Trust is something that is extremely important in business. Whether it is between colleagues or between companies and their customers or between companies and their suppliers trust underpins everything that is written down in a contract. Without trust business simply doesn’t work as well as it should.
Of course trust becomes even more important when dealing internationally with people from different backgrounds and cultures.
So let’s get a definition written down
Trust as a noun is the firm belief in the reliability, truth, or ability of someone or something.
The little Google Car pictured above is a prime example of a growing need to trust. In this case trusting a software engineer who has written the code that is helping you navigate your way around town. As I talked about in ‘Can sheep drive?‘ we will all to have a lot of trust in technology going forward.
But what about trust in business. Well there we seem to have a problem. According to a report by the World Economic Forum – We’re losing trust in business. How can we get it back? people are losing trust in business. And while this is not really a surprise with the focus on fake news currently it does present serious challenges, particularly to businesses that operate outside of their locality ie where the owner or staff are not known by their customers or suppliers.
The article goes on to highlight a number of areas businesses need to think through such as
- how to focus on developing a narrative about the business that is not just about shareholder returns explaining how the business contributes to improving society
- how to actually communicate this narrative to a broad range of people who might be interested in the business and what it is doing for society and
- actually doing something about it
And while I think the irony of the World Economic Forum highlighting a lack of trust in business is interesting in itself the article seems to miss one very major aspect. The almost complete focus on the investor and shareholder above all others. The quarterly reporting cycle focusing as it does on numbers and shareholder returns is probably the biggest contributor to a lack of trust.
Perhaps its time for a quarterly reporting process on what value has been added to society rather that just focusing on the eps?
Anyone have any other ideas?
The Burble 