Last week I spent some time with the team at FranklinCovey exploring Stephen M R Covey’s book “The Speed of Trust”. Excellent book and a very useful and informing day.
The basic premise is that low trust organisations cost more to run and operate more slowly than high trust organisations. Seems logical really, think of the places you have worked that have low trust, remember having to fill forms in triplicate, 27 layers of review and authorisation? Or perhaps you didn’t “trust” the motives of your colleagues on the management team so spent ages second guessing them or making sure your backside was protected? How much did all that extra effort cost you in terms of time and money?
Covey’s premise is that the opposite is true in high trust organisations – you can significantly reduce cost and increase speed. Again sounds logical – I think of the work we do with high performing project teams and conclude that one of the reasons they work well is because they trust each other to deliver!
Challenge is, most people think trust is binary – you either have it or you don’t! Actually trust can be earnt and learnt – and Covey has put together some really nice frameworks for understanding this.
If your interested in discussing this further ping me here or have a look at www.speedoftrust.com
Cheers, Paul.
