The unabashed bias has always been towards the ‘tried and trusted‘. Coming from a place of quiet reassurance. Comforting and calming. No friction or inertia.
Sometime back I had the opportunity to do an interview with Steven Covey Jr for our media platform BrandKnew. He had then just released his book ‘ Trust & Inspire‘. For those interested, you can access the interview here. The conversation was way more than intriguing and opened up a can of multiple possibilities in my mind.
Food for thought- I firmly believe that ‘culture is strategy‘ and much water has flown under the ‘culture eats strategy for breakfast‘ bridge. We are trusted because of our way of being, not because of our polished exteriors or our expertly crafted communications. Trust is not a matter of technique, tricks, or tools but of character.
I am sticking my neck out here with a rant of a different kind.We have stock exchanges all over the world and stocks move up and down due to macro or micro economic factors and equally importantly company performance in terms of both top lines and bottom lines. My wish list is slightly different. What if organisations were to be indexed on a Trust Stock Exchange and measured on various metrics that include all key stake holders be it the entire supply chain, the end users | customers, the internal stakeholders | employees, associates and business partners, suppliers, regulators, banks, internal and external auditors and financial institutions, the conventional stock markets- each and every possible touch point that an organisation engages with, day in and day out- and the most vital metric used to measure performance is trust. Whether they are complying with norms or not, are they under delivering, are they practicing DEI, do they walk the talk on customer and employee experience, is it engaging in unfair trade practices, are they sourcing ethically, are they practicing the need to go green, are supplier payments made on time, is it meritocracy driven etc etc- sum summarum, is the organisation trustworthy? The index could move up or down in real time and the scale could be on 1 to 100. Greater the trust ratings on the index, more the value and the equity of the company. Which in turn brings on more gravitas from customers, collaborators, the entire value chain. The domino effect being the stocks on the exchange reflect positively too.
This can be applicable across Governments and electorates, communities and society and in all walks of life. Measuring an intangible will become the norm.
Could this be for real? Can this inspire? Would this be the future? If trust-deficit is so loosely bandied about(simply because that is the reality in most cases and places), don’t you think it is time to walk the talk?
ENDS