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The Trust Extender: Enlarge the circle of trust by empowering stakeholders to trustand reciprocate trust

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Hack: The Trust Extender:Enlarge the circle oftrust by empowering stakeholders totrust and reciprocate trustBy Alex Todd - Founder at Trust Enablement Inc.May 4, 2010 at 3:49pm

trust strategy innovation engagement collaboration openness

Moonshots Embed the ethos of community and citizenshipIncrease trust, reduce fearReinvent the means of control

Summary Enlarge the circle of trust by orders of magnitude and radically accelerate the trust-buildingprocess by empowering people to rely on the information even before they trust each other. Scaling trust is important because it allows one to transcend traditional spheres of influence andcontrol, such as organizational hierarchy and personal relationships.

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Problem A paradigm-shifting breakthrough in how management views trust is necessary for this hack towork. Trust is most often viewed in the context of personal relationships, but we know that trust-building confined to personal relations is a limiting paradigm that adversely affects howorganizations operate. Relationship building is counterproductive for extending and sustainingtrust. Relationships affect people’s objectivity; on one hand, causing them to be overly trustingand less discriminating within relationships, and on the other, to be excessively discriminating andless trusting of others. Relationships can therefore be insular, keeping people within their comfortzone and less open to external influences that spawn innovation. Trust, based solely onrelationships, can also be fickle by being overly susceptible to changes in the dynamics of thepersonalities involved. Thus trust limited to relationships can also stunt an organization’s abilityto innovate, because information is not valued equally regardless of its source.

Current models of “trust building” focus on modifying the behavior of individuals, when it is exactlythe differences in human behavior that create information diversity and lead to “big ideas.” Francis Fukuyama and other academics have even attributed the trust-building norms of variouscultures to their nations’ economic performance, offering a macroeconomic perspective thatassociates prosperity with a capacity to scale trust. We believe that an open, free flow of ideas,regardless of their source within and between organizations would stimulate significant gains inproductivity and employee satisfaction, and lead to discovering hidden organizational dynamics,such as underlying, exclusive power channels.

Solution Trust is one of the most important success factors for the prosperity of business and society.And today we need trust more than ever. Yet, trust is one of the least understood managementsciences, as it has traditionally been relegated to social science. Trust requires more thanplatitudes about ethics, accountability and transparency. And it is inadequate to address trustconsiderations indirectly, as merely a byproduct of other activities, such as risk management. Ifevery business, government organization and politician were professional at systematicallydesigning structures that enable trust, we would enjoy more sustainable prosperity and avoid theself-inflicted costs of recurring cycles of exuberance and despair.

According to the Conference Board of Canada’s 2009 report, Stakeholder Trust, "Companies thatcreate trust with stakeholders build intangible value and anticipate, innovate, and adapt fast—keys to business survival and maximization of shareholder value."

Our societies are returning to their roots. We now live in a "global village" that calls for a new, yettime-honored, approach for people, businesses and governments to improve their capacity to trustand be trusted. Throughout history trust was rooted in physical communities. Today, ourcommunities span the globe, and persist in ubiquitous digital spaces. Trust messages are now



communities span the globe, and persist in ubiquitous digital spaces. Trust messages are nowsent and received through a distinct-new, online medium that dramatically alters the dynamics ofhow trust is created and eroded, and is characterized by unprecedented speed, scope and impact.

We propose the following approach to solving the problem:

1. A New Perspective on Trust: Educate managers that they can have a greater impact onbusiness performance by enabling trust in information than only in individuals. Managers,open your minds and revisit your longstanding beliefs about trust by participating incontinuing education programs.

2. The Dynamics of Trust: Provide case studies that demonstrate how mechanisms thatfacilitate trust in information not only allow organizations to scale the effects of their trust-building efforts, but also improve trust between people – even strangers. Managers, readcase studies and attend workshops to gain insights into new approaches that could help youachieve your trust objectives.

3. A Universal Framework for Trust: Demonstrate the use of a universal framework fordiagnosing and designing scalable trust and its impact on business performance. Managers,start communicating using a universal lingua franca for trust as your blueprint for evaluatingyour existing trust models and refining them.

4. Institute for Extending Trust: Create a research, education, collaboration and advocacyorganization focused on enhancing the capacity of people and organizations worldwide totrust by facilitating innovation in trust-extending business practices that deliver sustainableimprovements in business performance. Managers, encourage your organizations to join theInstitute for Extending Trust in order to improve their chances of success by learning fromthe experiences of other innovative organizations on the leading edge of transforming trustextending practices.

5. Delivering Trust Models: Provide expertise and tools for developing information trustmodels to organizations on the cutting edge of innovation that value idea channels overpower channels in order to help them develop trust extending systems that help engage thebest and brightest creative talent worldwide in activities that generate unprecedented newvalue for stakeholders. Managers, seek external expertise and create sandboxes forexperimenting with third party tools that support your trust extending initiatives.

Practical Impact We believe that an open, free flow of ideas, regardless of source, could yield huge gains inorganizational productivity, employee satisfaction, and engaging neglected organizationaldynamics that transcend traditional power channels.



Managers will find that by implementing trust models that depersonalize trust they will reduceconflict and resistance to change, and engage more participants, sooner.

It has broad applicability that impacts virtually every aspect of business:

Risk Management: http://trustenablement.com/local/GRCT-KPMG.ppsx

Corporate Policies: see http://trustenablement.com/Policy_Recommendations.htm

Corporate Governance: see Governance Lifecycle Model (GLM)™ Assessment Tool athttp://trustenablement.com/governing.html#GLM and "Corporate Governance Best Practices: Onesize does not fit all" athttp://trustenablement.com/local/Corporate_Governanc_Best_%20Preactices-...

Business Strategy: "Trust Enablement: A critical success factor" athttp://trustenablement.com/local/Assessment_of_Critical_Success_Factor.pdf

Supply Chain Management: "Trust Enabled™ Supply Networks: Uncovering the trust-buildingsecrets of highly collaborative supply chains." athttp://trustenablement.com/local/Trust_Enabled_Supply_Networks-whitepape... and "TrustEnabled™ Supply Networks: Enabling trust for collaboration, innovation and sustainability" athttp://trustenablement.com/Trust_Enabled_Supply_Networks-SCL-notes.pdf

Electronic Commerce: "The Challenges of Online Trust: for online and offline businesses" athttp://trustenablement.com/local/The_Challenges_of_Online_Trust-slides.pdf and "The EssentialChristmas Web-store Makeover" at http://trustenablement.com/Web-store_Makeover_Article.html

Sales and Marketing: "Trust: The most important marketing ingredient" athttp://trustenablement.com/local/Hepworth_Interview-Trust_the_most_impor..., "MeasuringAwareness, Brand & Competitive Standing: Using trust indicators", and "Enabling Trust Online" athttp://trustenablement.com/local/Enabling_Trust_Online.pdf

Online Social Networks: "Building Trust in the Social Space" at http://diy-marketing.blogspot.com/2008/10/building-trust-in-social-space...

Information Technology: "Confidence & The Cloud" athttp://trustenablement.com/local/Cobit_Cloud.pdf, "Trusting Information - Not the Source: Theimpact of trust on Business on Demand" at http://trustenablement.com/local/Trusting_Information-Not_the_Source.pdf, and E-Trust: Establisning consumer confidence in On-Line CommercialTransactions" at http://trustenablement.com/local/E-Trust-Establishing_Consumer_Confidenc...

Outsourcing: "Why Outsourcing Deals Fail" athttp://trustenablement.com/local/Why_Outsourcing_Deals_Fail-draft.pdf

Collaboration: ""Trust Enabled™ Ecosystems: SAP Global Ecosystem Marketing" at

http://trustenablement.com/local/GRCT-KPMG.ppsx

http://trustenablement.com/Policy_Recommendations.htm

http://trustenablement.com/governing.html#GLM

http://trustenablement.com/local/Corporate_Governanc_Best_%20Preactices-mar08_icsa_intnl.pdf

http://trustenablement.com/local/Assessment_of_Critical_Success_Factor.pdf

http://trustenablement.com/local/Trust_Enabled_Supply_Networks-whitepaper.pdf

http://trustenablement.com/Trust_Enabled_Supply_Networks-SCL-notes.pdf

http://trustenablement.com/local/The_Challenges_of_Online_Trust-slides.pdf

http://trustenablement.com/Web-store_Makeover_Article.html

http://trustenablement.com/local/Hepworth_Interview-Trust_the_most_important_marketing_ingredient.pdf

http://trustenablement.com/local/Enabling_Trust_Online.pdf

http://diy-marketing.blogspot.com/2008/10/building-trust-in-social-space.html

http://trustenablement.com/local/Cobit_Cloud.pdf

http://trustenablement.com/local/Trusting_Information-Not_the_Source.pdf

http://trustenablement.com/local/E-Trust-Establishing_Consumer_Confidence_presentation.PDF

http://trustenablement.com/local/Why_Outsourcing_Deals_Fail-draft.pdf



Collaboration: ""Trust Enabled™ Ecosystems: SAP Global Ecosystem Marketing" athttp://trustenablement.com/local/Trust_Enabled_Ecosystems.ppsx, "Global Supply Chain RiskManagement & Trust Study" at http://trustenablement.com/Aberdee_SCRM_&_Trust_Study-ExecSummary.pdf, and "The Wikinomics Playbook" athttp://www.socialtext.net/data/workspaces/wikinomics/attachments/wikinom...

Leadership: "Building Trust in a Law Firm" athttp://trustenablement.com/local/Building_Trust_in_a_Law_Firm.pdf

Ethics and Compliance: "Trust without Ethics - Ethics without Trust" athttp://trustenablers.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=28147497689...

Public Policy: "Creating trust in government is more than 'cleaning house'" athttp://trustenablement.com/local/Creating_trust_in_government.pdf

Economic Development: "Leading Intelligent Communities Through Enabling Trust" athttp://trustenablement.com/local/iCommunity_Focus_on_Leadership-Leading_...

First Steps 1. Develop a model and processes that allow organizations to adopt information trust

practices. Managers, start learning about trust models designed to extend trust;

2. Pilot a high-visibility, low-risk implementation of a scalable trust model for an innovativeproject, such as http://www.managementexchange.com. Managers, identify your own pilotprojects and experiment with models and processes for extending trust;

3. Work with a few cutting edge organizations committed to innovating on their managementpractices to experiment with prototypes of information-oriented trust tools and methods inorder to extend trust beyond traditional boundaries. Managers, if you have a mandate toadopt innovative new approaches for improving business performance, get involved inorganized experiments that position you as a leader in trustextending innovations; and

4. Celebrate successes and enroll other similarly-minded organizations to participate in theInstitute for Extending Trust by building upon previous successes. Managers, get involvedin the Institute for Extending Trust by sharing your experiences with other members andcollaboratively refining methods for extending trust.

Credits I am most grateful to Matthew Cloutier for helping me structure and compose this hacksubmission.

http://trustenablement.com/local/Trust_Enabled_Ecosystems.ppsx

http://trustenablement.com/Aberdee_SCRM_&_Trust_Study-ExecSummary.pdf

http://www.socialtext.net/data/workspaces/wikinomics/attachments/wikinomics:20080213154459-1-3411/original/the%20wikinomics%20playbook%2002%202008.pdf

http://trustenablement.com/local/Building_Trust_in_a_Law_Firm.pdf

http://trustenablers.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474976899647

http://trustenablement.com/local/Creating_trust_in_government.pdf

http://trustenablement.com/local/iCommunity_Focus_on_Leadership-Leading_Intelligent_Communities_Through_Enabling_Trust-Alex%20Todd.pdf




Documents Trust_Measures_and_Indicators_for_Customers.pdf Trust_Measures_and_Indicators_for_Investors.pdf Trust Enablement Institute - Membership Package.pdf

Images

http://www.managementexchange.com/sites/default/files/media/posts/documents/Trust_Measures_and_Indicators_for_Customers.pdf

http://www.managementexchange.com/sites/default/files/media/posts/documents/Trust_Measures_and_Indicators_for_Investors.pdf

http://www.managementexchange.com/sites/default/files/media/posts/documents/Trust%20Enablement%20Institute%20-%20Membership%20Package.pdf



Videos

Alliance Governance: Balancing Trust and Control in Dealing with Risk from Alex Todd on Vimeo.

Every alliance requires that at the outset there are ways and means to establish sufficient trustfor the parties to share information fully and to make timely decisions regarding joint investmentsand activities. Additionally, there are always times during the life cycle of an alliance when trust ischallenged (key people change, surprises happen, partners become complacent and letcommunications lapse, etc.). So how do alliance managers develop and preserve a sufficientlevel of trust and deal with situations where trust erodes and needs to be shored up again?

When designing an alliance governance structure, managers have to choose between approachesbased on control or on trust. This presentations proposes a framework to help managers decidewhich of the two is appropriate in a particular situation. Are control and trust substitutes orcomplements? What is the link between control, trust and risk? Our approach proposes thatwhether control and trust are substitutes or complements depends on the level and type of risk analliance faces. In high risk situations companies use complex combinations of control and trust ina complementary way.

Download slides from http://trustenablement.com/local/Alliance_Governance.ppsx.

Note to the time constrained: The risk and trust discussion begins at the 15 minute mark.

http://vimeo.com/12212074

http://vimeo.com/user3949216

http://vimeo.com/



October 9, 2010 at 8:09pm

October 9, 2010 at 5:57am

October 8, 2010 at 8:04am

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alexandra campbell

I think this is an important topic that is important to all organizations. This approachoffers interesting ideas that managers can begin to implement right away.

Len Nanjad

Cool tool. This directly goes at making the intangible tangible. If culture eats strategyfor breakfast, this helps get at that for the top team and all levels of an organization.This is a clear way to make culture a clearer part of top level strategy. It is, for allthe largest organizations in Canada that I have worked with, the biggest, least knownabout challenge to address to release untapped value = breaking down silos, buildingstronger leadership, giving boards a clear decision framework on enabler andblockers of achieving strategic objectives and organizational strategy, providing datato support design of more innovative management systems. This has the potentialtool for the architecture and design of business.

Max Carbone

Alex has done some solid thinking on this concept. Trust is the foundation uponwhich business and other relationships work. Leaders and teams that are able todevelop a high degree of trust have a much greater likelihood to realize theirpotential. Similarly, if businesses were able to have a more sophisticated "system"to increase trust, then business could be transacted more quickly and expeditiously.The challenge will be to develop appropriate practices / systematized measures andprocesses that companies can both implement and rely upon in order to achieveimproved business performance. Cheers, Max Carbone

Jerry Adel

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October 7, 2010 at 12:34pm

November 23, 2010 at 7:30am

Hi Alex, Much of my work as a consultant involvescreating self-directed work teams and transforming them into high-performing teams.Consequently I am dealing with leaders and managers concerned with developing,enhancing and sustaining trust with their employees and amongst themselves. Howdoes your approach to trust apply to a workplace environment where people knoweach other and already have relationships with each other?

Thanks,

Jerry Adel

Alex ToddHi Jerry,

Thank you for asking your excellent question about the applicability of The TrustExtender to employees with existing relationships. Perhaps its applicability isbest illustrated with an example.

A number of years ago, I was engaged in a discussion between two majorconsuling firms (I was representing one of them) to hold a joint event on trust fora professional organization. A few weeks after our meeting, I received an e-mailfrom a meeting prarticipant from the other consulting firm, thanking me forintroducing him to my novel trust concept because he had just applied it in aclient engagement with great success. I was both flattered and confused, notknowing to which "trust concept" he was referring. In response to my inquiry toclairfy what he meant, he related his experience of acting as mediator between agovernment agency (his client) and their IT outsourcer to resolve a seriousbreakdown in trust that had developed between the representatives of therespective organizations. Instead of trying to broker a reconciliation between theindividuals whose resentment had reached a critical level, he chose instead totry my information-based approach to overcoming the trust rift. He applied myprinciple to "trust the information despite its source" by identifying objectivesources for the business information both parites needed to rely on in theiroutsourcing relationship, instead of having to rely on the veracity of theassertions of the representing parties. Although this approach did not directlyaddress the trust between the individuals, it removed the need to do so byintroducing a mechanism that allowed both partiese to rely on the informationthey needed to productively conduct business with each other, despite theirmistrust for each other.

An insight that can be gained from this experience is the improtance of focusing

http://www.managementexchange.com/users/jerry-adel





November 23, 2010 at 7:28am

on the business problem, rather than the factors inhibiting performance. Relationships are fickle. When they break down, the effects on the businesscan be considerable. What if mechanisms and processes were in place thathelped create rich conditions for trust independent of personal relationships? After all, it's not personal - it's just business.

The same concpets can be applied to any workgroup. Work environments canbe designed to make it easier for participants to choose to share and rely oninformation of their colleagues, despite thier personal feelings about theindividuals involved. I hope that helps.

Alex ToddContest Winner: How to Increase Trust (in 140 characters or less)

Thank you to the Management Innovation eXchange judges of the Tweet-a-Hackcontest for choosing my tweet:

@TrustEnabler: 1. Celebrate vulnerability; 2. Admire authenticity; 3. Insist onintegrity (honor yr word); 4. Champion EVERY stand

"We were impressed with Alex's ability to squeeze four good ideas into a singletweet, as well as with the passion with which they came through. Personally, I'mintrigued by his first suggestion ("celebrate vulnerability"), which I hope he'll elaborateon in a future post. It's probably no surprise that Alex took this prize: as the founderof Trust Enablement, Inc., he's clearly focused on the matter at hand." - seehttp://www.managementexchange.com/blog/contest-winner-how-increase-trust-140-characters-or-less

As request, I would also like to take this opportunity to elaborate on my "Celebratevulnerability" suggestion. I wrote about this in a comment to Dan Oestareich’s blogat http://www.unfoldingleadership.com/blog/?p=2208#comment-32844. Here is anexcerpt:

“Finally, I’d like to address the bigger question of the value of vulnerability.Vulnerability is the prerequisite for sociability and survival of most species. Without itwe would eat our young. Vulnerability is therefore also the ultimate moral stand.Heroism may be the ultimate act of vulnerability.”

I'd be happy to answer questions on this, or elaborate further.



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August 13, 2010 at 4:50am


Raj Kumar

Hello Alex,

Thanks for your prompt response to my comment. Regret your reply got misplaced inmy box and I read it today!

Your "we don't always have personal experience and need to rely on other people'sexperiences to establish trust" struck a chord with me. However, trust does notmean belief. Perhaps it means I am listening and am willing to wait toagree/disagree.

Considering that what the other says must pass through filters and the fact thathuman nature is very motive driven it is possible that the absence of trust is part ofbeing hard boiled. Perhaps this explains why "business has invested billions ofdollars on risk management (which increases transaction costs) instead."

I conclude there is no escape from Dialogue for trust as you wish to progress it. Butthat means interactions, and managers rarely have the time and energy for that,particularly to collaborate meaningfully. Simple collaboration is just not enough fortrust or the readiness for conviction as it is prone to biases as noted by you. Therehas to be a commitment to surface assumptions and reach a consensus. Your pointwas that Dialogue or meaningful collaboration is not a solution cause it does notscale. We cannot be assured all managers will have the commitment for it given thedemand on their time and energy. I hope you will have a look at my hack. Mybreakthrough is converting IT from a tool to compelling energy for Dialogue. My workassures Dialogue on the enterprise scale.

Keen to have your feedback.

Regards,

Raj Kumar

Alex Todd

Hi Raj,

I appreciate your interest in my hack and your comments.

Allow me to clarify. I do not advocate that people "disassociate trust from onespersonal experience". Instead, I am saying we don't always have personalexperience and need to rely on other people's experiences to establish trust.

http://www.managementexchange.com/users/raj-kumar







June 25, 2010 at 8:42am

Dialogue is great. We know it helps to promote trust. Personal relationships are anequally important factor for affecting trust. However, neither of these methods scalesvery well. They are also prone to biased subjectivity that relies more on how onefeels about the person delivering the information than the objective merits of theinformation itself. It causes people to become insular, not open to new informationfrom other people.

In summary, my approach is complementary and allows trust to scale moreeffectively. I hope that helps.

Raj Kumar

Hello Alex,

I entirely agree with your conclusion that free flow of ideas and insights will progresstrust and this in turn will promote success. But to disassociate trust from onespersonal experience appears not only counter intuitive but is a big step in denyingthe self. It is like taking leave of your anchor for thinking. I mention this because itappears to be quite un-necessary for the development of trust.

I have concluded that egoless means for collective working and interaction likeDialogue builds trust. I find you saying the same thing: open the mind, develop theability to listen, stretch the comfort zone.... However, in practice while I havepromoted a system for Dialogue you have emphasisized a single point: Do notextend your personal self to business relationships.

Have I missed something?

Alex Todd

Hi Noreen,

I agree, relationships form part of the trust equation, but don't define it. In my way ofthinking, relationships are simply one important method of validating certain kinds ofinformation; mostly information related to future decisions and behaviour (the MotiveForces element of my framework), rather than performance (the Proficiencieselement of my framework).







June 25, 2010 at 7:24am

June 15, 2010 at 10:21am

June 14, 2010 at 7:56am

Noreen J. Kelly

Alex,Thanks for sharing this comprehensive trust framework. One of the Challenges ofthis model is: "Shifting the perspective of trust from the context of personalrelationships to information." I believe these two concepts provide a both/and, ratherthan either/or scenario. More info at:http://trustmattersgroup.com/images/trust_model.pdf

Noreen KellyTrust Matters Group, Inc.

Joseph Carrabis

Hello,At Alex Todd's invitation and my own curiosity I ran the post through one of our toolsand was impressed by the results; Trust Rating about 25%, Affinity about 27%(these are remarkably good ratings compared to most people), Confidence around58% (austounding), ... (you can see the analysis of the entire page athttp://nssa.nextstagevolution.com/review.cfm?pageid=374 and just Alex's text athttp://nssa.nextstagevolution.com/review.cfm?pageid=380. For a detailedexplanation seehttp://www.bizmediascience.com/2010/06/a_sentiment_analysis_of_alex_t.htmlJoseph

Alex Todd

George,

Thank you for your interest and for taking time to ask some thoughtful and thought-provoking questions. I'll try to answer them below, bur first I'd like to confirm yourunderstanding of the premise of my hack:

1. Question: Would enforcable legal contracts (and a developed rule of law) be acurrent example of information that enables trust?

Answer: Yes, I would say that a contract supported by a developed judicial processis a good example of enabling trust in information. The contract specifies what eachparty needs to rely on (in other words, what information needs to be trusted) and thejudicial process helps to validate and enforce compliance.

http://www.managementexchange.com/users/noreen-j-kelly

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http://trustmattersgroup.com/images/trust_model.pdf


http://nssa.nextstagevolution.com/review.cfm?pageid=374


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2. Question: An alternative seems to be for market participants to increase theirvolume of "personal" relationships through social networking sites - how do you seethis phenomenon fitting into your model?

Answer: Yes, That's a good example. Most social networking relationships areshallow (however, some may deepen with repeated interactions, especially ifaugmented by meetings in person), and would not by many measures meet thestandard of what most people think of when they use the term "relationship". In thosecases, members of your social network may act simply as sources of trust for anyinformation you are trying to validate. Although you may not place a great deal oftrust in any individual of your social network, you may be able to attain a higher levelof confidence in the validity of the information by getting validation from multiple(semi-trusted) people in your network. In fact, you may well be able to attain a higherlevel of trust by aggregating the validations of many people you hardly know thanyou can from one or a few individuals with whom you have a very close relationship.

3. Question: Do we tend to trust like minded people more than people who thinkdifferently from us? Is this something you would view as limitting or simply a fact?

Answer: I would say that it is generally limiting. We do tend to trust like-mindedpeople more, because they are more likely to validate our own beliefs, whichessentially validates our being. Likewise, relying on people who understand usensures that they are validating the information based on a context that is relevant tous. In other words, their validation of any information is based on them having abetter understanding of the impact to us if we rely on the information. However, it canalso have the opposite effect, by causing us to self-select a homogeneous sample ofpeople to trust. It's kind of like replicating yourself multiple times to be able to saythat others feel the same way you do. We label people who seek only to validatetheir own point of view as "delusional". The key to developing trust in any informationis validating it from multiple independent sources, even those you don't trust somuch. If you think about it, that's exactly how a court of law works when it relies onthe evidence of independent witnesses. The big challenge with this approach isfaced by people, like innovators, who are pursuing a course of action they believe tobe valid, but are surrounded by people who view those actions from a differentcontext and therefore tend to invalidate them. The solution is to diversify the networkof prospective validators, perhaps through online social networking and to carefullyconsider the context of each validator's feedback.

4. Question: What do you see as the relationship between competence andtrustability?

Answer: Trusting someone's competence is the same as trusting someone to do



what they say (or imply) they will do. I call this "integrity", which I define ashonouring your word. Integrity is the foundation for "trustability". The question thenbecomes, what are the different ways in which you can establish trust in someone'scompetency? For example, you could ask for independent and recognizedcredentials, or you could rely on references (preferably from someone you trust), oryou can directly put the person's competency to the test, etc.

5. Question: Have you seen or done any studies on statistical predictors of trust ?For example if someone has acted in a trustworthy way in the past does this makethem more likely to act in a trustworthy way in the future? Assuming this is the case- how does one deal with anomalies - for example a long con?

Answer: I have compiled many studies on trust, some of which I have included in adocument "The Facts on Trust" (seehttp://trustenablement.com/opt/The_Facts_on_Trust.pdf). However, I don't recall astudy that measures either the propensity of an individual to trust again when theirtrust had been validated in the past or a person to continue to behave in atrustworthy fashion if they have done so in the past. Nevertheless, we all know frompersonal experiences and that of others, that this is absolutely the case. If you haveproven to be trustworthy in the past, I will tend to trust you more. In the event thatsomething happens to erode my trust, you will need to rebuild it for me again.Likewise, if I behave in a trustworthy fashion today, I am likely to continue to do soin the future - unless circumstances change. So what are the implications for longcons, such as the infamous case of Bernie Madoff? Well, this is exactly the problemmy hack attempts to overcome. A con is founded on the premise that the con artisthas proven themselves trustworthy over time, and is expected to continue to behavethe same way in the future. The fallacy with this relationship-based foundation fortrust is that in the process of building trust, people also narrow the diversity ofsources of trust to one person, the con artist. "The Trust Extender" seeks toempower people with the knowledge and resources that help them objectivelydevelop, sustain and rebuild trust. It also helps them to continually re-consider andrely on both the person's proficiencies (for performance) and their motivations (thatmay affect the person's future decision-making) that may change over time. IfMadoff's clients had means to be be aware of the experiences of all his other clients,had independent access to their assets and underlying performance metrics, andhypothetically knew that strong disincentives (such as a method of maintaining thechain of custody to the money or strong and/or effective extradition laws) made ithighly unlikely that Madoff would abscond with their money, then his con may havebeen far less likely. This is what I mean when I refer to designing rich conditions fortrust that make trust scalable beyond relationships and allow more people to trustsooner and longer.

http://trustenablement.com/opt/The_Facts_on_Trust.pdf



June 10, 2010 at 10:20am

June 8, 2010 at 8:48am

George Graziani

Thanks Alex - thoughtful hack.Questions:If I understand your premise it is to augment personal relationship based trust withinformation based trust in order to increase scope and volume of profitable businessactivity.1. Would enforcable legal contracts (and a developed rule of law) be a currentexample of information that enables trust?2. An alternative seemsto be for market participants to increase their volume of"personal" relationships through social networking sites - how do you see thisphenomenon fitting into your model?3. Do we tend to trust like minded people more than people who think differently fromus? Is this something you would view as limitting or simply a fact?4. What do you see as the relationship between competence and trustability?5. Have you seen or done any studies on statistical predictors of trust ? For exampleif someone has acted in a trustworthy way in the past does this make them morelikely to act in a trustworthy way in the future? Assuming this is the case - how doesone deal with anomalies - for example a long con?

Thanks again - look forward to your response.

Joseph Carrabis

I read Alex's "The Trust Extender: Enlarge the circle of trust by empoweringstakeholders to trust and reciprocate trust" post athttp://www.managementexchange.com/content/trust-extender-enlarge-circle-... andwas very impressed by it. My curiosity turned into my using some NextStage toolsto analyze it so that I could get back to Alex with any suggestions for revising it ormaking future postings more actionable/readable/acceptable.I shared the initial analysis with Alex and he asked me to share it, hence thiscomment/post/discussion thread.

[[Obligatory Promotional Paragraphs]]The analyses are based on NextStage's Sentiment Analysis (NSSA) Tool(http://nssa.nextstagevolution.com/), Advanced version, a web-based tool availableto anyone. The two analyses shared here together cost about US$80. Thisexplanation would amount to a webinar style training and would cost another US$50or so. We at NextStage had an option to make our tools expensive, uninformative,

http://www.managementexchange.com/users/george-graziani


http://www.managementexchange.com/users/george-graziani


http://www.managementexchange.com/content/trust-extender-enlarge-circle-trust-empowering-stakeholders-trust-and-reciprocate-trust

http://nssa.nextstagevolution.com/



unactionable and uncustomizable or to make them inexpensive, highly informative,actionable and customizable.We decided on the latter.You can learn a lot about NextStage's Sentiment Analysis tool by following the linksat the bottom of http://nssa.nextstagevolution.com/nssaabout.cfm.

[[The Analyses]]Please go to http://nssa.nextstagevolution.com/review.cfm?pageid=374 to followalong with this analysis.

Starting at the top with Basic: Author Attitude - The fact that the Positive (green bar)is about 10pts higher than the Negative (red bar) is an indication that the author(Alex, in this case) is doing "heart" writing. They are writing to an audience they bothknow and believe will respond positively to what is written. Because they (probably)both know and believe the response will be positive, they're sharing more ofthemselves than they might normally share in a professional piece of writing.

Intermediate: Confidence - This is a very impressive value, 67%, and high enough tobe rarely seen in professional pieces that aren't blatant self-promotion ordemonstrations of outright arrogance. In a training, I would instruct users to comparethe Confidence value to Intermediate: Message Intent: Referral, Active Pleasure andLove values and Advanced: Trust and Advanced: Affinity values found further downin the report. The fact that all these values are also relatively high indicates that theConfidence value is based on the author's core beliefs in what they're offering ratherthan sarcasm, arrogance or self-promotion. In any case, 67% is a demonstration thatthe author (Alex) strongly believes the audience will both benefit and act upon theinformation presented.

Intermediate: Audience Branding - The fact that the "Read Once Then Ignore" valueis low and the other values in this section are non-existent indicates that a generalaudience wouldn't pay much attention to this piece. As with Confidence, I wouldinstruct users to compare these values with Advanced: Sphere of Influence: RealFollowers. That value is at 30%, meaning that 30% of the people in the author'simmediate circle of associates will respond to it. Thirty percent is a fairly highnumber in marketing circles and something to be proud of. The fact that RealFollowers is 30% but Friends of Followers and Friends of Friends are insignificantindicates that this piece could be audience specific (meaning it's full of jargon onlyknown to a specific audience) and definitely that people outside of the author'ssociologic "first circle" won't pay much attention to it, hence will "Read Once ThenIgnore".

Intermediate: Message Intent - The high Referral, Active Pleasure and Love values

http://nssa.nextstagevolution.com/nssaabout.cfm




all demonstrate that the author believes the information presented is valuable to thereader, will be acted upon by the reader and that the author believes they are bothrecognized and honored by their audience. Very nice. This conclusion is verified bythe Advanced: Trust and Advanced: Affinity values both being between 15-20%, bothgood numbers for a western cultural audience/author. Advanced: Trust and Affinityare indications of whether or not the author believes they are a member of theiraudience, hence that the audience will accept and act upon the informationpresented. Those values being between 15-20% validate many of the other values inthis analysis.

Intermediate: Author Influencer Type - At 90%, the author strongly believes they caninfluence their audience to act in certain ways. Also note the GateKeeper value isabout 10% of the Influencer value. This indicates that the author also believes theremay be a need to protect the audience from something. This becomes obvious aftera simple read of the material; the material is about trust demonstrations betweenindividuals without social ties. Whenever there is a request for trust there may be aconcern about misplaced trust, hence the residual GateKeeper value.

Advanced: Ten Must Marketing Messages - The two leftmost values, We Trust Youand You Can Trust Us, form a nice stair and this is good because it demonstratesthe trust relationship both extended by the author and received by the audience. Thenext four values, This Is Important to We Can Help You, don't demonstrate as nice astaircase and this can be a concern. The difference between This Is Important andThis Is Important to You equates to someone not proving something's importancebut still demanding that people pay attention, likewise the step between We Can Helpand We Can Help You equates to someone being a tad obsessive towards anindividual than being able to genuinely help that individual. The analysis providessome suggestions for rewriting the material so that these messages aren't lost in themix.

Advanced: Trust - A value of 16% is on the high side of what English speaking,western educated authors get here and is usually an indication of some relationshippre-existing between the author and their audience.

Advanced: Affinity - The 19% value here indicates (for most English speaking,western educated authors) that the author believes they are part of their audience.This is validated by some of the other values in the report and means the authorbelieves their audience will respond to the provided information as intended.Advanced: Author-Audience Rich Persona - RichPersona is a NextStage metric thata) I've written about quite a bit elsewhere and b) all of our clients use for a variety ofpurposes. The RichPersona section provides some psychologic factors of the mostreceptive audience for the material presented.



Advanced: Sphere of Influence - As mentioned previously, this material will work wellwith an audience familiar with the author and subject but not beyond it.

What I want to offer next can be thought of as "Comparing Apples with Apples, butGranny Smiths with Golden Delicious". The previous analysis came from analyzinghow the entire web page -- how it's typeface, font, colors, images, ... -- affectsreadership. Now compare the values presented above with the values presentedwhat follows (and found in http://nssa.nextstagevolution.com/review.cfm?pageid=380). What follows is an analysis of Alex's material only (I cut&pasted Alex'smaterial into a text file and analyzed that with NextStage's Sentiment Analysis tool).The differences between the full web page and just Alex's content demonstrate thatpeople should write both for the audience and also for how their information ispresented to its audience.

Basic: Author Attitude - The plain content demonstrates more Positive than the webpage version and draws that increase from both Neutral and Negative. In otherwords, if the author were sharing this information with you directly, you'd probablyfeel better about it.

Intermediate: Confidence - Here is the big news; the web page's formatting, etc., isdraining about 20 percentage points from this value. The author, by themself, ismuch more confident in their material than the web page would lead the reader tononconsciously believe.

Intermediate: Message Intent - The web page has the same stultifying aspects onthe Love metric here.

Intermediate: Author Influencer Type - The pure material has a recognizably higherHub value meaning the author sans web page formatting also believes theinformation they're offering is time, person and place specific.

Advanced: Ten Must Marketing Messages - You'll notice that the staircase of This IsImportant to We Can Help You is much better in the non-web page version.

Advanced: Trust and Affinity - Here is the big news. The author sans web pageformatting is demonstrating amazingly high values of social trust and affinity withtheir audience. These numbers are recognizably high for an English speaking,western educated author and that author should be congratulated (congrats, Alex!).

Advanced: Sphere of Influence - And here is where marketing in the guise ofplacement, web page audience versus individual's audience, etc., come into play.While the author's native material has much higher social connectivity andrelationship values, its actual audience is much smaller, meaning the author




transmitting this material by themself will make less of an impact that by placing thatsame material on this outlet.

Hope this helps and is useful. Please feel free to contact me directly with questions,comments or concerns.

Joseph

[[The Analyses]]Please go to http://nssa.nextstagevolution.com/review.cfm?pageid=374 to followalong with this analysis.

Starting at the top with Basic: Author Attitude - The fact that the Positive (green bar)is about 10pts higher than the Negative (red bar) is an indication that the author(Alex, in this case) is doing "heart" writing. They are writing to an audience they bothknow and believe will respond positively to what is written. Because they (probably)both know and believe the response will be positive, they're sharing more ofthemselves than they might normally share in a professional piece of writing.

Intermediate: Confidence - This is a very impressive value, 67%, and high enough tobe rarely seen in professional pieces that aren't blatant self-promotion ordemonstrations of outright arrogance. In a training, I would instruct users to comparethe Confidence value to Intermediate: Message Intent: Referral, Active Pleasure andLove values and Advanced: Trust and Advanced: Affinity values found further downin the report. The fact that all these values are also relatively high indicates that theConfidence value is based on the author's core beliefs in what they're offering ratherthan sarcasm, arrogance or self-promotion. In any case, 67% is a demonstration thatthe author (Alex) strongly believes the audience will both benefit and act upon theinformation presented.

Intermediate: Audience Branding - The fact that the "Read Once Then Ignore" valueis low and the other values in this section are non-existent indicates that a generalaudience wouldn't pay much attention to this piece. As with Confidence, I wouldinstruct users to compare these values with Advanced: Sphere of Influence: RealFollowers. That value is at 30%, meaning that 30% of the people in the author'simmediate circle of associates will respond to it. Thirty percent is a fairly highnumber in marketing circles and something to be proud of. The fact that RealFollowers is 30% but Friends of Followers and Friends of Friends are insignificantindicates that this piece could be audience specific (meaning it's full of jargon onlyknown to a specific audience) and definitely that people outside of the author'ssociologic "first circle" won't pay much attention to it, hence will "Read Once ThenIgnore".




Intermediate: Message Intent - The high Referral, Active Pleasure and Love valuesall demonstrate that the author believes the information presented is valuable to thereader, will be acted upon by the reader and that the author believes they are bothrecognized and honored by their audience. Very nice. This conclusion is verified bythe Advanced: Trust and Advanced: Affinity values both being between 15-20%, bothgood numbers for a western cultural audience/author. Advanced: Trust and Affinityare indications of whether or not the author believes they are a member of theiraudience, hence that the audience will accept and act upon the informationpresented. Those values being between 15-20% validate many of the other values inthis analysis.

Intermediate: Author Influencer Type - At 90%, the author strongly believes they caninfluence their audience to act in certain ways. Also note the GateKeeper value isabout 10% of the Influencer value. This indicates that the author also believes theremay be a need to protect the audience from something. This becomes obvious aftera simple read of the material; the material is about trust demonstrations betweenindividuals without social ties. Whenever there is a request for trust there may be aconcern about misplaced trust, hence the residual GateKeeper value.

Advanced: Ten Must Marketing Messages - The two leftmost values, We Trust Youand You Can Trust Us, form a nice stair and this is good because it demonstratesthe trust relationship both extended by the author and received by the audience. Thenext four values, This Is Important to We Can Help You, don't demonstrate as nice astaircase and this can be a concern. The difference between This Is Important andThis Is Important to You equates to someone not proving something's importancebut still demanding that people pay attention, likewise the step between We Can Helpand We Can Help You equates to someone being a tad obsessive towards anindividual than being able to genuinely help that individual. The analysis providessome suggestions for rewriting the material so that these messages aren't lost in themix.

Advanced: Trust - A value of 16% is on the high side of what English speaking,western educated authors get here and is usually an indication of some relationshippre-existing between the author and their audience.

Advanced: Affinity - The 19% value here indicates (for most English speaking,western educated authors) that the author believes they are part of their audience.This is validated by some of the other values in the report and means the authorbelieves their audience will respond to the provided information as intended.Advanced: Author-Audience Rich Persona - RichPersona is a NextStage metric thata) I've written about quite a bit elsewhere and b) all of our clients use for a variety ofpurposes. The RichPersona section provides some psychologic factors of the most



receptive audience for the material presented.

Advanced: Sphere of Influence - As mentioned previously, this material will work wellwith an audience familiar with the author and subject but not beyond it.

What I want to offer next can be thought of as "Comparing Apples with Apples, butGranny Smiths with Golden Delicious". The previous analysis came from analyzinghow the entire web page -- how it's typeface, font, colors, images, ... -- affectsreadership. Now compare the values presented above with the values presentedwhat follows (and found in http://nssa.nextstagevolution.com/review.cfm?pageid=380). What follows is an analysis of Alex's material only (I cut&pasted Alex'smaterial into a text file and analyzed that with NextStage's Sentiment Analysis tool).The differences between the full web page and just Alex's content demonstrate thatpeople should write both for the audience and also for how their information ispresented to its audience.

Basic: Author Attitude - The plain content demonstrates more Positive than the webpage version and draws that increase from both Neutral and Negative. In otherwords, if the author were sharing this information with you directly, you'd probablyfeel better about it.

Intermediate: Confidence - Here is the big news; the web page's formatting, etc., isdraining about 20 percentage points from this value. The author, by themself, ismuch more confident in their material than the web page would lead the reader tononconsciously believe.

Intermediate: Message Intent - The web page has the same stultifying aspects onthe Love metric here.

Intermediate: Author Influencer Type - The pure material has a recognizably higherHub value meaning the author sans web page formatting also believes theinformation they're offering is time, person and place specific.

Advanced: Ten Must Marketing Messages - You'll notice that the staircase of This IsImportant to We Can Help You is much better in the non-web page version.

Advanced: Trust and Affinity - Here is the big news. The author sans web pageformatting is demonstrating amazingly high values of social trust and affinity withtheir audience. These numbers are recognizably high for an English speaking,western educated author and that author should be congratulated (congrats, Alex!).

Advanced: Sphere of Influence - And here is where marketing in the guise ofplacement, web page audience versus individual's audience, etc., come into play.While the author's native material has much higher social connectivity and




June 1, 2010 at 9:37am

relationship values, its actual audience is much smaller, meaning the authortransmitting this material by themself will make less of an impact that by placing thatsame material on this outlet.

Hope this helps and is useful. Please feel free to contact me directly with questions,comments or concerns.

Joseph

Alex Todd

Barry, thank you for asking this important question, as it addresses the essence ofunderstanding the paradigm shift being introduced by this hack.

When we say we trust someone, we implicitly mean that we trust them for somethingin particular. For example, when I say I trust my mother, implicitly I mean I trust mymother to have my best interests at heart. Likewise, when I say I trust my pilot,implicitly I mean I trust him/her to fly the plane safely, but not necessarily to give megood financial advice. In each case, I am not trusting the individual absolutely foreverything in every possible situation. I trust people within a very specific context.Heck, I don't even trust myself absolutely, as sometimes I am tired, sick, hungry,emotional, drunk, etc. So, the things for which we trust people represent theinformation (implicit or explicit) that we rely on when we say we trust someone.

Here is a formulaic way to look at it: A trusts (or relies) on B for matters of C. C isthe information that A really needs to know is valid. Ideally, A's primary source oftrust is B, who also happens to be the provider of the C information. However, thatneed not be the case. You don't have to trust the person who delivers the informationin order to be able to rely on the validity of the information. Instead, you can rely onother sources of trust (other Bs if you will) to validate the C information.

If you think about it, this is exactly how a court of law works, which relies on neitherthe accuser or the accused for the validity of their claims, but instead on a collectionof witnesses. The same is true for eBay, where you don't necessarily trust theclaims of the merchant, but instead rely on the feedback provided by othercustomers. So, although relationships are an important way of validating criticalinformation about the parties involved, it is by no means the only way. In fact, Iwould suggest it is a limiting paradigm that does not scale well. I hope that helpsclarify what I mean when I say "managers can have a greater impact on businessperformance by enabling trust in information."





May 31, 2010 at 7:00am

May 31, 2010 at 6:10am

July 21, 2010 at 6:26am

Alex Todd

Hi Matt,

Thank you for being the first to comment on my proposed Hack.

Be assured that I am not holding back any "proprietary" information about theconcept, the framework, or any general methods. If you are interested in the detailsof how I envision it working, please review the Helpful Materials section. There isalso a lot more on my web site at http://TrustEnablement.com. However, I am alsonot claiming that my work to date is the final word on this hack. Instead, I believe itrepresents a good start for collaboration, starting with this discussion, towardrealizing the ultimate, "radical management innovation".

I'd be happy to fully answer all questions, short of disclosing details about anyspecific models or solutions that I designed by applying the framework.

- Alex

Matt Shlosberg

Alex -

You have all the right things there. I know it's proprietary, but it would be useful topost some details of how you approach the solution.

Thanks

Alex Todd

Charles, thank you for suggesting an "audit" system for non-financial data andprotect from data erosion. The framework I propose addresses both suggestions byempowering relying parties to identify and engage preferred sources of trust, and byfactoring the mechanisms that reliably deliver expected value.

You are right when you say "your focus on trusting data, rather than individuals isgood, but it's not new or unique". What is new is the structured method (systematicappraoch) I propose for universally diagnosing and designing condiions for trust indata. This takes it from being a heuristic to a technology, and therefore a


http://www.managementexchange.com/users/matt-shlosberg



http://trustenablement.com/

http://www.managementexchange.com/users/matt-shlosberg




July 14, 2010 at 12:57pm

June 12, 2010 at 3:38am

management innovation.

Charles Carrington

Alex,

Nice article/hack. This is my first introduction to MIX.

A couple of thoughts. First, your focus on trusting data, rather than individuals isgood, but it's not new or unique. As these commenters and you have noted, WesternJudicial systems use this approach. So does FASB for audits, and most large orgsdo too, as long as the data is sourced within their org (Military, IBM, etc.)

Unfortunately most of our non financial data is not audited, and its veracity isquestionable. Data is notoriously "dirty". Using the model of "trust but verify" youwould need to put in place process to audit the data, and then shift trust relationshipsfrom "personal relationships" to "data integrity". This integrity is quantifiable so youcan adjust the risk tolerance to the quality of the data.

People use trust to expand their sphere of information beyond direct experience. Insome sense that will always be riskier than data collected firsthand.

Second, I think that people already put more trust in data than is warranted. ErgoWikipedia. If you want to improve people's reliance on trust in data, you have toimprove the data, and decrease the "erosion".

Charles

Alex Todd

George,

Thank you for your interest and for taking time to ask some thoughtful and thought-provoking questions. I'll try to answer them below, bur first I'd like to confirm yourunderstanding of the premise of my hack:

1. Question: Would enforcable legal contracts (and a developed rule of law) be acurrent example of information that enables trust?

Answer: Yes, I would say that a contract supported by a developed judicial processis a good example of enabling trust in information. The contract specifies what each

http://www.managementexchange.com/users/charles-carrington


http://www.managementexchange.com/users/charles-carrington




party needs to rely on (in other words, what information needs to be trusted) and thejudicial process helps to validate and enforce compliance.

2. Question: An alternative seems to be for market participants to increase theirvolume of "personal" relationships through social networking sites - how do you seethis phenomenon fitting into your model?

Answer: Yes, That's a good example. Most social networking relationships areshallow (however, some may deepen with repeated interactions, especially ifaugmented by meetings in person), and would not by many measures meet thestandard of what most people think of when they use the term "relationship". In thosecases, members of your social network may act simply as sources of trust for anyinformation you are trying to validate. Although you may not place a great deal oftrust in any individual of your social network, you may be able to attain a higher levelof confidence in the validity of the information by getting validation from multiple(semi-trusted) people in your network. In fact, you may well be able to attain a higherlevel of trust by aggregating the validations of many people you hardly know thanyou can from one or a few individuals with whom you have a very close relationship.

3. Question: Do we tend to trust like minded people more than people who thinkdifferently from us? Is this something you would view as limitting or simply a fact?

Answer: I would say that it is generally limiting. We do tend to trust like-mindedpeople more, because they are more likely to validate our own beliefs, whichessentially validates our being. Likewise, relying on people who understand usensures that they are validating the information based on a context that is relevant tous. In other words, their validation of any information is based on them having abetter understanding of the impact to us if we rely on the information. However, it canalso have the opposite effect, by causing us to self-select a homogeneous sample ofpeople to trust. It's kind of like replicating yourself multiple times to be able to saythat others feel the same way you do. We label people who seek only to validatetheir own point of view as "delusional". The key to developing trust in any informationis validating it from multiple independent sources, even those you don't trust somuch. If you think about it, that's exactly how a court of law works when it relies onthe evidence of independent witnesses. The big challenge with this approach isfaced by people, like innovators, who are pursuing a course of action they believe tobe valid, but are surrounded by people who view those actions from a differentcontext and therefore tend to invalidate them. The solution is to diversify the networkof prospective validators, perhaps through online social networking and to carefullyconsider the context of each validator's feedback.

4. Question: What do you see as the relationship between competence and



trustability?

Answer: Trusting someone's competence is the same as trusting someone to dowhat they say (or imply) they will do. I call this "integrity", which I define ashonouring your word. Integrity is the foundation for "trustability". The question thenbecomes, what are the different ways in which you can establish trust in someone'scompetency? For example, you could ask for independent and recognizedcredentials, or you could rely on references (preferably from someone you trust), oryou can directly put the person's competency to the test, etc.

5. Question: Have you seen or done any studies on statistical predictors of trust ?For example if someone has acted in a trustworthy way in the past does this makethem more likely to act in a trustworthy way in the future? Assuming this is the case- how does one deal with anomalies - for example a long con?

Answer: I have compiled many studies on trust, some of which I have included in adocument "The Facts on Trust" (seehttp://trustenablement.com/opt/The_Facts_on_Trust.pdf). However, I don't recall astudy that measures either the propensity of an individual to trust again when theirtrust had been validated in the past or a person to continue to behave in atrustworthy fashion if they have done so in the past. Nevertheless, we all know frompersonal experiences and that of others, that this is absolutely the case. If you haveproven to be trustworthy in the past, I will tend to trust you more. In the event thatsomething happens to erode my trust, you will need to rebuild it for me again.Likewise, if I behave in a trustworthy fashion today, I am likely to continue to do soin the future - unless circumstances change. So what are the implications for longcons, such as the infamous case of Bernie Madoff? Well, this is exactly the problemmy hack attempts to overcome. A con is founded on the premise that the con artisthas proven themselves trustworthy over time, and is expected to continue to behavethe same way in the future. The fallacy with this relationship-based foundation fortrust is that in the process of building trust, people also narrow the diversity ofsources of trust to one person, the con artist. "The Trust Extender" seeks toempower people with the knowledge and resources that help them objectivelydevelop, sustain and rebuild trust. It also helps them to continually re-consider andrely on both the person's proficiencies (for performance) and their motivations (thatmay affect the person's future decision-making) that may change over time. IfMadoff's clients had means to be be aware of the experiences of all his other clients,had independent access to their assets and underlying performance metrics, andhypothetically knew that strong disincentives (such as a method of maintaining thechain of custody to the money or strong and/or effective extradition laws) made ithighly unlikely that Madoff would abscond with their money, then his con may havebeen far less likely. This is what I mean when I refer to designing rich conditions for




June 8, 2010 at 9:04am

trust that make trust scalable beyond relationships and allow more people to trustsooner and longer.

Jose Leal

Hello Alex,

Great work on this hack. This is a critical part of the future of information. Withoutthis type of work we will not be able to move beyond proprietary information andtowards a future where democratized information creates a truely efficientmarketplace.

As we've discussed in the past, having a trust framework will be increasinglyimportant for the future of the marketplace and information technology as we know it.As more and more information is created and moderated and managed bycommunities it is essential that we create systems for evaluating the trustworthinessof the resulting information.

To your point below, there is no way for me to trust the person. How can I trust eachof the 20 or more people that contributed to a single Wikipedia article? How do I asnon-active member of the Wikipedia community trust the article? I don't know thosecontributors, nor do I have the time or inclination to learn about them. In most cases,I trust that the Wikipedia community did their best to keep the article accurate. Idon't need to know who contributed, nor do I need to trust them individually. I trustthe system, the community. The problem arises as the article is used outside theWikipedia community. If for example, a blogger copies the article and pastes it into ablog post, I have much less trust that the article is accurate.

We need to create systems that live outside of a single community. Systems thatbridge communities or more importantly that exist above individual communities.Systems that translate the intrinsic trust of individual, contributions andcommunities, and provides for the trust to be embedded in the resulting informationitself.

In other words, if I can be assured that the excerpt from the Wikipedia article in ablog is exactly as the Wikipedia community created it, then I have a greater level oftrust.

Keep up the good work!

Jose

http://www.managementexchange.com/users/jose-leal

http://www.managementexchange.com/users/jose-leal



June 5, 2010 at 10:12amAlex Todd

Anna,

Thank you for your excellent suggestion. You are absolutely correct, the GoogleLabs analogy is exactly the kind of thing I had in mind in item #5 of the Solutionsection, where I refer to experimenting in sandboxes, "Managers, seek externalexpertise and create sandboxes for experimenting with third party tools that supportyour trust extending initiatives." I envision the proposed Institute for Extending Trustas being the enabler of these sandboxes on behalf of participating organizations, andthereby, in effect, providing the "Google Labs"-like structures and processes, whichwould make it considerably easier for organizations to begin experimenting. As Ithink about it, your suggestion may be worthy of being a distinct hack that stands onits own, because these lab/sandbox type facilities would likely be generic and able tosupport experimentation with virtually any innovation, including that being conductedby the Institute for Extending Trust (IET). In this scenario, the IET would simply usethe lab facilities provided by an overarching management innovation lab, such asLondon Business School's MLabs (see http://www.managementlab.org/).

Your questions about motivation hit at the heart of the issue of why trust has beenlargely ignored by business. If you think about it, if trust is known to significantlyimproving business and economic performance (see "The Facts on Trust" athttp://trustenablement.com/opt/The_Facts_on_Trust.pdf) it is difficult to comprehendwhy business has invested billions of dollars on risk management (which increasestransaction costs) instead. In fact, virtually every organization has a budget formanaging risks, but almost none have any money allocated explicitly for enablingtrust. After spending years of trying to understand the reasons for this, I have cometo the conclusion that organizations inherently do not have a mandate to enablestakeholder trust. I believe corporate governance practices will need to transform inways that legitimize stakeholder trust as a strategic consideration (see TheConference Board of Canada's work on this athttp://trustenablement.com/index.htm#StakeholderTrust). With that in mind, I haveconducted research and made recommendations intended to begin this process in arecent article and book contribution (seehttp://trustenablement.com/index.htm#CorporateGovernance). I believe that withoutchanging the tone from the top, any trust enablement initiatives are likely to wilt anddie from a toxic organizational environment. An example of this is customerrelationship management (CRM), a well intentioned initiative that when adoptedbecame usurped by conflicting organizational motivations to instead become a toolfor exploiting customers.



http://www.managementlab.org/


http://trustenablement.com/index.htm#StakeholderTrust

http://trustenablement.com/index.htm#CorporateGovernance



June 4, 2010 at 8:26am

June 3, 2010 at 12:43pm

Appropriate transformations in board practices will cause new principles and policies(see an example at http://trustenablement.com/Policy_Recommendations.htm) tobecome incorporated in operational standards and processes. These new structureswill systematize trust practices and accordingly transform organizational cultures.Cultures that value trust will feed a virtuous, sustainable, self-reinforcing spiral ofevery-increasing trust, reversing current institutionalized, risk-oriented cultures thatare fueling a vile, self-reinforcing downward spiral of mistrust and ever-growingcontrols that stifle productivity.

Thank you for asking these critically important questions.

Anna Carbone

Alex,A couple thoughts come to mind:

1. Perhaps, the analogy for your trust process/framework could be presented as the“Google Labs” of sorts, promotingcollaboration and departmental thought leadership.

2. Motivation-How do you ensure legitimate motivation exists amongst stakeholders to sustain theflow of trustful information(garbage in garbage out) ?

- What incentives need to be considered to ensure the process remains relevant andthat it results in meaningful paybackfor manager types?

Food for thought.Anna

Alex Todd

Erika,

Thank you for your helpful suggestion. Here are some additional applications thatmight resonate with managers:

Risk Management: http://trustenablement.com/local/GRCT-KPMG.ppsx

http://www.managementexchange.com/users/anna-carbone



http://www.managementexchange.com/users/anna-carbone


http://trustenablement.com/local/GRCT-KPMG.ppsx



Corporate Policies: see http://trustenablement.com/Policy_Recommendations.htm

Corporate Governance: see Governance Lifecycle Model (GLM)™ Assessment Toolat http://trustenablement.com/governing.html#GLM and "Corporate Governance BestPractices: One size does not fit all" athttp://trustenablement.com/local/Corporate_Governanc_Best_%20Preactices-...

Business Strategy: "Trust Enablement: A critical success factor" athttp://trustenablement.com/local/Assessment_of_Critical_Success_Factor.pdf

Supply Chain Management: "Trust Enabled™ Supply Networks: Uncovering thetrust-building secrets of highly collaborative supply chains." athttp://trustenablement.com/local/Trust_Enabled_Supply_Networks-whitepape... and"Trust Enabled™ Supply Networks: Enabling trust for collaboration, innovation andsustainability" at http://trustenablement.com/Trust_Enabled_Supply_Networks-SCL-notes.pdf

Electronic Commerce: "The Challenges of Online Trust: for online and offlinebusinesses" at http://trustenablement.com/local/The_Challenges_of_Online_Trust-slides.pdf and "The Essential Christmas Web-store Makeover" athttp://trustenablement.com/Web-store_Makeover_Article.html

Sales and Marketing: "Trust: The most important marketing ingredient" athttp://trustenablement.com/local/Hepworth_Interview-Trust_the_most_impor...,"Measuring Awareness, Brand & Competitive Standing: Using trust indicators", and"Enabling Trust Online" athttp://trustenablement.com/local/Enabling_Trust_Online.pdf

Online Social Networks: "Building Trust in the Social Space" at http://diy-marketing.blogspot.com/2008/10/building-trust-in-social-space...

Information Technology: "Confidence & The Cloud" athttp://trustenablement.com/local/Cobit_Cloud.pdf, "Trusting Information - Not theSource: The impact of trust on Business on Demand" athttp://trustenablement.com/local/Trusting_Information-Not_the_Source.pdf, and E-Trust: Establisning consumer confidence in On-Line Commercial Transactions" athttp://trustenablement.com/local/E-Trust-Establishing_Consumer_Confidenc...

Outsourcing: "Why Outsourcing Deals Fail" athttp://trustenablement.com/local/Why_Outsourcing_Deals_Fail-draft.pdf

Collaboration: ""Trust Enabled™ Ecosystems: SAP Global Ecosystem Marketing" athttp://trustenablement.com/local/Trust_Enabled_Ecosystems.ppsx, "Global SupplyChain Risk Management & Trust Study" at


http://trustenablement.com/governing.html#GLM

http://trustenablement.com/local/Corporate_Governanc_Best_%20Preactices-mar08_icsa_intnl.pdf

http://trustenablement.com/local/Assessment_of_Critical_Success_Factor.pdf

http://trustenablement.com/local/Trust_Enabled_Supply_Networks-whitepaper.pdf

http://trustenablement.com/Trust_Enabled_Supply_Networks-SCL-notes.pdf

http://trustenablement.com/local/The_Challenges_of_Online_Trust-slides.pdf

http://trustenablement.com/Web-store_Makeover_Article.html

http://trustenablement.com/local/Hepworth_Interview-Trust_the_most_important_marketing_ingredient.pdf

http://trustenablement.com/local/Enabling_Trust_Online.pdf

http://diy-marketing.blogspot.com/2008/10/building-trust-in-social-space.html

http://trustenablement.com/local/Cobit_Cloud.pdf

http://trustenablement.com/local/Trusting_Information-Not_the_Source.pdf

http://trustenablement.com/local/E-Trust-Establishing_Consumer_Confidence_presentation.PDF

http://trustenablement.com/local/Why_Outsourcing_Deals_Fail-draft.pdf

http://trustenablement.com/local/Trust_Enabled_Ecosystems.ppsx



June 3, 2010 at 4:29am

June 1, 2010 at 10:27am

http://trustenablement.com/Aberdee_SCRM_&_Trust_Study-ExecSummary.pdf, and"The Wikinomics Playbook" athttp://www.socialtext.net/data/workspaces/wikinomics/attachments/wikinom...

Leadership: "Building Trust in a Law Firm" athttp://trustenablement.com/local/Building_Trust_in_a_Law_Firm.pdf

Ethics and Compliance: "Trust without Ethics - Ethics without Trust" athttp://trustenablers.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=28147497689...

Public Policy: "Creating trust in government is more than 'cleaning house'" athttp://trustenablement.com/local/Creating_trust_in_government.pdf

Economic Development: "Leading Intelligent Communities Through Enabling Trust"at http://trustenablement.com/local/iCommunity_Focus_on_Leadership-Leading_...

Erika Ilves

Alex,On a conceptual level, I can see how in some contexts taking relationships out ofthe trust equation can do great things.It would be helpful if you could spell out what you see as the most importantapplications for your Trust Extender, in addition to governing alliances. It might makeit easier for the managers you target to take you up on your invitation.

Alex Todd

I just suggested a build for Gary Hamel's hack "Leader Meter (Finding NaturalLeaders)" and it occurred to me that it would also be valuable for my own hack:

"Gary, consider incorporating a social media tool such as the one I have beendesigning for a similar purpose:

A microblogging widget that captures business intelligence about users' ability tobelieve information:

Decision Support Widget: A tool that helps users validate information by askingstructured questions in the form "Is it true that…?" sent via microblogging, instantmessaging, SMS or e-mail to people they trust to validate it. - Hence, the peoplethey choose to follow (namely, prospective leaders).

http://www.managementexchange.com/users/erika-ilves


http://trustenablement.com/Aberdee_SCRM_&_Trust_Study-ExecSummary.pdf

http://www.socialtext.net/data/workspaces/wikinomics/attachments/wikinomics:20080213154459-1-3411/original/the%20wikinomics%20playbook%2002%202008.pdf

http://trustenablement.com/local/Building_Trust_in_a_Law_Firm.pdf

http://trustenablers.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474976899647

http://trustenablement.com/local/Creating_trust_in_government.pdf

http://trustenablement.com/local/iCommunity_Focus_on_Leadership-Leading_Intelligent_Communities_Through_Enabling_Trust-Alex%20Todd.pdf

http://www.managementexchange.com/users/erika-ilves




June 1, 2010 at 9:06am

Business Intelligence: Tracks communications between individuals inside andoutside the organization, identifying what employees and business ecosystemparticipants are having difficulty believing and who they are relying on for validation. -Hence, identify the emerging leaders in various areas.

Performance Optimization: Helps management eliminate trust bottlenecks inside andoutside the organization."

BTW, I am designing this tool using the trust extending framework I propose in thishack.

Barry Linetsky

Alex: I am generally unfamiliar with the subject matter, but I think of trust as arelationship between two people. From this perspective, I don't understand what itmeans to "rely on the information" apart from trusting the source of the information.So this still entails trust between people. Please clarify what you mean when yousay that "managers can have a greater impact on business performance by enablingtrust in information."

Barry Linetsky

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