A Disappearing Asset . . . Trust
Here's a fascinating instance of the general lack of trust in organizations today, courtesy of Management Issues: Execs don't trust their own companies with private information. According to a survey of more than 1,700 senior-level corporate and technology leaders in the USA and UK looking at the importance, impact and influence of trust, privacy and security within the corporate world, almost a third of senior executives do not trust their own companies to handle private or sensitive information.
Is it any wonder that so much time and effort has to be spent "checking up" on people, when even those at the top think their own colleagues don't trust them? Could there be a more chilling indictment of the typical organizational culture around today?
The study also found that despite a growing awareness of risk management and security issues in the corporate world, more than a third of the companies polled do not task senior leaders with protecting the trust that customers, investors and even their own employees have placed in those companies.And look at this: not only do a third of executives not trust their own companies, the same proportion are either unsure or don't think that most of their business partners consider them to be trustworthy.
Is it any wonder that so much time and effort has to be spent "checking up" on people, when even those at the top think their own colleagues don't trust them? Could there be a more chilling indictment of the typical organizational culture around today?
4 Comments:
The "Trust" theme is beginning to appear everywhere. I suspect what it really means is who and what can we Trust? We seem to have lost our way on knowing about Trust.
When I talk to people about Trust and how to determine who and what they Trust, and to what degree, I get a lot of blank looks.
I get even more blank looks when I use the scenario of mountain climbing and who you would want on the other end of your rope? The typical response is, "How silly! I don't mountain climb". It is even worse if you try to use deep sea diving and who you would want manning your tether and air lines.
I ran across this Web page for the OSDL Doubt SIG at:
http://developer.osdl.org/dev/doubt/
This is their philosophy:
DOUBT
We want to trust system.
We do not want to believe in system.
What is DOUBT project?
DOUBT is project to create set of system invalidation checking programs.
DOUBT stands for
D oubt is
c O llection of
U ncertainty checking
B road range
T esting tools
I have been trying to apply these guidelines and philosophy.
to trust means to risk
to risk requires courage
courage requires security
to feel secure, one needs to trust.
sadly, my experience of the capitalist model in my country means that to trust, outside a loving relationship, is naive.
the default behaviour in society has been learned from experience - and thus skepticism is prevalent.
the unusual behaviours we seem to have adopted due to unfettered capitalism (win-at-all-costs, productivity obsession, curbed emotional expression) are all too common in modern society and are precious little evidence of 5000 odd years of 'civilisation'.
we've stalled a bit, think.
Thanks for your comment, Jason.
Yes, trust is becoming a rare commodity, but it doesn't have to be that way. If enough people speak out and expose those who would replace trust with expediency, we might just change things.
Keep reading, my freind.
Thanks for your great comment, Robert.
I have written in praise of doubt before, and the acronym you supply truly encapsulates why doubt is so important.
Keep reading, my friend.
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