Achieving large scale impact requires the coordinated movement of many people. When people trust each other, less work is required in the back-and-forth of more meetings, follow-ups, escalations, etc. Unfortunately none of that extra work can be automated and requires our precious human time. Even those ‘harmless’ additional emails demand time and context switching: minutes which could be otherwise spent making.
The more trust there is, the more seamless the process and quicker the progress to results. Establishing trust is critical. Zero trust breeds fear or worse, sabotage and the general sludge of politics. Broken trust is hard to repair and may be insurmountable. Improvements in trust over time, however, can drive holistic, organizational performance gains. Fully trusting teams are closer to operating at 100%. Imagine how effective a society could be if it fully trusted its institutions and leadership. It inspires me to focus on improving trust throughout and across my life.
Trust has become a big topic for me lately with the decentralized approaches of blockchain and other platforms. I’m realizing that trust is an essential human condition to bringing out the best in people, teams, organizations, and personal relationships. Incredible things happen in a trusted space. I wonder how trust can be quantified, verified, and automated to make our lives more fluid, nimble, productive, and fulfilling.