The Decision to Trust: A book review by Bob Morris

The Decision to Trust: How LEADERS Creat High-Trust Organizations
Robert F. Hurley
Jossey-Bass/A Wiley Imprint (2012)

How and why in most (if not all) workplaces, everything of value starts with trust and stops without it.

Obviously, a decision to trust anyone and anything is based on factors that vary from one person to another, from one situation to another. In this book, Robert F. Hurley’s purpose is to explain “why some people, groups, organizations, and institutions have been able to defy the overall trend of declining trust – how they have created trust even in environments where change, uncertainty, and risk exist.” Indeed, given the trend to which Hurley refers, the even greater importance of trustworthiness is good news for those who have earned it and bad news for those who haven’t. Hurley introduces the Decision to Trust Model (DTM) that can be used to make better trust more understandable and manageable and explains how to

o   Make better decisions about who and what to trust
o   Allocate trust-building energy by appreciating how others make trust decisions
o   Identify the root cause of trust issues
o   Offer concrete interventions and reforms that enhance trust
o   Identify in which situations trust can and can’t be developed
o   Establish and enhance trust at different levels and to varying extent

It should be emphasized that, with appropriate modifications, the DTM has almost unlimited applications. Its potential value is incalculable.  Hurley suggests six (6) reasons for the decline of trust (Pages 16-21) and then explains how it manifests itself at different levels: individual (i.e. people don’t trust each other), structural (i.e. departments don’t trust other departments), and cultural (i.e. distrust pervades throughout the given enterprise). “In high-trust collectives, people and groups are invited to move beyond their narrow self-interests and commit to common goals. They aren’t excessively distracted by the need to protect themselves from others’ self-promoting agendas.” It is worth noting that trust is the primary measure by which The Great Place to Work® Institute selects the annual list of “100 Best Companies to Work For” published by Fortune magazine.

In Chapter 2, Hurley identifies and discusses what he characterizes as “Ten Essential Elements of Trust.” There are three trustor factors (i.e. risk tolerance, psychological adjustment, and relative power) that are the result of “a complex mix of personality culture, and experience and account for the fact that building trust takes more time and effort than it does for others.”  There are seven situational factors (i.e. security, similarities, alignment of interests, benevolent concern, capability, predictability and integrity, and communication” that trustees can most effectively address and influence in order to gain the trust the confident reliance – of trustors.”

In most (if not all) workplaces, everything of value begins with trust and goes nowhere without it. Hurley explains both how and why by citing dozens of real-world situations throughout his lively narrative.  We all know that trust is earned over time and must be nourished by behavior worthy of it but trust can be lost in an instant. Hence the importance of the Decision to Trust Model (DTM) that offers two substantial benefits: It provides a structure and methodology by which to make better trust decisions, and, it creates a context, a frame-of-reference within which to determine the nature and impact of those decisions. Readers will also appreciate the Trust Diagnosis Worksheet” in Appendix B as well as Hurley’s review of “Some Trust Interventions to Build Trust” in Appendix C that include strategies to (1) address orientation to trustee, (2) facilitate appropriate risk in relationships, (3) prevent coercion, and (4) redistribute power at the interpersonal and group levels.

Simple. Keep it simple. Know What to Leave Out – (Insight from Tony Bennett & Steve Jobs)

Everywhere we turn, the message of “simple” screams out at us.  And this weekend, I heard and read that message reinforced time and again.

On Saturday, Scott Simon interviewed Tony Bennett.  Here is a great slice of that interview:

SIMON: Who do you think you can put into a song in your 80s that you couldn’t in your 30s or 40s?
BENNETT: The business of knowing what to leave out. That happens with age. Less is more. And it becomes more of a performance. It tugs the listeners’ heart by knowing that it’s just in the right pocket, right in the right groove.

(Read and/or listen to the full interview, Tony Bennett’s Art of Intimacy, here).

The essence of “simple” is knowing “what to leave out.”

The other source, of course, is the ongoing bombardment of insight about and from Steve Jobs, following his death.  The touching read of the weekend was his sister’s eulogy: A Sister’s Eulogy for Steve Jobs by Mona Simpson.  In case you have been living under a rock, the accomplished novelist Mona Simpson is the sister Steve Jobs did not know he had for the first part of his life.  They met when she was 25, and according to the new Walter Isaacson book, they bonded deeply, and immediately.

Her eulogy reveals so much about his love and commitment to “simple.”  Here are a few revealing excerpts:

(Steve) was the opposite of absent-minded.
Their house didn’t intimidate with art or polish; in fact, for many of the first years I knew Steve and Lo together, dinner was served on the grass, and sometimes consisted of just one vegetable. Lots of that one vegetable. But one. Broccoli. In season. Simply prepared. With just the right, recently snipped, herb.
I spoke to him every other day or so, but when I opened The New York Times and saw a feature on the company’s patents, I was still surprised and delighted to see a sketch for a perfect staircase.
Intubated, when he couldn’t talk, he asked for a notepad. He sketched devices to hold an iPad in a hospital bed. He designed new fluid monitors and x-ray equipment. He redrew that not-quite-special-enough hospital unit.
But with that will, that work ethic, that strength, there was also sweet Steve’s capacity for wonderment, the artist’s belief in the ideal, the still more beautiful later.
Steve’s final words, hours earlier, were monosyllables, repeated three times.
Before embarking, he’d looked at his sister Patty, then for a long time at his children, then at his life’s partner, Laurene, and then over their shoulders past them.
Steve’s final words were:
OH WOW. OH WOW. OH WOW.

Simple sketches.  Simple designs  Simple words.

We know his work as the triumph of simple design.  You buy a computer from Apple, and the booklet for set-up is all images.  No words.  So simple, even I can do it.

Simple.  Keep it simple.  Know what to leave out.