Trust measurement— start with feeling the pain of distrust
In the first article I explored Taking Trust Seriously and the second about measuring trust I looked at the sorts of trust measures going around for companies and civic institutions, but with a warning that measures skew incentives and incentives skew behaviours, so to think carefully about why you want to measure trust and how you intend to respond to the results. Here I am reflecting on why and where to start on trust measurement.
What do you mean by trust?
When organisations put trust as one of their Core Values (as 17% of US companies in an MIT study did), it often isn’t clear what they mean by it. Is it an airy aspiration — ‘we want to be trusted’, a commitment — ‘we commit to trust people by default’, or a strategy — ‘we want to be trustworthy, so people know they can trust us and we get the benefits of that”?
If they aren’t really clear what they mean, what they will measure? I also saw among the Core Values in the MIT study were many of the 7 signals or qualities of trustworthiness (below). Those things which multidisciplinary research shows are the foundational ‘drivers’ of trust and distrust. Integrity was top with 65%, Respect 4th with 35%, Accountability 29%, Transparency 13%, Fairness 6%. But as the study also found that ‘there is no correlation between the cultural values a company emphasizes in its published statements and how well the company lives up to those values in the eyes of employees”. One could surmise that they aren’t clear what they mean by those, and don’t take them seriously either.
I was intrigued talking to three organisations who really did take trust seriously, to find that they also had a set of organisational values. These weren’t connected to their trust work, even though some were not dissimilar to their chosen ‘trust values’ (usually 4 or more of these below) and certainly measurement of how they uphold them not considered. This must be very confusing, particularly to staff.
Perhaps these are a specific set of values that are oriented towards trust. Is therefore earning trust about taking seriously these Trust/Trustworthiness Values?
I went a bit pale at this point, because this meant I had to start to delve into all the stuff about embedding values. So I took a deep breath and, albeit not in an in-depth way, started to look. Here’s what I found:
- Core values are described (by Good to Great author Jim Collins ) as — values you hold to be so fundamental that you would hold them regardless of whether or not they are rewarded? Sounds like a trust building thing to commit to.
- These Trust Values are ubiquitous when people talk about trust and when they talk about organisational values.
- But the measurement ideas I found uninspiring. I looked at measuring adherence to values, aligning action and values, ethical assessment and measurement, not much really detailed or serious stuff I could find there, and surprisingly nothing in HBR for example. There are bits on measuring individual areas, such as Integrity, but the most sensible and aligned to the sort of work I had been thinking of came under measuring ethical culture, cultural assessment, measuring culture, cultural audit.
Is measuring trust about understanding how in your culture and stakeholder relationships you uphold these Trust Values?
I warmed to this idea and it is the basis of the ideas below.
Taking Trust and Trust Measurement Seriously
The galvanising power of the pain of distrust
Stephen Covey his book The Speed of Trust talks about trust as ‘The One Thing That Changes Everything’. My own trust research brought home to me just how important trust is, ‘We make many trust-based decisions each day. Every time we pay for something, choose what to eat, what to buy, or who’s advice to act upon, dismiss or endorse — we consciously and unconsciously place trust in institutions, information, people, processes. Without these generalised and specific acts of trust our societies simply wouldn’t work”.
I won’t go into this in any more depth here, as lots of people, organisations and governments get by OK on low trust; but it is most definitely better to be trusted than not, and while as a society we might not want blind trust, (though companies might), organisations that can be trusted, and that we trust, make all our lives better.
Many years work on embedding ethics and values has shown me that the reason so many companies don’t take their values seriously, is because they are a bit nebulous and it’s hard to pin down why they are so important. And also why the companies that do take them seriously are the ones who have really felt the pain of distrust.
I did some research for my Masters dissertation in Responsibility in Business Practice and found that every company, except one, of those widely considered leaders in ethics or corporate responsibility, had at one time another had a disaster which led them to transform themselves from the bottom up. The head of CSR for this one outlier company, Novo Nordisk, was on the course and I approached her excitedly for her secret. “Oh no’ she said. “we had a terrible disaster…”
But how to feel the pain of distrust, when you don’t think it will happen to you and, err, you haven’t really felt it!?
Get clear, get stories, on the pain of distrust and power of trust
If you want your organisation to take trust seriously you need as clearly and viscerally as possible to feel the pain of distrust and understand the power of trust. If people don’t think it matters and there are not concrete reasons why and compelling stories to back those up, they will never take on the spade work that is needed. Needless to say if the leaders don’t feel this pain, it definitely won’t happen.
For some organisations it is clear why trust matters, which makes it easier to take it seriously. The UK Food Standards Agency, for example, a leader in trust measurement, was specifically set up to rebuild public trust in the food system following the failings resulting in the BSE (Mad Cow Disease) disaster in the early 1990s. Their mission is ‘Food we can trust’ to ensure ‘that it is safe and what it says it is’. They researched trust and now track public trust and attitudes to how it is delivering on its mandate together with the cultural values and activities internally which will help make that happen.
Similarly for healthcare organisations — it is not an exaggeration to say that for them trust is a matter of life and death. If people trust the healthcare system, particular health services, individual hospitals and GPs, they are more likely to seek help at the right time, report symptoms, follow treatment plans, attend screenings, show up for surgery and follow health advice. More likely to live, less likely to die.
As trust is an outcome and is bestowed on you by others the only way to see this clearly is to involve your stakeholders and simply ask (more of that later). But that is a big deal, and you will perhaps need your ‘business case’ for trust to get the money and the mandate to take that scary step.
This is not an insignificant exercise I know. But you could start small, with brainstorms. You will need to speak to all the major departments and people at all levels. Everyone needs another brainstorm like a hole in the head, but it is often surprising how intriguing the subject of trust is, though only if the purpose is serious, and not just a tick box exercise because it is the latest management fad.
Steven Covey distills the benefits down to Speed and Cost, but there will many day-to-day implications, inconveniences and problems of how work is made easier by trust and more difficult by the lack of it.
You could start by naming your important stakeholders on wall charts or mural boards or you could do some fun games or scenarios. The aim is to get some detailed answers to these questions and stories to support them:
- What might they do and not do if they distrust us?
- What might they do and not do if they trust us?
- What could the implications be for us?
- What behaviours of ours might cause these actions.
For some general prompts, have a look at this short vid on The Effects of trust and distrust here or a shorter 90sec version 6 things that happen when you are distrusted is here)
It is also be worth remembering that trust is not a black and white thing. It is on a spectrum, from passionate trust to passionate distrust, with various states in between — see below. So think of gradations too rather than just one static state of trust or distrust. Not all distrust may be bad. Passive distrust, a sort of Trust but Verify state may even be healthy way to be. An illustration of how trust can move up and down that spectrum, and the contribution of the Trust Values, can be found in this short vid — How trust is lost and can it be regained
Mapping causes and behaviours against the Trust Values
Lots of factors might contribute to why people trust and distrust individuals and institutions — explored a little in the previous article on Taking trust Seriously and page 60–67 of TIGTech report.
Not all of these are under your direct control, but even if not (the weather in this pic), they will affect you and you need to try to understand them and factor them into your thinking on trust and distrust.
The next stage of taking trust seriously will be to start to understand and map causes and behaviours against the Trust Values and find out any gaps and surprises. This means you have to go directly to the stakeholders, internally and externally.
Trust remember is bestowed on you by someone who perceives you to be worthy of it. So you have to ask them. As my primary school teacher Miss Rowe told me: “Do not Assume. Assume, makes an Ass of U and Me”. This is very very true of trust.
Also remember, Inclusion, Respect and Fairness are two of the Trust Values. This is not about just about you. It is the first step in walking your talk and taking the Trust Values seriously.
This is the third article in a series that I thought I could do in one article!
The first is about Taking Trust Seriously, the second on Measuring trust — why you might be wasting your money, and the next will explore methodologies for taking the Trust Values seriously.
PPS, sorry I promised first 4, then 5 mins, and this is 8! It can’t be done in the time I have, apologies for ‘not doing what I said I would do’ a cross in the integrity values box!
