The glue of life

What do your best friend, your family doctor and your favorite mentor all have in common? You trust them! Whether it’s with your secrets, your health or the support you may receive, if you didn’t trust them, then your relationship would be a very different one. It’s no wonder trust is sometimes called the “glue of life.”

At #TED2018 in Vancouver last month, I took away something from every talk I heard.

But it was the one by Harvard Business School Professor Frances Frei on how to rebuild trust that struck the deepest chord. Like Frances, I too believe that all human endeavors need a foundation of trust.

Photo: Ryan Lash / TED

The CEO of any company needs to keep in mind the importance of preserving public trust – and the threat its erosion poses. Leading a pharmaceutical company may make me particularly aware of this, because health is such a sensitive area and there can be no compromising about the quality of the medicines we take to preserve or restore health.

As we celebrate our 350th year, I think back to our founder, Friedrich Jacob Merck. With no 21st-century science to back him up, he must have exercised great caution in dispensing cures and ointments to the residents of 17th-century Darmstadt, our city of origin and global headquarters.

The fact that his pharmacy flourished and set the stage for 350 years of success - and counting! - naturally reflects many factors. Besides being driven by curiosity, courage and our values, I think of trust as the cornerstone on which everything that followed – today a company with more than 50,000 employees on five continents – was built.

Trust also played a prominent role in the early stages of my career as a practicing physician. I identify fully with what Frances calls the “trust triangle” of authenticity, logic, and empathy - characteristics necessary for trust to emerge.

To get at the essence of a problem, to convey a diagnosis with tact yet honesty, to convince a patient to stick to a treatment regimen – these fundamental aspects of a doctor’s work are hard to imagine without a robust “trust triangle.”

From the perspective of both a doctor and a CEO, I am struck by the parallels between dealing with patients directly and being responsible for a pharmaceutical company. Either way, it’s all about trust.