Why It Is All About Trust

Imagine you walk up to a perfect stranger who says he has the deal of a lifetime. This lifetime deal is all about you giving him several thousand dollars that he will use to create millions of dollars in return. It will take a while; he cannot tell you how long but he says he knows how to turn your thousands into millions. Would you take the deal?

If you said no, it was probably because you do not trust the person right? Well, if you have ever hired someone to work for you – you have taken the deal of a lifetime. Think about it, you hire someone that you will pay thousands of dollars to with the hope of him bringing you millions. Sometimes it works, sometimes it does not, but the failure never makes you not hire another person does it?   

When he fails you, typically you will be much more careful about the next hire. Trust goes down in people and up in processes. Organizations move from behind people driven to being process driven. Not a bad thing, until you realize that out of balance, a process driven organization is one that has no empathy for clients. It becomes a situation of “that is corporate policy”. To the opposite extreme, you can become so people driven that deadlines are not followed through on, clients become secondary to the organization and chaos rules. Both extremes are examples of the level of trust an organization has in its own people – the engine of the organization.

What does an innovative organization have that people want to work for? They trust their people in success and failure. 

Recently, I read a story about Netflix, an organization that implicitly trusts its people. There are few if any rules in the organization. The entire organization is built on trusting that the people they hire are going to bring their best effort. Take Apple, an organization that always pushed the boundaries (at least for a while, the jury is out on if that has stopped). There is most likely an organization in your town that everyone wants to work for. Maybe something small and seemingly insignificant or something big and powerful – but they both have something in common: they trust their people. 

The leads to the question of how do you build a culture of trust?

Create transparency

Not governmental transparency, but something that shows what is happening within the organization. Knowing the margins, understanding the vision and the ideas of what the future holds is key to creating transparency. Seeing the inner workings can be difficult, but it sheds light on politically charged areas which tend to dry up. The back room deals and personal vendettas dry up in the light. This leads to more honest and open conversations. It drives innovation because people see all the aspects of the process. Together, your team is able to understand where the goal line is, how to reach it together and who’s parts are needed. It is eye opening. To many organizations it is too much of a challenge against the old way, but to the ones that want to make a change, it is the first step to showing staff that the machinery of business is deep and everyone can have a part to play.  It is a key part of trust because it shows the organization’s cards to the staff. 

Create mutual accountability

Being able to know what you are accountable for means communication – both ways.  People have to be part of the decision making process, particularly in areas that directly affect them. You keep chaos down by being able to properly manage engagement with a focus on accomplishments. When I would leave a meeting I lead, it was with a plan for who was doing what with a timeframe. Without plans and expectations along with a reasonable timeframe, accountability is impossible. With it in place, the organization can engage all the relevant people in the relevant places to achieve success. It is the idea of putting the right people, in the right seats on the right bus that achieve success. With accountability on all sides, everyone knows what is expected and when. 

Replace the rules

I am not say, the only rule is there are no rules – that is irresponsible. Replacing the rules means providing guidance, not micro-managing. Hire the right people, give them the right tools for the job and let them go to work. When I worked with someone creative, I gave them the idea with the footnote of make it better. That meant sometimes the idea came back completely unrecognizable. What I did not want was my idea taken verbatim, I wanted something better. That meant taking the reins off the person. It meant letting the work from home. The idea of handing everyone in the office a laptop to work at a desk seems to be one of the bizarre behaviors ever.  Here is an underpowered, mobile device, now sit at that desk and do your work for the next eight hours.  Trust means looking at the success of their effort. When I worked with a lot of single moms, I was not interested in getting eight hour days from them, I was interested in getting the work that needed done finished. When they understood that, they could be available to have a better work/life balance. As a result, most of the people that worked for me stayed even when offered more money. It was a risk to remove the eight-hour day, but the success was better with the rules guiding not dominating their day.

Trust is the key. If you do not have it in any relationship, it will not last. Just to be clear, trust is a firm belief in the reliability, truth, ability or strength of someone or something. When you have that, you can create anything – even what you do not even know could exist.