A few things happened recently that, together, gave me cause to think about trust, the role it plays in our lives, and (for this post) in business.  Studies just published show that our trust levels are at an all-time low.  Main Street doesn’t trust Wall Street.  Joe Citizen is skeptical (if not paranoid) about what the government is doing, and Jane Employee doesn’t trust her company’s leadership.

Trust is one of the fundamental tenets on which today’s society exists. If, when lost in a city you don’t know, you ask someone for directions to the business meeting you’re attending, you generally follow the directions you’re given.  When driving down the street you trust that the cars coming against you will stay on their own side of the road. When you pay for parking with your credit card you assume that the fee you’re  charged will be the fee posted on the price schedule beside the pay machine. You expect that the contributions your employer committed to make to your pension or 401k are being made, and when you ask your friend for advice, you believe that the advice they give is – in their opinion at least – in your best interest.

Trust is at the heart of our everyday interactions, and central to the machine that fuels business.  In business relationships, such as the relationship between an employer and his or her employer, trust breeds productivity.  For employers, the more they trust their employees, the more the employee feels empowered and more inclined to naturally act in the interest of the business. Too much oversight or granular micromanagement can (sometimes unfairly) be seen as a lack of trust and is at worst serious demotivation.  On the other hand, not enough involvement can be perceived as being uncaring.  That’s a tough balance to strike.

According to Roderick Kramer of Stanford: “Gatekeeping measures may actually have contributed to declines in public trust in business.  These studies have found that ‘innocent employees’ who are subjected to additional compulsory oversight measures often become less committed to internal standards of honesty and integrity in the workplace.”

The thing about trust is; you can’t fake it.  You really need to care. And this is where actions speak louder that words. In fact, action is really the only language of trust. According to Charles Green, the author of The Trusted Advisor, trust can be measured, and combines Credibility, Reliability and Intimacy – all over the denominator of Self Orientation.

Self Orientation relates to how self or others focused you are. Green suggests that people will judge this based on whether:

• You achieve your goals through helping others achieve theirs.
• You interact with others through fear or blaming.
• You interact with others from a perspective of curiosity.
• In dealing with others, you are anchored to a particular outcome.
• You are seen as focusing on the longer term relationship rather than the immediate transaction.

In these difficult times (which unfortunately will be with us for quite a while yet), progression in business demands uncommon levels of trust. My recent observations would suggest that buyers are more nervous than ever before.  The emotions they experience throughout the sales cycle that I outlined in my post ‘Understanding the buyer’s emotions’ are today disproportionately weighted to mitigate risk. Reward for trying something new is rare, and career progression is seen as being linked more to not screwing up than innovating.  For the wheels of commerce to keep turning, this has to change, and in the first instance each one of us has a role to play.

Many consultants and business advisors (The TAS Group included) extol the virtues of becoming a ‘trusted advisor’ to your customer.   The value of the Trusted Advisor has itself become questioned.  What happens if your trusted advisor is called Bernie Madoff?  You end up asking yourself “How did that happen?”  “What other trusted relationships do I have that I should question?” A recent article by Danielle Crittenden in the Huffington Post about the Sanford affair (Mark Sanford Governor S.C.) started with . . . “I always feel sorry for husbands on the morning after these political sex scandals break. How many thousands of dark looks are being exchanged across breakfast tables?” That’s the issue with trust.  It’s a complex interwoven fabric that’s not entirely self-controlled – but that doesn’t give us a license to abrogate our responsibility.

I’ve always taken a (perhaps naive) approach to trusting someone, both in my personal and business interactions. I believe that people are inherently honest, and until you betray my trust once, I will assume the best about you.  Through more than 30 years of business this has served me well. On occasion, it has cost me – but overall I would say it has enabled me to build relationships more quickly, and in business it has accelerated the pace at which I’ve developed partnerships that really work.

That’s why I was – at first – a little concerned as I began to read Roderick Kramer’s article in the June 2009 edition of Harvard Business Review. His opening take is that “Despite [the] deceit, greed and incompetence on a previously unimaginable scale, people are still trusting too much.” As I continued to read the article my disquiet abated; his proposition is less about trusting less, but more about not trusting blindly.  Healthy skepticism is just that – healthy, but too much skepticism can be a retardant to progress.

When I wrote that Early Failure is Better than Late Failure, I was addressing early qualification of opportunities in a sales cycle.  The principles therein though – and expounded in the title itself, could just as easily have referred to the development of trusting relationships.  By adopting an open and trusting approach to a new relationship or business partnership, it lays before you an avenue of trust that allows you to say … “Ok, let’s first be clear as to what we are both trying to achieve from this relationship.  Let’s figure out why this might fail, and together in an open and honest way, let’s make sure that if the partnership is going to fail, then it fails early.” Kramer suggests that our readiness to trust makes it likely that we will make mistakes, but I’d suggest that his proposition is only true when we don’t take a measured approach to trust. In fact Kramer sets out some guidelines for safer (my qualifier) trust. (The content in parentheses is mine.)

1. Know yourself (understand how you interpret cues you receive)
2. Start small (build in checkpoints early to trust where there’s manageable risk)
3. Write an escape clause (be clear about how, when, and under what circumstances, you should disengage)
4. Send strong signals (confront instances of trust abuse, quickly and clearly)
5. Recognize the other person’s dilemma (consider the other person’s perspective)
6. Look at roles as well as people (the role an individual plays – e.g. procurement officer – will inform their objectives and approach)
7. Remain vigilant and always question (trust assessment is not a one time event)

At a corporate level, organizations that fail to be transparent will suffer in two ways.  Firstly, through the increased regulation that is now deemed necessary on foot of the incredible breach of trust we’ve witnessed, organizations will have transparency forced upon them, but then it’s too late – the incredible benefits of a trusting culture will have been missed.  Secondly, customers and employees alike will focus more on self-preservation in their interactions with the organizations, and that will impact the bottom line in no uncertain terms.

In that same issue of Harvard Business Review, an accompanying article is called What’s Needed Next: A Culture of Candor. For me that’s the place to focus, and it gives guidelines to each of us (though its positioned to the leadership of companies – which for me let’s everyone else off the hook).  There should be no surprises here – but these are good practices to embrace or revisit. (Once again, the content in parentheses is mine.)

1. Tell the truth (Well, yes!)
2. Encourage people to speak the truth to power (Ignore hierarchy when it comes to truth and trust)
3. Reward contrarians (Allow all assumptions to be challenged)
4. Practice having unpleasant conversations (Sometimes being honest is unpleasant – but it’s always necessary)
5. Admit your mistakes (Then everyone else can)
6. Build organization support for transparency (Through actions, not just words)
7. Set information free. (Trust your employees to do the right thing)

My experience would suggest that trust is a potent weapon in sales, as in all of business. But someone has to show leadership and someone has to take the first step – which involves exposing themselves to some risk. But it’s worth it. Clarity results and relationships develop. Quickly you can discover whether the particular relationship (sale, contract, partnership) is worth pursuing and whether there is true alignment between the parties. When the parameters of mutual benefit is understood, and the parameters, borders, or guardrails are clearly established, the fog lifts, objectives are shared, and business velocity ensues.

If you fail to establish trust you will fail. Put yourself on the line. Remember, action is the only language of trust. Deliver more than you expect to receive.  You might be surprised at the return.

Dave Stein has been blogging and twittering about his frustrated efforts to buy a new phone.  His tale of woe in trying to buy an iPhone from AT&T reminded me of a similar experience I had 8 years ago.  In some ways it seems not a lot has changed.

In 2001 my family and I moved back to Ireland from Seattle. We decided that we would not move back to Dublin.  We were finally going to give-up the big city life where much too much time was spent sitting in traffic and commuting to work. We had finally achieved a long-term goal and with our three-year-old daughter we looked forward to trading in the hustle, bustle and excitement of a large city for a more relaxed telecommuting based existence in Cork in the south west of Ireland, near where we grew up. We moved in and I set about setting up my home office.

First thing I needed to get sorted out was a new PC.  I intended to do quite a bit of writing and graphics work and in the interest of maintaining the health of my eyes, wrists, fingers, and back I wanted to get a desktop, with a good monitor, lots of power and good ergonomics.  As Dell employed thousands of people in Ireland (at that time) and they (used to) make good machines, I decided to go with Dell.  I went online, configured the PC that I wanted, keyed in the necessary personal details and credit card information and clicked on the SUBMIT button. That’s when things started to go wrong. The site stalled, hiccupped, had a brain cramp or something, but nothing happened. So, I’m a little concerned.  My order, along with my details and credit card information, are floating somewhere in the ether and all I’m faced with is a blank screen. What am I to do? I hit the refresh button and the system returned and thanked me for my order. Everything seemed OK.

Just to be sure I thought I had better call Dell to make sure the order had been received correctly and to make sure that refreshing the site at that critical juncture didn’t cause the order to be entered twice. I called the 800 number, got through to sales department and spoke to Michael (not Michael Dell, another Michael).  Yes, the order is in the system and no, there does not seem to be more than one order with my name against it.  About a week or so later the delivery guy arrived with the boxes, but wait – one computer, six boxes? Dell had sent me two identical machines and when I checked online with my bank I saw that Dell had hit my credit card twice, just the day before.

Well, I will just call Dell, tell them what happened, and get my credited card refunded and they could come and pick up the extra PC at their convenience. It was their mistake after all – I had called to check that there were not two orders placed on the system.  I called Michael who assured me he would speak to the finance department and have the problem resolved, though he explained it would take about three days to have the credit card entry reversed.  He said someone would call me to confirm when the credit card company had been contacted.

A week went by.  I called again. Expressing exasperation that this was not resolved Michael undertook to get it fixed and get back to me.  Multiple weeks passed and multiple phone calls ensued, all calls initiated by me, and all to no avail. Then 2 months later someone called to arrange pick-up of the superfluous PC.  You can imagine at this point that I was not terribly inclined to give up the only leverage I had until the credit card issue got resolved.  I explained this to the nice lady who called who said she would look into it and get back to me.  I never heard from her again.  My confidence in Dell being about to solve my problem had completely ebbed.

About this time, a friend of mine who was also re-doing his home office, called by to chat. I relayed for him the Dell saga and he was delighted, not with the fact that I was getting screwed around by Dell, but because he too wanted a new PC and fast.  He would take the spare PC off my hands, pay me the price I paid Dell (or rather Dell took from me) and he could get set up without having to worry about choosing or evaluating systems.

Dell never fixed the problem and then five months later, someone again called me to arrange pick up of the spare PC!

I’m a very happy Apple Macbook user now.

When you think about it, most every personal interaction you have every day has something to do with social networking, or more accurately, your personal social network – your social net-worth.  Every meeting you have, email you send, call you make, tweet you tweet, text message you send, blog you write, tv show you watch, website you use, research you read, Facebooker you ‘friend’, twitterer tweeter you follow, report you write, newspaper you read, advert you see, question you ask, song you download, RSS feed you join, LinkedIn connection you accept, and presentation you make, all contribute to the texture of your personal knowledge base, your network, and your reputation, and informs the context of your next interaction.

In sales, as in all business, choosing the networks you influence, and the networks you choose to be influenced by, can have a fundamental impact on your personal momentum, the velocity at which you develop, and ultimately the success you achieve.  We’re all increasingly interrupt driven and subjected to a melange of inputs and stimuli that crackle their way through our individual assimilative, creative, deductive, reasoning and analytical capabilities and resolve as a directive, and sometimes prescriptive personal outlook. What you choose to participate in is your choice – and as you make that choice, you should consider if it’s the optimum one, focusing first on how you’re hoping to develop (personally or professionally) and whether, and how, the choices you make can help you further those goals.

-o-

I’ve written before about the malady that I call the social network junkie. Observing the antics of this species, I’ve wondered at the braggadocio that accompanies such misdirected utterances as “I reached 15,000 LinkedIn connections today!”, or “I’m now following 4,000 people on Twitter.”  The inherent stimulus overload is a certainty. Worse still is the impact it has on the rest of us. It undermines the considerable value of the network.

When Einstein was asked if he kept a notebook beside his bed to record good ideas that came to him, he replied that he had no need for such a thing, as he had only ever had one good idea.  Not so for many of the social network junkies who have multiple thoughts every few minutes, that they feel compelled to reduce to tweets to share with the world. [My advice: Quick click on 'Unfollow'].

I, for one, am already too frequently interrupted to welcome the misguided “I’d like to invite you to join my professional network on LinkedIn” missive, the invitation issued only to increase the sender’s LinkedIn connections count, like some many notches on a virtual network belt.  Too frequently, those bandwidth and time thieves (my time, my bandwidth) have given little or no thought to the mutual value of the connection.  It’s spam – plain and simple.

Networking (or getting to know people) has always been at the core of personal interaction.  It’s always been polite (and productive) to expend more energy in being interested in your social counterpart than proving that you are interesting.  The bore you avoided at the cocktail party has been replaced by the Internet enabled social networking junkie.  In blind pursuit of more friends/connections/followers – the associated number (of friends/connections/followers) to be held up as a badge of self importance or self worth – this bore can ruin the party.

I’d like to think that I have consideration for my friends/connections/followers, and those that I have in my network add real value to my personal and professional life.  I welcome invitations to connect on LinkedIn from (sometimes unknown) professionals who’ve considered how the relationship might be beneficial to at least one of us.  I like to help if I can. I’ve surely received value, and I do believe in giving to your network, just as you would give to your friends. The watchwords for any relationship are, in my opinion, mutual respect and perspective, and as the Internet allows us to speed everything up, sometimes we need to slow down lest we lose sight of the core worth of the collaboration.

We’ve not managed to win the battle against unsolicited email – but we can control our participation in social networks. Spam accounts for more than 90% of all email traffic, up from 65% in 2005, with upwards of 60 trillion spam messages being sent every year.  According to a study by McAfee, the eco-cost of dealing with an unsolicited email (presumably this is equally application to solicited email) is 0.3g of carbon dioxide per email. It’s pretty much out of control. The outages on Twitter, and other such sites, are the first indicators that the tentacles of the new social media are getting tangled, and in some cases, are suffering from too much traffic – much of it worthless. The eco-cost is unknown (and not the focus of this blog) but the personal cost is one of reduced productivity, and diminished returns.

I’ve derived huge value from social networking sites such as Twitter and LinkedIn.  Twitter is a wonderful real-time research engine. As I continue to seek out inspiration for future versions of Dealmaker (our Sales Performance Automation platform), I frequently mine the insights and analysis of my [respected] network on Twitter.  Twitter is too a multi-faceted billboard – when you have something useful and valuable to contribute.  LinkedIn has helped me find employees for my company (The TAS Group), and introductions to customers and business partners. And both have help me to re-discover friends with whom I had lost contact.

-o-

A recent Gartner report on social networks (in an enterprise context) reports that:

• An enterprise’s various social networks, with very distinct characteristics, have different effects on an enterprise’s achievement of its business objectives.
• Relationships in social networks can be opposing, neutral, cooperative or collaborative.
• Players in a social network will generally improve the achievement of their individual and collective objectives as relationships slide from opposing to neutral, cooperative and collaborative.

It follows with these recommendations:

• Assess social networks and their possible positive or negative impact on business objectives.
• Use value network analysis (VNA) to understand the drivers, characteristics, dynamics
  and outcomes of social network relationships.
• Design initiatives focused on evolving the relationship patterns with the objective of
  leveraging the positive effects and neutralizing the negative ones.

As you consider how to weave social media into your personal and professional life, you might reflect on your objectives. Whose cocktail party do you want to join, and who to you want to invite to your soiree. What do you want your visitors to feel after their visit? Do you want to have made a specific impact, just strengthen your relationship, or deliver a particular message?

It’s said that you can tell a lot about a person by the company she keeps.  Remember, it’s your network to shape, your asset to mine. Don’t lessen its value by a cavalier approach, reducing the value of your true friend to just an invisible name in the midst of  a myriad of connections, or by inviting too many strangers into your home.  This considered approach will increase the value – not just of your own circle of friends – but of the social network as a whole.  And that’s something we will all benefit from in the end.