impacts virtually every aspect of business:
Risk Management: http://trustenablement.com/local/GRCT-KPMG.ppsx
Corporate Policies: see http://trustenablement.com/Policy_Recommendations.htm
Corporate Governance: see Governance Lifecycle Model (GLM)™ Assessment Tool at http://trustenablement.com/governing.html#GLM and "Corporate Governance Best Practices: One size does not fit all" at http://trustenablement.com/local/Corporate_Governanc_Best_%20Preactices-...
Business Strategy: "Trust Enablement: A critical success factor" at http://trustenablement.com/local/Assessment_of_Critical_Success_Factor.pdf
Supply Chain Management: "Trust Enabled™ Supply Networks: Uncovering the trust-building secrets of highly collaborative supply chains." at http://trustenablement.com/local/Trust_Enabled_Supply_Networks-whitepape... and "Trust Enabled™ Supply Networks: Enabling trust for collaboration, innovation and sustainability" at http://trustenablement.com/Trust_Enabled_Supply_Networks-SCL-notes.pdf
Electronic Commerce: "The Challenges of Online Trust: for online and offline businesses" at http://trustenablement.com/local/The_Challenges_of_Online_Trust-slides.pdf and "The Essential Christmas Web-store Makeover" at http://trustenablement.com/Web-store_Makeover_Article.html
Sales and Marketing: "Trust: The most important marketing ingredient" at http://trustenablement.com/local/Hepworth_Interview-Trust_the_most_impor..., "Measuring Awareness, Brand & Competitive Standing: Using trust indicators", and "Enabling Trust Online" at http://trustenablement.com/local/Enabling_Trust_Online.pdf
Online Social Networks: "Building Trust in the Social Space" at http://diy-marketing.blogspot.com/2008/10/building-trust-in-social-space...
Information Technology: "Confidence & The Cloud" at http://trustenablement.com/local/Cobit_Cloud.pdf, "Trusting Information - Not the Source: The impact of trust on Business on Demand" at http://trustenablement.com/local/Trusting_Information-Not_the_Source.pdf, and E-Trust: Establisning consumer confidence in On-Line Commercial Transactions" at http://trustenablement.com/local/E-Trust-Establishing_Consumer_Confidenc...
Outsourcing: "Why Outsourcing Deals Fail" at http://trustenablement.com/local/Why_Outsourcing_Deals_Fail-draft.pdf
Collaboration: ""Trust Enabled™ Ecosystems: SAP Global Ecosystem Marketing" at http://trustenablement.com/local/Trust_Enabled_Ecosystems.ppsx, "Global Supply Chain Risk Management & Trust Study" at http://trustenablement.com/Aberdee_SCRM_&_Trust_Study-ExecSummary.pdf, and "The Wikinomics Playbook" at http://www.socialtext.net/data/workspaces/wikinomics/attachments/wikinom...
Leadership: "Building Trust in a Law Firm" at http://trustenablement.com/local/Building_Trust_in_a_Law_Firm.pdf
Ethics and Compliance: "Trust without Ethics - Ethics without Trust" at http://trustenablers.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=28147497689...
Public Policy: "Creating trust in government is more than 'cleaning house'" at http://trustenablement.com/local/Creating_trust_in_government.pdf
Economic Development: "Leading Intelligent Communities Through Enabling Trust" at http://trustenablement.com/local/iCommunity_Focus_on_Leadership-Leading_...
- Develop a model and processes that allow organizations to adopt information trust practices. Managers, start learning about trust models designed to extend trust;
- Pilot a high-visibility, low-risk implementation of a scalable trust model for an innovative project, such as http://www.managementexchange.com. Managers, identify your own pilot projects and experiment with models and processes for extending trust;
- Work with a few cutting edge organizations committed to innovating on their management practices to experiment with prototypes of information-oriented trust tools and methods in order to extend trust beyond traditional boundaries. Managers, if you have a mandate to adopt innovative new approaches for improving business performance, get involved in organized experiments that position you as a leader in trust-extending innovations; and
- Celebrate successes and enroll other similarly-minded organizations to participate in the Institute for Extending Trust by building upon previous successes. Managers, get involved in the Institute for Extending Trust by sharing your experiences with other members and collaboratively refining methods for extending trust.
I am most grateful to Matthew Cloutier for helping me structure and compose this hack submission.
Alliance Governance: Balancing Trust and Control in Dealing with Risk from Alex Todd on Vimeo.
Every alliance requires that at the outset there are ways and means to establish sufficient trust for the parties to share information fully and to make timely decisions regarding joint investments and activities. Additionally, there are always times during the life cycle of an alliance when trust is challenged (key people change, surprises happen, partners become complacent and let communications lapse, etc.). So how do alliance managers develop and preserve a sufficient level of trust and deal with situations where trust erodes and needs to be shored up again?
When designing an alliance governance structure, managers have to choose between approaches based on control or on trust. This presentations proposes a framework to help managers decide which of the two is appropriate in a particular situation. Are control and trust substitutes or complements? What is the link between control, trust and risk? Our approach proposes that whether control and trust are substitutes or complements depends on the level and type of risk an alliance faces. In high risk situations companies use complex combinations of control and trust in a complementary way.
Download slides from http://trustenablement.com/local/Alliance_Governance.ppsx.
Note to the time constrained: The risk and trust discussion begins at the 15 minute mark.
Hello Alex,
Great work on this hack. This is a critical part of the future of information. Without this type of work we will not be able to move beyond proprietary information and towards a future where democratized information creates a truely efficient marketplace.
As we've discussed in the past, having a trust framework will be increasingly important for the future of the marketplace and information technology as we know it. As more and more information is created and moderated and managed by communities it is essential that we create systems for evaluating the trustworthiness of the resulting information.
To your point below, there is no way for me to trust the person. How can I trust each of the 20 or more people that contributed to a single Wikipedia article? How do I as non-active member of the Wikipedia community trust the article? I don't know those contributors, nor do I have the time or inclination to learn about them. In most cases, I trust that the Wikipedia community did their best to keep the article accurate. I don't need to know who contributed, nor do I need to trust them individually. I trust the system, the community. The problem arises as the article is used outside the Wikipedia community. If for example, a blogger copies the article and pastes it into a blog post, I have much less trust that the article is accurate.
We need to create systems that live outside of a single community. Systems that bridge communities or more importantly that exist above individual communities. Systems that translate the intrinsic trust of individual, contributions and communities, and provides for the trust to be embedded in the resulting information itself.
In other words, if I can be assured that the excerpt from the Wikipedia article in a blog is exactly as the Wikipedia community created it, then I have a greater level of trust.
Keep up the good work!
Jose
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Thank you to the Management Innovation eXchange judges of the Tweet-a-Hack contest for choosing my tweet:
@TrustEnabler: 1. Celebrate vulnerability; 2. Admire authenticity; 3. Insist on integrity (honor yr word); 4. Champion EVERY stand
"We were impressed with Alex's ability to squeeze four good ideas into a single tweet, as well as with the passion with which they came through. Personally, I'm intrigued by his first suggestion ("celebrate vulnerability"), which I hope he'll elaborate on in a future post. It's probably no surprise that Alex took this prize: as the founder of Trust Enablement, Inc., he's clearly focused on the matter at hand." - see http://www.managementexchange.com/blog/contest-winner-how-increase-trust-140-characters-or-less
As request, I would also like to take this opportunity to elaborate on my "Celebrate vulnerability" suggestion. I wrote about this in a comment to Dan Oestareich’s blog at http://www.unfoldingleadership.com/blog/?p=2208#comment-32844. Here is an excerpt:
“Finally, I’d like to address the bigger question of the value of vulnerability. Vulnerability is the prerequisite for sociability and survival of most species. Without it we would eat our young. Vulnerability is therefore also the ultimate moral stand. Heroism may be the ultimate act of vulnerability.”
I'd be happy to answer questions on this, or elaborate further.
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George,
Thank you for your interest and for taking time to ask some thoughtful and thought-provoking questions. I'll try to answer them below, bur first I'd like to confirm your understanding of the premise of my hack:
1. Question: Would enforcable legal contracts (and a developed rule of law) be a current example of information that enables trust?
Answer: Yes, I would say that a contract supported by a developed judicial process is a good example of enabling trust in information. The contract specifies what each party needs to rely on (in other words, what information needs to be trusted) and the judicial process helps to validate and enforce compliance.
2. Question: An alternative seems to be for market participants to increase their volume of "personal" relationships through social networking sites - how do you see this phenomenon fitting into your model?
Answer: Yes, That's a good example. Most social networking relationships are shallow (however, some may deepen with repeated interactions, especially if augmented by meetings in person), and would not by many measures meet the standard of what most people think of when they use the term "relationship". In those cases, members of your social network may act simply as sources of trust for any information you are trying to validate. Although you may not place a great deal of trust in any individual of your social network, you may be able to attain a higher level of confidence in the validity of the information by getting validation from multiple (semi-trusted) people in your network. In fact, you may well be able to attain a higher level of trust by aggregating the validations of many people you hardly know than you can from one or a few individuals with whom you have a very close relationship.
3. Question: Do we tend to trust like minded people more than people who think differently from us? Is this something you would view as limitting or simply a fact?
Answer: I would say that it is generally limiting. We do tend to trust like-minded people more, because they are more likely to validate our own beliefs, which essentially validates our being. Likewise, relying on people who understand us ensures that they are validating the information based on a context that is relevant to us. In other words, their validation of any information is based on them having a better understanding of the impact to us if we rely on the information. However, it can also have the opposite effect, by causing us to self-select a homogeneous sample of people to trust. It's kind of like replicating yourself multiple times to be able to say that others feel the same way you do. We label people who seek only to validate their own point of view as "delusional". The key to developing trust in any information is validating it from multiple independent sources, even those you don't trust so much. If you think about it, that's exactly how a court of law works when it relies on the evidence of independent witnesses. The big challenge with this approach is faced by people, like innovators, who are pursuing a course of action they believe to be valid, but are surrounded by people who view those actions from a different context and therefore tend to invalidate them. The solution is to diversify the network of prospective validators, perhaps through online social networking and to carefully consider the context of each validator's feedback.
4. Question: What do you see as the relationship between competence and trustability?
Answer: Trusting someone's competence is the same as trusting someone to do what they say (or imply) they will do. I call this "integrity", which I define as honouring your word. Integrity is the foundation for "trustability". The question then becomes, what are the different ways in which you can establish trust in someone's competency? For example, you could ask for independent and recognized credentials, or you could rely on references (preferably from someone you trust), or you can directly put the person's competency to the test, etc.
5. Question: Have you seen or done any studies on statistical predictors of trust ? For example if someone has acted in a trustworthy way in the past does this make them more likely to act in a trustworthy way in the future? Assuming this is the case - how does one deal with anomalies - for example a long con?
Answer: I have compiled many studies on trust, some of which I have included in a document "The Facts on Trust" (see http://trustenablement.com/opt/The_Facts_on_Trust.pdf). However, I don't recall a study that measures either the propensity of an individual to trust again when their trust had been validated in the past or a person to continue to behave in a trustworthy fashion if they have done so in the past. Nevertheless, we all know from personal experiences and that of others, that this is absolutely the case. If you have proven to be trustworthy in the past, I will tend to trust you more. In the event that something happens to erode my trust, you will need to rebuild it for me again. Likewise, if I behave in a trustworthy fashion today, I am likely to continue to do so in the future - unless circumstances change. So what are the implications for long cons, such as the infamous case of Bernie Madoff? Well, this is exactly the problem my hack attempts to overcome. A con is founded on the premise that the con artist has proven themselves trustworthy over time, and is expected to continue to behave the same way in the future. The fallacy with this relationship-based foundation for trust is that in the process of building trust, people also narrow the diversity of sources of trust to one person, the con artist. "The Trust Extender" seeks to empower people with the knowledge and resources that help them objectively develop, sustain and rebuild trust. It also helps them to continually re-consider and rely on both the person's proficiencies (for performance) and their motivations (that may affect the person's future decision-making) that may change over time. If Madoff's clients had means to be be aware of the experiences of all his other clients, had independent access to their assets and underlying performance metrics, and hypothetically knew that strong disincentives (such as a method of maintaining the chain of custody to the money or strong and/or effective extradition laws) made it highly unlikely that Madoff would abscond with their money, then his con may have been far less likely. This is what I mean when I refer to designing rich conditions for trust that make trust scalable beyond relationships and allow more people to trust sooner and longer.
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Thanks,
Jerry Adel
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Thank you for asking your excellent question about the applicability of The Trust Extender to employees with existing relationships. Perhaps its applicability is best illustrated with an example.
A number of years ago, I was engaged in a discussion between two major consuling firms (I was representing one of them) to hold a joint event on trust for a professional organization. A few weeks after our meeting, I received an e-mail from a meeting prarticipant from the other consulting firm, thanking me for introducing him to my novel trust concept because he had just applied it in a client engagement with great success. I was both flattered and confused, not knowing to which "trust concept" he was referring. In response to my inquiry to clairfy what he meant, he related his experience of acting as mediator between a government agency (his client) and their IT outsourcer to resolve a serious breakdown in trust that had developed between the representatives of the respective organizations. Instead of trying to broker a reconciliation between the individuals whose resentment had reached a critical level, he chose instead to try my information-based approach to overcoming the trust rift. He applied my principle to "trust the information despite its source" by identifying objective sources for the business information both parites needed to rely on in their outsourcing relationship, instead of having to rely on the veracity of the assertions of the representing parties. Although this approach did not directly address the trust between the individuals, it removed the need to do so by introducing a mechanism that allowed both partiese to rely on the information they needed to productively conduct business with each other, despite their mistrust for each other.
An insight that can be gained from this experience is the improtance of focusing on the business problem, rather than the factors inhibiting performance. Relationships are fickle. When they break down, the effects on the business can be considerable. What if mechanisms and processes were in place that helped create rich conditions for trust independent of personal relationships? After all, it's not personal - it's just business.
The same concpets can be applied to any workgroup. Work environments can be designed to make it easier for participants to choose to share and rely on information of their colleagues, despite thier personal feelings about the individuals involved. I hope that helps.
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Alex,
Nice article/hack. This is my first introduction to MIX.
A couple of thoughts. First, your focus on trusting data, rather than individuals is good, but it's not new or unique. As these commenters and you have noted, Western Judicial systems use this approach. So does FASB for audits, and most large orgs do too, as long as the data is sourced within their org (Military, IBM, etc.)
Unfortunately most of our non financial data is not audited, and its veracity is questionable. Data is notoriously "dirty". Using the model of "trust but verify" you would need to put in place process to audit the data, and then shift trust relationships from "personal relationships" to "data integrity". This integrity is quantifiable so you can adjust the risk tolerance to the quality of the data.
People use trust to expand their sphere of information beyond direct experience. In some sense that will always be riskier than data collected firsthand.
Second, I think that people already put more trust in data than is warranted. Ergo Wikipedia. If you want to improve people's reliance on trust in data, you have to improve the data, and decrease the "erosion".
Charles
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Alex has done some solid thinking on this concept. Trust is the foundation upon which business and other relationships work. Leaders and teams that are able to develop a high degree of trust have a much greater likelihood to realize their potential. Similarly, if businesses were able to have a more sophisticated "system" to increase trust, then business could be transacted more quickly and expeditiously. The challenge will be to develop appropriate practices / systematized measures and processes that companies can both implement and rely upon in order to achieve improved business performance. Cheers, Max Carbone
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Charles, thank you for suggesting an "audit" system for non-financial data and protect from data erosion. The framework I propose addresses both suggestions by empowering relying parties to identify and engage preferred sources of trust, and by factoring the mechanisms that reliably deliver expected value.
You are right when you say "your focus on trusting data, rather than individuals is good, but it's not new or unique". What is new is the structured method (systematic appraoch) I propose for universally diagnosing and designing condiions for trust in data. This takes it from being a heuristic to a technology, and therefore a management innovation.
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Cool tool. This directly goes at making the intangible tangible. If culture eats strategy for breakfast, this helps get at that for the top team and all levels of an organization. This is a clear way to make culture a clearer part of top level strategy. It is, for all the largest organizations in Canada that I have worked with, the biggest, least known about challenge to address to release untapped value = breaking down silos, building stronger leadership, giving boards a clear decision framework on enabler and blockers of achieving strategic objectives and organizational strategy, providing data to support design of more innovative management systems. This has the potential tool for the architecture and design of business.
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Alex -
You have all the right things there. I know it's proprietary, but it would be useful to post some details of how you approach the solution.
Thanks
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I think this is an important topic that is important to all organizations. This approach offers interesting ideas that managers can begin to implement right away.
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Hi Matt,
Thank you for being the first to comment on my proposed Hack.
Be assured that I am not holding back any "proprietary" information about the concept, the framework, or any general methods. If you are interested in the details of how I envision it working, please review the Helpful Materials section. There is also a lot more on my web site at http://TrustEnablement.com. However, I am also not claiming that my work to date is the final word on this hack. Instead, I believe it represents a good start for collaboration, starting with this discussion, toward realizing the ultimate, "radical management innovation".
I'd be happy to fully answer all questions, short of disclosing details about any specific models or solutions that I designed by applying the framework.
- Alex
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Barry, thank you for asking this important question, as it addresses the essence of understanding the paradigm shift being introduced by this hack.
When we say we trust someone, we implicitly mean that we trust them for something in particular. For example, when I say I trust my mother, implicitly I mean I trust my mother to have my best interests at heart. Likewise, when I say I trust my pilot, implicitly I mean I trust him/her to fly the plane safely, but not necessarily to give me good financial advice. In each case, I am not trusting the individual absolutely for everything in every possible situation. I trust people within a very specific context. Heck, I don't even trust myself absolutely, as sometimes I am tired, sick, hungry, emotional, drunk, etc. So, the things for which we trust people represent the information (implicit or explicit) that we rely on when we say we trust someone.
Here is a formulaic way to look at it: A trusts (or relies) on B for matters of C. C is the information that A really needs to know is valid. Ideally, A's primary source of trust is B, who also happens to be the provider of the C information. However, that need not be the case. You don't have to trust the person who delivers the information in order to be able to rely on the validity of the information. Instead, you can rely on other sources of trust (other Bs if you will) to validate the C information.
If you think about it, this is exactly how a court of law works, which relies on neither the accuser or the accused for the validity of their claims, but instead on a collection of witnesses. The same is true for eBay, where you don't necessarily trust the claims of the merchant, but instead rely on the feedback provided by other customers. So, although relationships are an important way of validating critical information about the parties involved, it is by no means the only way. In fact, I would suggest it is a limiting paradigm that does not scale well. I hope that helps clarify what I mean when I say "managers can have a greater impact on business performance by enabling trust in information."
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I read Alex's "The Trust Extender: Enlarge the circle of trust by empowering stakeholders to trust and reciprocate trust" post at http://www.managementexchange.com/content/trust-extender-enlarge-circle-... and was very impressed by it. My curiosity turned into my using some NextStage tools to analyze it so that I could get back to Alex with any suggestions for revising it or making future postings more actionable/readable/acceptable.
I shared the initial analysis with Alex and he asked me to share it, hence this comment/post/discussion thread.
[[Obligatory Promotional Paragraphs]]
The analyses are based on NextStage's Sentiment Analysis (NSSA) Tool (http://nssa.nextstagevolution.com/), Advanced version, a web-based tool available to anyone. The two analyses shared here together cost about US$80. This explanation would amount to a webinar style training and would cost another US$50 or so. We at NextStage had an option to make our tools expensive, uninformative, unactionable and uncustomizable or to make them inexpensive, highly informative, actionable and customizable.
We decided on the latter.
You can learn a lot about NextStage's Sentiment Analysis tool by following the links at the bottom of http://nssa.nextstagevolution.com/nssaabout.cfm.
[[The Analyses]]
Please go to http://nssa.nextstagevolution.com/review.cfm?pageid=374 to follow along with this analysis.
Starting at the top with Basic: Author Attitude - The fact that the Positive (green bar) is about 10pts higher than the Negative (red bar) is an indication that the author (Alex, in this case) is doing "heart" writing. They are writing to an audience they both know and believe will respond positively to what is written. Because they (probably) both know and believe the response will be positive, they're sharing more of themselves than they might normally share in a professional piece of writing.
Intermediate: Confidence - This is a very impressive value, 67%, and high enough to be rarely seen in professional pieces that aren't blatant self-promotion or demonstrations of outright arrogance. In a training, I would instruct users to compare the Confidence value to Intermediate: Message Intent: Referral, Active Pleasure and Love values and Advanced: Trust and Advanced: Affinity values found further down in the report. The fact that all these values are also relatively high indicates that the Confidence value is based on the author's core beliefs in what they're offering rather than sarcasm, arrogance or self-promotion. In any case, 67% is a demonstration that the author (Alex) strongly believes the audience will both benefit and act upon the information presented.
Intermediate: Audience Branding - The fact that the "Read Once Then Ignore" value is low and the other values in this section are non-existent indicates that a general audience wouldn't pay much attention to this piece. As with Confidence, I would instruct users to compare these values with Advanced: Sphere of Influence: Real Followers. That value is at 30%, meaning that 30% of the people in the author's immediate circle of associates will respond to it. Thirty percent is a fairly high number in marketing circles and something to be proud of. The fact that Real Followers is 30% but Friends of Followers and Friends of Friends are insignificant indicates that this piece could be audience specific (meaning it's full of jargon only known to a specific audience) and definitely that people outside of the author's sociologic "first circle" won't pay much attention to it, hence will "Read Once Then Ignore".
Intermediate: Message Intent - The high Referral, Active Pleasure and Love values all demonstrate that the author believes the information presented is valuable to the reader, will be acted upon by the reader and that the author believes they are both recognized and honored by their audience. Very nice. This conclusion is verified by the Advanced: Trust and Advanced: Affinity values both being between 15-20%, both good numbers for a western cultural audience/author. Advanced: Trust and Affinity are indications of whether or not the author believes they are a member of their audience, hence that the audience will accept and act upon the information presented. Those values being between 15-20% validate many of the other values in this analysis.
Intermediate: Author Influencer Type - At 90%, the author strongly believes they can influence their audience to act in certain ways. Also note the GateKeeper value is about 10% of the Influencer value. This indicates that the author also believes there may be a need to protect the audience from something. This becomes obvious after a simple read of the material; the material is about trust demonstrations between individuals without social ties. Whenever there is a request for trust there may be a concern about misplaced trust, hence the residual GateKeeper value.
Advanced: Ten Must Marketing Messages - The two leftmost values, We Trust You and You Can Trust Us, form a nice stair and this is good because it demonstrates the trust relationship both extended by the author and received by the audience. The next four values, This Is Important to We Can Help You, don't demonstrate as nice a staircase and this can be a concern. The difference between This Is Important and This Is Important to You equates to someone not proving something's importance but still demanding that people pay attention, likewise the step between We Can Help and We Can Help You equates to someone being a tad obsessive towards an individual than being able to genuinely help that individual. The analysis provides some suggestions for rewriting the material so that these messages aren't lost in the mix.
Advanced: Trust - A value of 16% is on the high side of what English speaking, western educated authors get here and is usually an indication of some relationship pre-existing between the author and their audience.
Advanced: Affinity - The 19% value here indicates (for most English speaking, western educated authors) that the author believes they are part of their audience. This is validated by some of the other values in the report and means the author believes their audience will respond to the provided information as intended.
Advanced: Author-Audience Rich Persona - RichPersona is a NextStage metric that a) I've written about quite a bit elsewhere and b) all of our clients use for a variety of purposes. The RichPersona section provides some psychologic factors of the most receptive audience for the material presented.
Advanced: Sphere of Influence - As mentioned previously, this material will work well with an audience familiar with the author and subject but not beyond it.
What I want to offer next can be thought of as "Comparing Apples with Apples, but Granny Smiths with Golden Delicious". The previous analysis came from analyzing how the entire web page -- how it's typeface, font, colors, images, ... -- affects readership. Now compare the values presented above with the values presented what follows (and found in http://nssa.nextstagevolution.com/review.cfm?pageid=380). What follows is an analysis of Alex's material only (I cut&pasted Alex's material into a text file and analyzed that with NextStage's Sentiment Analysis tool). The differences between the full web page and just Alex's content demonstrate that people should write both for the audience and also for how their information is presented to its audience.
Basic: Author Attitude - The plain content demonstrates more Positive than the web page version and draws that increase from both Neutral and Negative. In other words, if the author were sharing this information with you directly, you'd probably feel better about it.
Intermediate: Confidence - Here is the big news; the web page's formatting, etc., is draining about 20 percentage points from this value. The author, by themself, is much more confident in their material than the web page would lead the reader to nonconsciously believe.
Intermediate: Message Intent - The web page has the same stultifying aspects on the Love metric here.
Intermediate: Author Influencer Type - The pure material has a recognizably higher Hub value meaning the author sans web page formatting also believes the information they're offering is time, person and place specific.
Advanced: Ten Must Marketing Messages - You'll notice that the staircase of This Is Important to We Can Help You is much better in the non-web page version.
Advanced: Trust and Affinity - Here is the big news. The author sans web page formatting is demonstrating amazingly high values of social trust and affinity with their audience. These numbers are recognizably high for an English speaking, western educated author and that author should be congratulated (congrats, Alex!).
Advanced: Sphere of Influence - And here is where marketing in the guise of placement, web page audience versus individual's audience, etc., come into play. While the author's native material has much higher social connectivity and relationship values, its actual audience is much smaller, meaning the author transmitting this material by themself will make less of an impact that by placing that same material on this outlet.
Hope this helps and is useful. Please feel free to contact me directly with questions, comments or concerns.
Joseph
[[The Analyses]]
Please go to http://nssa.nextstagevolution.com/review.cfm?pageid=374 to follow along with this analysis.
Starting at the top with Basic: Author Attitude - The fact that the Positive (green bar) is about 10pts higher than the Negative (red bar) is an indication that the author (Alex, in this case) is doing "heart" writing. They are writing to an audience they both know and believe will respond positively to what is written. Because they (probably) both know and believe the response will be positive, they're sharing more of themselves than they might normally share in a professional piece of writing.
Intermediate: Confidence - This is a very impressive value, 67%, and high enough to be rarely seen in professional pieces that aren't blatant self-promotion or demonstrations of outright arrogance. In a training, I would instruct users to compare the Confidence value to Intermediate: Message Intent: Referral, Active Pleasure and Love values and Advanced: Trust and Advanced: Affinity values found further down in the report. The fact that all these values are also relatively high indicates that the Confidence value is based on the author's core beliefs in what they're offering rather than sarcasm, arrogance or self-promotion. In any case, 67% is a demonstration that the author (Alex) strongly believes the audience will both benefit and act upon the information presented.
Intermediate: Audience Branding - The fact that the "Read Once Then Ignore" value is low and the other values in this section are non-existent indicates that a general audience wouldn't pay much attention to this piece. As with Confidence, I would instruct users to compare these values with Advanced: Sphere of Influence: Real Followers. That value is at 30%, meaning that 30% of the people in the author's immediate circle of associates will respond to it. Thirty percent is a fairly high number in marketing circles and something to be proud of. The fact that Real Followers is 30% but Friends of Followers and Friends of Friends are insignificant indicates that this piece could be audience specific (meaning it's full of jargon only known to a specific audience) and definitely that people outside of the author's sociologic "first circle" won't pay much attention to it, hence will "Read Once Then Ignore".
Intermediate: Message Intent - The high Referral, Active Pleasure and Love values all demonstrate that the author believes the information presented is valuable to the reader, will be acted upon by the reader and that the author believes they are both recognized and honored by their audience. Very nice. This conclusion is verified by the Advanced: Trust and Advanced: Affinity values both being between 15-20%, both good numbers for a western cultural audience/author. Advanced: Trust and Affinity are indications of whether or not the author believes they are a member of their audience, hence that the audience will accept and act upon the information presented. Those values being between 15-20% validate many of the other values in this analysis.
Intermediate: Author Influencer Type - At 90%, the author strongly believes they can influence their audience to act in certain ways. Also note the GateKeeper value is about 10% of the Influencer value. This indicates that the author also believes there may be a need to protect the audience from something. This becomes obvious after a simple read of the material; the material is about trust demonstrations between individuals without social ties. Whenever there is a request for trust there may be a concern about misplaced trust, hence the residual GateKeeper value.
Advanced: Ten Must Marketing Messages - The two leftmost values, We Trust You and You Can Trust Us, form a nice stair and this is good because it demonstrates the trust relationship both extended by the author and received by the audience. The next four values, This Is Important to We Can Help You, don't demonstrate as nice a staircase and this can be a concern. The difference between This Is Important and This Is Important to You equates to someone not proving something's importance but still demanding that people pay attention, likewise the step between We Can Help and We Can Help You equates to someone being a tad obsessive towards an individual than being able to genuinely help that individual. The analysis provides some suggestions for rewriting the material so that these messages aren't lost in the mix.
Advanced: Trust - A value of 16% is on the high side of what English speaking, western educated authors get here and is usually an indication of some relationship pre-existing between the author and their audience.
Advanced: Affinity - The 19% value here indicates (for most English speaking, western educated authors) that the author believes they are part of their audience. This is validated by some of the other values in the report and means the author believes their audience will respond to the provided information as intended.
Advanced: Author-Audience Rich Persona - RichPersona is a NextStage metric that a) I've written about quite a bit elsewhere and b) all of our clients use for a variety of purposes. The RichPersona section provides some psychologic factors of the most receptive audience for the material presented.
Advanced: Sphere of Influence - As mentioned previously, this material will work well with an audience familiar with the author and subject but not beyond it.
What I want to offer next can be thought of as "Comparing Apples with Apples, but Granny Smiths with Golden Delicious". The previous analysis came from analyzing how the entire web page -- how it's typeface, font, colors, images, ... -- affects readership. Now compare the values presented above with the values presented what follows (and found in http://nssa.nextstagevolution.com/review.cfm?pageid=380). What follows is an analysis of Alex's material only (I cut&pasted Alex's material into a text file and analyzed that with NextStage's Sentiment Analysis tool). The differences between the full web page and just Alex's content demonstrate that people should write both for the audience and also for how their information is presented to its audience.
Basic: Author Attitude - The plain content demonstrates more Positive than the web page version and draws that increase from both Neutral and Negative. In other words, if the author were sharing this information with you directly, you'd probably feel better about it.
Intermediate: Confidence - Here is the big news; the web page's formatting, etc., is draining about 20 percentage points from this value. The author, by themself, is much more confident in their material than the web page would lead the reader to nonconsciously believe.
Intermediate: Message Intent - The web page has the same stultifying aspects on the Love metric here.
Intermediate: Author Influencer Type - The pure material has a recognizably higher Hub value meaning the author sans web page formatting also believes the information they're offering is time, person and place specific.
Advanced: Ten Must Marketing Messages - You'll notice that the staircase of This Is Important to We Can Help You is much better in the non-web page version.
Advanced: Trust and Affinity - Here is the big news. The author sans web page formatting is demonstrating amazingly high values of social trust and affinity with their audience. These numbers are recognizably high for an English speaking, western educated author and that author should be congratulated (congrats, Alex!).
Advanced: Sphere of Influence - And here is where marketing in the guise of placement, web page audience versus individual's audience, etc., come into play. While the author's native material has much higher social connectivity and relationship values, its actual audience is much smaller, meaning the author transmitting this material by themself will make less of an impact that by placing that same material on this outlet.
Hope this helps and is useful. Please feel free to contact me directly with questions, comments or concerns.
Joseph
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Thanks Alex - thoughtful hack.
Questions:
If I understand your premise it is to augment personal relationship based trust with information based trust in order to increase scope and volume of profitable business activity.
1. Would enforcable legal contracts (and a developed rule of law) be a current example of information that enables trust?
2. An alternative seemsto be for market participants to increase their volume of "personal" relationships through social networking sites - how do you see this phenomenon fitting into your model?
3. Do we tend to trust like minded people more than people who think differently from us? Is this something you would view as limitting or simply a fact?
4. What do you see as the relationship between competence and trustability?
5. Have you seen or done any studies on statistical predictors of trust ? For example if someone has acted in a trustworthy way in the past does this make them more likely to act in a trustworthy way in the future? Assuming this is the case - how does one deal with anomalies - for example a long con?
Thanks again - look forward to your response.
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George,
Thank you for your interest and for taking time to ask some thoughtful and thought-provoking questions. I'll try to answer them below, bur first I'd like to confirm your understanding of the premise of my hack:
1. Question: Would enforcable legal contracts (and a developed rule of law) be a current example of information that enables trust?
Answer: Yes, I would say that a contract supported by a developed judicial process is a good example of enabling trust in information. The contract specifies what each party needs to rely on (in other words, what information needs to be trusted) and the judicial process helps to validate and enforce compliance.
2. Question: An alternative seems to be for market participants to increase their volume of "personal" relationships through social networking sites - how do you see this phenomenon fitting into your model?
Answer: Yes, That's a good example. Most social networking relationships are shallow (however, some may deepen with repeated interactions, especially if augmented by meetings in person), and would not by many measures meet the standard of what most people think of when they use the term "relationship". In those cases, members of your social network may act simply as sources of trust for any information you are trying to validate. Although you may not place a great deal of trust in any individual of your social network, you may be able to attain a higher level of confidence in the validity of the information by getting validation from multiple (semi-trusted) people in your network. In fact, you may well be able to attain a higher level of trust by aggregating the validations of many people you hardly know than you can from one or a few individuals with whom you have a very close relationship.
3. Question: Do we tend to trust like minded people more than people who think differently from us? Is this something you would view as limitting or simply a fact?
Answer: I would say that it is generally limiting. We do tend to trust like-minded people more, because they are more likely to validate our own beliefs, which essentially validates our being. Likewise, relying on people who understand us ensures that they are validating the information based on a context that is relevant to us. In other words, their validation of any information is based on them having a better understanding of the impact to us if we rely on the information. However, it can also have the opposite effect, by causing us to self-select a homogeneous sample of people to trust. It's kind of like replicating yourself multiple times to be able to say that others feel the same way you do. We label people who seek only to validate their own point of view as "delusional". The key to developing trust in any information is validating it from multiple independent sources, even those you don't trust so much. If you think about it, that's exactly how a court of law works when it relies on the evidence of independent witnesses. The big challenge with this approach is faced by people, like innovators, who are pursuing a course of action they believe to be valid, but are surrounded by people who view those actions from a different context and therefore tend to invalidate them. The solution is to diversify the network of prospective validators, perhaps through online social networking and to carefully consider the context of each validator's feedback.
4. Question: What do you see as the relationship between competence and trustability?
Answer: Trusting someone's competence is the same as trusting someone to do what they say (or imply) they will do. I call this "integrity", which I define as honouring your word. Integrity is the foundation for "trustability". The question then becomes, what are the different ways in which you can establish trust in someone's competency? For example, you could ask for independent and recognized credentials, or you could rely on references (preferably from someone you trust), or you can directly put the person's competency to the test, etc.
5. Question: Have you seen or done any studies on statistical predictors of trust ? For example if someone has acted in a trustworthy way in the past does this make them more likely to act in a trustworthy way in the future? Assuming this is the case - how does one deal with anomalies - for example a long con?
Answer: I have compiled many studies on trust, some of which I have included in a document "The Facts on Trust" (see http://trustenablement.com/opt/The_Facts_on_Trust.pdf). However, I don't recall a study that measures either the propensity of an individual to trust again when their trust had been validated in the past or a person to continue to behave in a trustworthy fashion if they have done so in the past. Nevertheless, we all know from personal experiences and that of others, that this is absolutely the case. If you have proven to be trustworthy in the past, I will tend to trust you more. In the event that something happens to erode my trust, you will need to rebuild it for me again. Likewise, if I behave in a trustworthy fashion today, I am likely to continue to do so in the future - unless circumstances change. So what are the implications for long cons, such as the infamous case of Bernie Madoff? Well, this is exactly the problem my hack attempts to overcome. A con is founded on the premise that the con artist has proven themselves trustworthy over time, and is expected to continue to behave the same way in the future. The fallacy with this relationship-based foundation for trust is that in the process of building trust, people also narrow the diversity of sources of trust to one person, the con artist. "The Trust Extender" seeks to empower people with the knowledge and resources that help them objectively develop, sustain and rebuild trust. It also helps them to continually re-consider and rely on both the person's proficiencies (for performance) and their motivations (that may affect the person's future decision-making) that may change over time. If Madoff's clients had means to be be aware of the experiences of all his other clients, had independent access to their assets and underlying performance metrics, and hypothetically knew that strong disincentives (such as a method of maintaining the chain of custody to the money or strong and/or effective extradition laws) made it highly unlikely that Madoff would abscond with their money, then his con may have been far less likely. This is what I mean when I refer to designing rich conditions for trust that make trust scalable beyond relationships and allow more people to trust sooner and longer.
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Alex: I am generally unfamiliar with the subject matter, but I think of trust as a relationship between two people. From this perspective, I don't understand what it means to "rely on the information" apart from trusting the source of the information. So this still entails trust between people. Please clarify what you mean when you say that "managers can have a greater impact on business performance by enabling trust in information."
Barry Linetsky
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Hello,
At Alex Todd's invitation and my own curiosity I ran the post through one of our tools and was impressed by the results; Trust Rating about 25%, Affinity about 27% (these are remarkably good ratings compared to most people), Confidence around 58% (austounding), ... (you can see the analysis of the entire page at http://nssa.nextstagevolution.com/review.cfm?pageid=374 and just Alex's text at http://nssa.nextstagevolution.com/review.cfm?pageid=380. For a detailed explanation see http://www.bizmediascience.com/2010/06/a_sentiment_analysis_of_alex_t.html
Joseph
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I just suggested a build for Gary Hamel's hack "Leader Meter (Finding Natural Leaders)" and it occurred to me that it would also be valuable for my own hack:
"Gary, consider incorporating a social media tool such as the one I have been designing for a similar purpose:
A microblogging widget that captures business intelligence about users' ability to believe information:
Decision Support Widget: A tool that helps users validate information by asking structured questions in the form "Is it true that…?" sent via microblogging, instant messaging, SMS or e-mail to people they trust to validate it. - Hence, the people they choose to follow (namely, prospective leaders).
Business Intelligence: Tracks communications between individuals inside and outside the organization, identifying what employees and business ecosystem participants are having difficulty believing and who they are relying on for validation. - Hence, identify the emerging leaders in various areas.
Performance Optimization: Helps management eliminate trust bottlenecks inside and outside the organization."
BTW, I am designing this tool using the trust extending framework I propose in this hack.
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Alex,
Thanks for sharing this comprehensive trust framework. One of the Challenges of this model is: "Shifting the perspective of trust from the context of personal relationships to information." I believe these two concepts provide a both/and, rather than either/or scenario. More info at: http://trustmattersgroup.com/images/trust_model.pdf
Noreen Kelly
Trust Matters Group, Inc.
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Alex,
On a conceptual level, I can see how in some contexts taking relationships out of the trust equation can do great things.
It would be helpful if you could spell out what you see as the most important applications for your Trust Extender, in addition to governing alliances. It might make it easier for the managers you target to take you up on your invitation.
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Hi Noreen,
I agree, relationships form part of the trust equation, but don't define it. In my way of thinking, relationships are simply one important method of validating certain kinds of information; mostly information related to future decisions and behaviour (the Motive Forces element of my framework), rather than performance (the Proficiencies element of my framework).
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Erika,
Thank you for your helpful suggestion. Here are some additional applications that might resonate with managers:
Risk Management: http://trustenablement.com/local/GRCT-KPMG.ppsx
Corporate Policies: see http://trustenablement.com/Policy_Recommendations.htm
Corporate Governance: see Governance Lifecycle Model (GLM)™ Assessment Tool at http://trustenablement.com/governing.html#GLM and "Corporate Governance Best Practices: One size does not fit all" at http://trustenablement.com/local/Corporate_Governanc_Best_%20Preactices-...
Business Strategy: "Trust Enablement: A critical success factor" at http://trustenablement.com/local/Assessment_of_Critical_Success_Factor.pdf
Supply Chain Management: "Trust Enabled™ Supply Networks: Uncovering the trust-building secrets of highly collaborative supply chains." at http://trustenablement.com/local/Trust_Enabled_Supply_Networks-whitepape... and "Trust Enabled™ Supply Networks: Enabling trust for collaboration, innovation and sustainability" at http://trustenablement.com/Trust_Enabled_Supply_Networks-SCL-notes.pdf
Electronic Commerce: "The Challenges of Online Trust: for online and offline businesses" at http://trustenablement.com/local/The_Challenges_of_Online_Trust-slides.pdf and "The Essential Christmas Web-store Makeover" at http://trustenablement.com/Web-store_Makeover_Article.html
Sales and Marketing: "Trust: The most important marketing ingredient" at http://trustenablement.com/local/Hepworth_Interview-Trust_the_most_impor..., "Measuring Awareness, Brand & Competitive Standing: Using trust indicators", and "Enabling Trust Online" at http://trustenablement.com/local/Enabling_Trust_Online.pdf
Online Social Networks: "Building Trust in the Social Space" at http://diy-marketing.blogspot.com/2008/10/building-trust-in-social-space...
Information Technology: "Confidence & The Cloud" at http://trustenablement.com/local/Cobit_Cloud.pdf, "Trusting Information - Not the Source: The impact of trust on Business on Demand" at http://trustenablement.com/local/Trusting_Information-Not_the_Source.pdf, and E-Trust: Establisning consumer confidence in On-Line Commercial Transactions" at http://trustenablement.com/local/E-Trust-Establishing_Consumer_Confidenc...
Outsourcing: "Why Outsourcing Deals Fail" at http://trustenablement.com/local/Why_Outsourcing_Deals_Fail-draft.pdf
Collaboration: ""Trust Enabled™ Ecosystems: SAP Global Ecosystem Marketing" at http://trustenablement.com/local/Trust_Enabled_Ecosystems.ppsx, "Global Supply Chain Risk Management & Trust Study" at http://trustenablement.com/Aberdee_SCRM_&_Trust_Study-ExecSummary.pdf, and "The Wikinomics Playbook" at http://www.socialtext.net/data/workspaces/wikinomics/attachments/wikinom...
Leadership: "Building Trust in a Law Firm" at http://trustenablement.com/local/Building_Trust_in_a_Law_Firm.pdf
Ethics and Compliance: "Trust without Ethics - Ethics without Trust" at http://trustenablers.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=28147497689...
Public Policy: "Creating trust in government is more than 'cleaning house'" at http://trustenablement.com/local/Creating_trust_in_government.pdf
Economic Development: "Leading Intelligent Communities Through Enabling Trust" at http://trustenablement.com/local/iCommunity_Focus_on_Leadership-Leading_...
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Hello Alex,
I entirely agree with your conclusion that free flow of ideas and insights will progress trust and this in turn will promote success. But to disassociate trust from ones personal experience appears not only counter intuitive but is a big step in denying the self. It is like taking leave of your anchor for thinking. I mention this because it appears to be quite un-necessary for the development of trust.
I have concluded that egoless means for collective working and interaction like Dialogue builds trust. I find you saying the same thing: open the mind, develop the ability to listen, stretch the comfort zone.... However, in practice while I have promoted a system for Dialogue you have emphasisized a single point: Do not extend your personal self to business relationships.
Have I missed something?
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Alex,
A couple thoughts come to mind:
1. Perhaps, the analogy for your trust process/framework could be presented as the “Google Labs” of sorts, promoting
collaboration and departmental thought leadership.
2. Motivation
-How do you ensure legitimate motivation exists amongst stakeholders to sustain the flow of trustful information
(garbage in garbage out) ?
- What incentives need to be considered to ensure the process remains relevant and that it results in meaningful payback
for manager types?
Food for thought.
Anna
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Hi Raj,
I appreciate your interest in my hack and your comments.
Allow me to clarify. I do not advocate that people "disassociate trust from ones personal experience". Instead, I am saying we don't always have personal experience and need to rely on other people's experiences to establish trust.
Dialogue is great. We know it helps to promote trust. Personal relationships are an equally important factor for affecting trust. However, neither of these methods scales very well. They are also prone to biased subjectivity that relies more on how one feels about the person delivering the information than the objective merits of the information itself. It causes people to become insular, not open to new information from other people.
In summary, my approach is complementary and allows trust to scale more effectively. I hope that helps.
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Anna,
Thank you for your excellent suggestion. You are absolutely correct, the Google Labs analogy is exactly the kind of thing I had in mind in item #5 of the Solution section, where I refer to experimenting in sandboxes, "Managers, seek external expertise and create sandboxes for experimenting with third party tools that support your trust extending initiatives." I envision the proposed Institute for Extending Trust as being the enabler of these sandboxes on behalf of participating organizations, and thereby, in effect, providing the "Google Labs"-like structures and processes, which would make it considerably easier for organizations to begin experimenting. As I think about it, your suggestion may be worthy of being a distinct hack that stands on its own, because these lab/sandbox type facilities would likely be generic and able to support experimentation with virtually any innovation, including that being conducted by the Institute for Extending Trust (IET). In this scenario, the IET would simply use the lab facilities provided by an overarching management innovation lab, such as London Business School's MLabs (see http://www.managementlab.org/).
Your questions about motivation hit at the heart of the issue of why trust has been largely ignored by business. If you think about it, if trust is known to significantly improving business and economic performance (see "The Facts on Trust" at http://trustenablement.com/opt/The_Facts_on_Trust.pdf) it is difficult to comprehend why business has invested billions of dollars on risk management (which increases transaction costs) instead. In fact, virtually every organization has a budget for managing risks, but almost none have any money allocated explicitly for enabling trust. After spending years of trying to understand the reasons for this, I have come to the conclusion that organizations inherently do not have a mandate to enable stakeholder trust. I believe corporate governance practices will need to transform in ways that legitimize stakeholder trust as a strategic consideration (see The Conference Board of Canada's work on this at http://trustenablement.com/index.htm#StakeholderTrust). With that in mind, I have conducted research and made recommendations intended to begin this process in a recent article and book contribution (see http://trustenablement.com/index.htm#CorporateGovernance). I believe that without changing the tone from the top, any trust enablement initiatives are likely to wilt and die from a toxic organizational environment. An example of this is customer relationship management (CRM), a well intentioned initiative that when adopted became usurped by conflicting organizational motivations to instead become a tool for exploiting customers.
Appropriate transformations in board practices will cause new principles and policies (see an example at http://trustenablement.com/Policy_Recommendations.htm) to become incorporated in operational standards and processes. These new structures will systematize trust practices and accordingly transform organizational cultures. Cultures that value trust will feed a virtuous, sustainable, self-reinforcing spiral of every-increasing trust, reversing current institutionalized, risk-oriented cultures that are fueling a vile, self-reinforcing downward spiral of mistrust and ever-growing controls that stifle productivity.
Thank you for asking these critically important questions.
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Hello Alex,
Thanks for your prompt response to my comment. Regret your reply got misplaced in my box and I read it today!
Your "we don't always have personal experience and need to rely on other people's experiences to establish trust" struck a chord with me. However, trust does not mean belief. Perhaps it means I am listening and am willing to wait to agree/disagree.
Considering that what the other says must pass through filters and the fact that human nature is very motive driven it is possible that the absence of trust is part of being hard boiled. Perhaps this explains why "business has invested billions of dollars on risk management (which increases transaction costs) instead."
I conclude there is no escape from Dialogue for trust as you wish to progress it. But that means interactions, and managers rarely have the time and energy for that, particularly to collaborate meaningfully. Simple collaboration is just not enough for trust or the readiness for conviction as it is prone to biases as noted by you. There has to be a commitment to surface assumptions and reach a consensus. Your point was that Dialogue or meaningful collaboration is not a solution cause it does not scale. We cannot be assured all managers will have the commitment for it given the demand on their time and energy. I hope you will have a look at my hack. My breakthrough is converting IT from a tool to compelling energy for Dialogue. My work assures Dialogue on the enterprise scale.
Keen to have your feedback.
Regards,
Raj Kumar
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