Trust: the final frontier
Mark Ashton
Developing high performance teams, redefining leadership to transform results, and enabling successful transatlantic businesses
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men should do nothing. Leave the Drink Trade alone and it will throttle all that is good in a nation’s life. Let it alone, that is all that is required. Cowardice will suffice for its triumph. Courage will suffice for its overthrow." Edmund Burke
As many people know I have been deeply inspired by studying the numerous independent research studies into what I call the Top 1% most consistent performers – those organisations whose long-term cumulative financial performance dramatically exceeds everyone else. It transpires that these organisations put trust at the heart of all they do – with customers, employees, business partners, regulators, shareholders and the wider community. They do not shout about it – they quietly get on and walk the talk, focused on consistent, reliable execution.
For forty years Dr R John Young has pioneered work into what he calls prospective organisational medicine – diagnosing the underlying ‘genetic’ ('hard', e.g. structural and governance), ‘environmental’ ('soft', e.g. cultural) and ‘lifestyle’ ('soft', e.g. attitudinal and behavioural) factors which determine an organisation’s future health. The most critical factors turn out to be rooted in trust, or a lack of it.
I have recently had the privilege of getting to know John, who has kindly agreed to work with me and my associate team to grow my business, Resolve Gets Results. John developed a model founded on trust which has been the cornerstone of his consulting and executive coaching work globally for thirty years though his company based in Charlotte NC, McLaughlin Young. It is called the Paradigm for Profitability - he uses it to diagnose organisational health and to adopt appropriate, tailored methods to improve it.
PARADIGM FOR PROFITABILITY - copyright McLaughlin Young
Top 1% businesses see trust as a sine qua non and refuse to compromise on it, whatever the pressures may be. They see enduring profit as a natural outcome of building and sustaining trust in all aspects of their business.
To learn more please read my full blog, RIP 'trusted advisor'? including a link to an interview I conducted in Manchester on 16th November 2018 with John Young and another respected thought leader on organisational development, Rein Lemberpuu, President of the Estonian Business Angel Network, who is the largest investor in start-ups in the Baltic region.
Let me know if you have any thoughts or questions on this topic, and please consider sharing this blog with your LinkedIn network.