"Change happens at the speed of trust..."

The late Stephen R. Covey is perhaps most famous for his book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.  His son, Stephen M.R. Covey, is the former CEO of the Covey Leadership Center and author of The Speed of Trust: The One Thing That Changes Everything.  Covey's main argument is that building trust is a key leadership competency.  Trust is also a strategic advantage, not just in business, but in life as well.  It's an incredible book based on the theme that "change happens at the speed of trust."  I've often said that change is the law of life and leadership.  Covey would definitely agree, but he would also emphatically add that without trust, change is impossible.

Covey suggests, "Trust always affects two outcomes - speed and cost.  When trust goes down, speed will also go down and costs will go up.  When trust goes up, speed will also go up and costs will go down."  He simplifies the importance of trust with a basic formula: (S × E) × T = R, where S = Strategy, E = Execution, T = Trust, and R = Results.  With high-trust teams, decisions are made faster and with less bureaucracy (see my post "You centralize so that you can decentralize...").  Conversely, with low-trust teams, the need for legal agreements, audits, and the degree of micromanagement across the organization all increase.

Covey explains further, "As one eminent consultant on this topic, Robert Shaw, has said, Above all, success in business requires two things: a winning competitive strategy, and superb organizational execution. Distrust is the enemy of both. I submit that while high trust won't necessarily rescue a poor strategy, low trust will almost always derail a good one."

Trust is critical to an organization's success.  Covey talks about the fact that organizations can have either a "trust tax" or a "trust dividend".  The American political scientist Francis Fukuyama said, "Widespread distrust in a society...imposes a kind of tax on all forms of economic activity, a tax that high-trust societies do not have to pay."  Covey applies this same logic to organizations.  Organizations with high-trust earn a dividend, in terms of their ability to generate positive results when they execute their strategy.  However, organizations with low-trust pay a tax, where the results that they actually generate are significantly less than what they could have (or should have) generated with their strategy.  

I've mentioned the Harvard Business Review article "Begin with Trust" by Frances X. Frei and Anne Morriss once in the past (see my post "How groups can make better decisions...").  Frei and Morriss mention a concept that they call the "Trust Triangle" (see their figure below).  They state that trust has three drivers - authenticity, logic, and empathy.  They go on to suggest that "when trust is lost, it can almost always be traced back to a breakdown in one of these three drivers."

  

Similarly, Covey suggests that there is more than one driver of trust.  He writes, "Trust is equal parts character and competence... You can look at any leadership failure, and it's always a failure of one or the other."  He goes on to say, "Character includes your integrity, your motive, your intent with people.  Competence includes your capabilities, your skills, your results, your track record.  And both are vital...Character is a constant; it's necessary for trust in any circumstance.  Competence is situational; it depends on what the circumstances requires."

Covey uses a great analogy.  One time in the past, his wife was scheduled to undergo a minor surgical procedure at the hospital.  Covey says that while she trusted him completely, there's no way that she would trust him to perform the surgery that she required.  So in this particular context (surgery), Covey's wife did not "trust" him to be able to competently perform the procedure.  

Covey goes on to suggest that trust is also confidence.  "Simply put, trust means confidence.  The opposite of trust - distrust - is suspicion.  When you trust people, you have confidence in them - in their integrity and in their abilities.  When you distrust people, you are suspicious of them - of their integrity, their agenda, their capabilities, or their track record.  It's that simple."  Again, trust requires both character and competence.

Coming back full circle to the concept of the "speed of trust", Covey states, "Low trust causes friction, whether it is caused by unethical behavior or by ethical but incompetent behavior (because even good intentions can never take the place of bad judgment). Low trust is the greatest cost in life and in organizations, including families. Low trust creates hidden agendas, politics, interpersonal conflict, interdepartmental rivalries, win-lose thinking, defensive and protective communication—all of which reduce the speed of trust. Low trust slows everything—every decision, every communication, and every relationship."

The Speed of Trust is a great book.  Given the widespread (and growing even more so) lack of trust in society today, I think we can learn a lot from Covey's book.  I will return to some of the concepts that he discusses in the book in future posts.