What's trust go to do with it?
Pretty much everything, but almost everyone misses what really matters
Oh no, not that word again.
Right now, I can’t help but think of a scene from Austin Powers…
Unfortunately Basil can’t help us here. Instead, you’re stuck with me.
In this article I’m going to break trust down (no rapping, just writing). I’ll do this by diving into just enough of the detail and nuance to help us move beyond some of the common, and often unhelpful, misconceptions. I’ll then share a basic framework that is useful for organisations when thinking about ethics, trustworthiness, trust, reputation and social license to operate (SLO). I’ll then describe how trust relates to what feels like the biggest challenge of our time; how we work together to bring the totality of humanity’s activities back within the safe operating zone of planetary boundaries, whilst also raising the standard of living for the people who need it most.
Before continuing, let me briefly say that this has been the focus of my career. I’ve spent well over a decade attempting to help organisations transform so that they are more verifiably trustworthy (and as a result, have a far greater capacity to net beneficially contribute to society). This process has required me to draw on a transdisciplinary approach to theory and practice, studying philosophy of trust, trust in the social sciences and economics, and of course, the ways in which the neuro and cognitive sciences are helping us better understand aspects of trust from their unique angles. All of this is a tall order. It’s not something that will ever be ‘done’. It’s something I learn more about each and every day.
What is trust?
Most of you will be familiar with Warren Buffet’s quote, “Trust is like the air we breathe. When it's present, nobody really notices. But when it's absent, everybody notices.”
But what do statements like this really tell us? I’ll suggest the answer is, pretty much nothing.
So what is trust?
Well, there’s no broadly agreed definition. But a useful definition I work with is: Trust is the willingness to be relationally vulnerable based on positive expectations.
This tells us that trust is some phenomena that generally involves two or more parties. It tells us that there might well be some type of power imbalance, or at least risk of harm to one or both / all of the parties as a result of the relational context, the actions that follow and the spectrum of consequences that may arise. It tells us that the relationship is entered into, or framed, by some type of positive expectation. You might like to think of this as the belief one party has in the other party’s trustworthiness.
But does this tell us what trust is?
No, it doesn’t.
I cannot make truth claims in this article. Nor can I even attempt to get at the ‘essence’ of things. But for the sake of giving you a little of that nuance I mentioned in the opening, I’m going to suggest that trust is usefully thought of as some kind of bio-psycho-social phenomena.
Biopsychosocial models, first conceptualised by Goerge Engel in 1977 (although, this can be argued given many wisdom traditions seem to have had very similar ‘models’ of the human being for millennia), are a class of transdisciplinary models which look at the interconnection between biology, psychology, and socio-environmental factors.
What this transdisiplinary model attempts to do is give us a fuller, richer and potentially more nuanced picture of the human being and the way they develop in relation to their environment.
Like we discussed in my last article on AI ethics, “all models are wrong, some are useful” (George Box). The bio-psycho-social model is not intended to be reality itself, but rather a useful enough depiction of reality that helps inform how we make sense of things in our attempt to make them better.
But why is this important? And how can we understand this without getting deep into metaphysics and the philosophy of science?
For the sake of brevity and focus, I’ll suggest this nuance is important because trust is something we feel and directly experience. We also attempt to describe and better understand trust through various scientific disciplines. Even though this is the case, we don’t really know what it is. Instead we approximate what it is. As a result, we should maintain humility - epistemic humility in formal terms - when we describe this phenomena and its seeming implications.
This, likely many topics, is something that can take you deep into the rabbit hole. For the purpose of today, let’s push that to the side and use the working definition of trust from above:
“Trust is the willingness to be relationally vulnerable based on positive expectations.”
With that out of the way, let’s get into the next big question.
Why do organisations (actually) need trust?
Much has been written about the importance of trust for organisations, both public and private. In my experience, this often fails to really get at the problem. Much of this literature and discourse seems to suggest that trust is the problem. This places the burden ‘out there’ in the world.
But that really isn’t the problem. The problem is largely ‘ in here’. Or rather, how the ‘in here’ (our organisation) results from what is ‘out there’ (the broader ‘system dynamics’), how that then relates to the ‘in here’ (incentives structures and other organisational features, processes etc.) and how that cycle continues to the ‘out there’ (customer beliefs about trustworthiness, how this impacts relational dynamics etc.).
To clarify exactly what I mean, let me share with you a simple framework that I use with my clients. The framework itself, albeit a necessary simplification of more complex system dynamics, helps us understand the relationship between these ideas. It can help us make sense of where we, as organisational decision makers and influencers, might better direct our efforts.
You can watch a video I published on LinkedIn about this here.
In this framework there are five layers:
Ethics (within the organisation): The deliberative process of reflecting on our first order (moral) beliefs in our attempt to align our decisions, actions and their likely consequences towards that which is ‘good’ and ‘right’ (often described in relation to our purpose, values and principles).
Trustworthiness (within the organisation): The qualities (these are sometimes referred to as trust antecedents in the literature) a given party exhibits, specifically benevolence (intent to act in the public’s best interest), integrity (acting in alignment to promises, values and principles, regardless of whether the spotlight is on or not) and competence (consistently delivering value promises in alignment to relevant expectations).
Trust (outside of the organisation): The willingness one party (a customer let’s say) has to be relationally vulnerable (to an organisation / business) based on positive expectations (the belief the customer has in the organisations trustworthiness, which is also impacted by the customer’s personality, disposition, cultural context, expectation framing and many other factors ).
Reputation (outside of the organisation): The opinion that people in general have about the organisation and its effect on the world.
Social license to operate (outside of the organisation): The ongoing acceptance of a company or industry's standard business practices and operating procedures by its employees, stakeholders, and the general public.
In the post presentation commentary, I go deeper into that here:
What organisations really care about, especially those responsible for corporate governance, is social license to operate (SLO). And often, when they think of SLO and how to improve or extend it, they think about trust and reputation. Specifically, how they might enhance trust and reputation so that there is more widespread acceptance for their practices and operating procedures.
But, and this is the crucial error so often made, trust and reputation happen ‘out there’. The organisation cannot control this, only influence it to some extent.
I cannot tell you how many initiatives I’ve seen of this kind - those focused on ‘enhancing trust and reputation’ - that are largely wasted. This can lead to an obsession with poorly thought out metrics (strange ideas like one trust metric to rule them all), perverse incentives (‘trust hacking’ for instance) and all manner of other issues (ethics washing, green washing etc.).
Instead, the organisation should focus on what it can influence; the process through which it makes decisions about what is good and right, and the ways in which that informs organisational features that help animate benevolence, integrity and competence (the organisation’s trustworthiness).
Now, this is not to suggest that trust and reputation don’t have an impact on social license. They do. The mistake, to reinforce my point, is that organisations start from the variable outcome (attempting to directly influence trust and reputation), when they should be starting from the actions they can directly influence (how to do ethics and organisational design better so that the organisation itself becomes more verifiably trustworthy).
Where we get to with all of this framing out of the way, especially given a rapidly changing sociocultural, sociopolitical and socioeconomic environment, is that the goalposts have moved. A lot.
Organisations can no longer bend it like Beckham. They will not be afforded SLO if they are seen to lack benevolence, integrity and competence.
Which brings us to the final question in this short essay.
How can trust help us design for genuine flourishing?
We now have very good reason to believe, thanks to the latest peer reviewed literature on the topic, that we have transgressed 6 of 9 planetary boundaries.
This is not new, however. We’ve known that there are effectively ‘hard’ limits to our extraction, production and consumption since the early 70’s. In response to this, we have seen different macro-economic proposals communicated. Namely:
Green growth: From the OECD, “fostering economic growth and development, while ensuring that natural assets continue to provide the resources and environmental services on which our well-being relies.”
Agrowth: There doesn’t seem to be a reasonably stable definition to rely on here, so let me loosely suggest something like, “attempting to decrease resource extraction, production and consumption in alignment with the Paris Agreement, with what is generally a growth agnostic mindset (although, most will suggest there is still a ‘focus on growth’ within this broad viewpoint).” And
Degrowth*: From Hickel, “a planned reduction of energy and resource use designed to bring the economy back into balance with the living world in a way that reduces inequality and improves human well-being”.
*Note there are many misconceptions around degrowth. It often sparks fairly ‘strong’ responses. But degrowth is referred to by others as something like a macroeconomic diet. It’s ‘necessary’ for a period of time so that we can bring material flows back into balance. Once that’s done we thoughtfully transition to something like a ‘steady state’ or ‘post growth’ economy.
I’m not here to compel one position over another. There are nuances and complexities to each of the thematic proposals. There are also some seriously varied views within each camp. What I will highlight is the fact that we seem to have good reason to believe that green growth is happening way too slow. We aren’t seeing anything near the sufficient absolute decoupling that would be required to keep GDP growing, whilst also bringing the totality of human activities back within the safe(ish) operating zone of planetary boundaries.
In short, we need to ‘net regenerate’, and fast, regardless of the specific pathway/s we take.
This is the backdrop, but it’s only part of the bigger picture.
The planet is warming faster than ever before. Greater than 70% of ‘wildlife’ has been lost in the last 50 years. The quality of our soils have been massively depleted. We’ve got an AI arms race. We have multiple wars being waged, some are obvious and overt, others are hidden and subtle. We still have far too many people living below the poverty line. We have what used to be a ‘middle class’ in many countries now struggling, even with two household incomes, to stay afloat. Inequality is rampant. This list, of course, goes on and on.
We face very real issues here and now. And the future risks sometimes seem overwhelming.
The flip side of this is that, even whilst acknowledging our deeply precarious trajectory, much of life right here and now is ‘better’ than it’s ever been.
So, what are we to do?
We need to design in ways that support people in relation to places and the rest of the planet. We need to find ways to deeply connect, thoughtfully collaborate and effectively coordinate so that we can bring life back within planetary boundaries. We need to do this whilst also raising the social foundations for those who need it most.
There doesn’t seem to be any one way to do this. Rather, I expect many different approaches working in some type of overall harmony at the macro, meso and micro scales.
For your everyday organisation, whether public or private, this first requires a hard and steady look in the mirror. The big question; Are you net positively contributing, or are you remaining a part of the problem?
If the mirror helps illuminate something inspiring, don’t start with SLO. Step back and question your purpose, values and principles. Start redesigning your organisation so that it explicitly exists in service of the publics’ interest (benevolence). Design your organising structure in such a way that you consistently operate in alignment to your values and principles, regardless of where the spotlight may be directed (integrity). Take the time to build real relationships, set shared expectations and work hard to deliver in alignment to, or above and beyond, those expectations you set (competence).
This process, or rather, this transformation, will help make your organisation far more worthy of trust. This will very likely positively improve trust states and the overall sentiment directed towards the organisation. Through this you can go beyond SLO and the general idea of acceptance. You can actually start doing what is overwhelmingly preferred, perhaps even celebrated, by your team and the broader group of stakeholders (including the bees and trees) that you exist to serve.
If you’ve got any questions, I’d love to chat. Good luck, and enjoy the journey.
*An evolved version of this will be posted on the RSA blog over the coming weeks.