Trust Across America-Trust Around the World™

Leaders and their organizations must earn trust before they can build it.

Failure to earn trust leaves the enterprise vulnerable to countless risks. —

Barbara Brooks Kimmel

Trust building can be implemented through the following sequence of actions and initiatives. We call this the VIP Trust Model.

• VISION & VALUES: Leaders identify, with input from all stakeholders, the organization’s principles or core values. Why does the organization exist and what does it stand for? Write a meaningful credo with buy-in from all silos.
• INTEGRITY: Practice and regularly communicate the moral principles and purpose of the leadership team and the organization. Hold training for employees in leading with trust in their behaviors and interactions. Lose the “sales scripts.”
• PROMISES & PROCESS: Ensure that leadership is held accountable for doing what they say they will do, and for regularly communicating the vision, values and promises to all stakeholders. Make this a daily function of your corporate responsibility team in collaboration with compliance and communications.

Implement ways of doing things that translate the principles above into organized group behavior. Internally this includes the hiring and training of employees, structure of meetings, transparency of/fair personnel policies, how decisions are made and accessibility to leadership. With external stakeholders (vendors, customers, community, etc.), trust can be enhanced using quantitative measurement, benchmark and screening “tools” like Trust Across America’s FACTS® Framework.

About the Author:

Barbara Brooks Kimmel is the CEO and Cofounder of Trust Across America-Trust Around the World whose mission is to help organizations build trust. Now in its seventh year, the program’s proprietary FACTS® Framework ranks and measures the trustworthiness of over 2,000 U.S. public companies on five quantitative indicators of trust. Barbara is also the editor of the award-winning TRUST INC. book series and a Managing Member at FACTS® Asset Management, a New Jersey registered investment advisor.

Nominations are now open for the 7th annual Top Thought Leaders in Trust.

Copyright (c)  2016, Next Decade, Inc.

It’s Week #31 of 2016. This latest article is part of a series drawn from our 3rd annual 2016 Trust Poster….now hanging in hundreds of offices around the world. Get yours today!

52 Ideas That You Can Implement to Build Trust

Nan Russell offers this week’s advice. Nan is both a Trust Across America Top Thought Leader in Trust and a member of our Trust Alliance.

Treat people as the talented, creative, resourceful, and innovative adults they are. 

Beliefs affect actions. Do you believe most people are talented and resourceful, or most people aren’t? Most are trustworthy or most aren’t? When we act in accordance with our expectations, we enable those expectations. It’s called the Pygmalion Effect. The connection between what we expect and what we get is well documented. Behavioral scientists at the University of Zurich have confirmed experimentally that “if you trust people, you make them more trustworthy.” And, conversely, “sanctions designed to deter people from cheating actually make them cheat.”  Yet many leaders don’t realize that withholding trust reduces the exact behaviors they want and need. When you treat people as the talented, creative, resourceful, and innovative adults they are, you’re likely to get the great results you seek, plus the added dividends of increased trust and engagement.

Will you choose to take this valuable advice to your organization this week? If not, ask yourself “why not?”

Barbara Brooks Kimmel is the CEO and Cofounder of Trust Across America-Trust Around the World whose mission is to help organizations build trust. Now in its seventh year, the program’s proprietary FACTS® Framework ranks and measures the trustworthiness of over 2000 US public companies on five quantitative indicators of trustworthy business behavior. Barbara is also the editor of the award winning TRUST INC. book series and the Executive Editor of TRUST! Magazine.

Copyright 2016, Next Decade, Inc.

It’s Week #24 of 2016. This latest article is part of a series drawn from our 3rd annual 2016 Trust Poster….now hanging in hundreds of offices around the world. Get yours today!

52 Ideas That You Can Implement to Build Trust

As the CEO and Cofounder of Trust Across America-Trust Around the World, I offer this week’s idea:

When trust is made a business imperative, leadership must “own” it.

Ask almost any employee from the ground floor to the C-Suite who “owns” trust in the organization and don’t be surprised at the blank stares coming back your way. The truth is, “trust” is an orphan child simply because most leaders suffer from two false assumptions:

• Trust is a soft skill.
• Trust can’t be measured or tied to profitability. 

But our own FACTS(R)  Framework research paints a very different picture. Trust is NOT soft and it CAN be measured. During the three-year period from February 2013-February 2016 America’s most trustworthy public companies outperformed the S&P 500 by 1.8x. The composite results translate to 16.7% annualized for FACTS® vs. 9.5% for the S&P 500.

This was not a “test” but rather actual money under management, followed by an independent audit verifying the returns.

When leaders embrace trust as an intentional business strategy it translates into a hard asset and profits soar. Building organizational trust is a top down strategy and almost always involves a period of culture change. If the leader doesn’t recognize the need for change, own it and budget for it, it will never happen. The most progressive leaders are out of the “trust” gate and ahead of their peers.

Barbara Brooks Kimmel is the CEO and Cofounder of Trust Across America-Trust Around the World whose mission is to help organizations build trust. Now in its seventh year, the program’s proprietary FACTS® Framework ranks and measures the trustworthiness of over 2000 US public companies on five quantitative indicators of trustworthy business behavior. Barbara is also the editor of the award winning TRUST INC. book series and the Executive Editor of TRUST! Magazine.

Copyright 2016, Next Decade, Inc.

I am happy to share our 2016 Trust Bibliography update curated by Bob Easton, an Accenture partner and long time friend of Trust Across America. Now at 84 pages, it is perhaps the largest living bibliography of its kind, and a tremendous asset to those who acknowledge trust as an intentional business strategy and competitive advantage.

Thank you Bob for your commitment.

Barbara Brooks Kimmel is the CEO and Cofounder of Trust Across America-Trust Around the World whose mission is to help organizations build trust. Now in its seventh year, the program’s proprietary FACTS® Framework ranks and measures the trustworthiness of over 2000 US public companies on five quantitative indicators of trustworthy business behavior. Barbara is also the editor of the award winning TRUST INC. book series and the Executive Editor of TRUST! Magazine.

Copyright 2016, Next Decade, Inc.

The media’s coverage of trust is gaining momentum — but the headlines are still fuzzy. It’s not hard to find examples that talk about trust as an adjective, verb, and noun, but that all fail to frame or define for readers what the word “trust” really means.

Consider the following headlines from just a couple of days in February:

When Chicagoans Don’t Trust Police, the City Suffers, Chicago Tribune, February 3, 2016

Do You Trust Taco Bell Enough to Blindly Pre-Order a Mystery Item From Them? Probably Not. Paste Magazine, February 3, 2016

In Flint water crisis, the biggest problem to fix may be trust, Christian Science Monitor, February 1, 2016

Are Chicago’s police officers untrustworthy, or is it just that Chicago’s citizenry are scared — or both? Do you trust Taco Bell to use high quality ingredients enough to order a “mystery item?” With which stakeholders is Flint attempting to fix trust?

So what EXACTLY do we mean when we talk about trust?

Read more in this article published yesterday on the FCPA Blog.

Is Gender Diversity Profitable? That’s the title of a recent study published by The Peterson Institute. In its introductory abstract the study states: Analysis of a global survey of 21,980 firms from 91 countries suggests that the presence of women in corporate leadership positions may improve firm performance.

Trust Across America-Trust Around the World is encouraged by this research and employed it as a steppingstone for a study to test the following hypothesis:

Does the percentage of women on boards positively impact the trustworthiness of public companies, and therefore, their performance?

Our methodology:

Our *FACTS® Framework data served as the basis to analyze the 5-year average FACTS® score for the Top 50 and Bottom 50 companies in the S&P 500.

We then matched the 100 companies (50 top and 50 bottom) to publicly available board composition data from the 2020 Women on Boards Gender Diversity Directory. For those unfamiliar with this program, the goal of 2020 Women on Boards is to increase the percentage of women on US company boards to 20% or greater by the year 2020. Women currently hold 18.8% of Board seats up from 14.6% in 2011.

Initial observations:

50 Most Trustworthy Public Companies

• An average of 23% women on boards
• Thirty companies above 20% women on boards, twenty below 20%
• In this 100-company universe Dr. Pepper Snapple Group had the highest percentage (44%) of women on boards.

50 Least Trustworthy Public Companies

• An average of 16.3% of women on boards or 43% lower than the Top 50 companies
• Twenty companies above 20% women on boards, thirty below 20%
• Four companies in the Bottom 50 had no women on their boards.

A few notable early findings:

Eight of the most trustworthy companies in our survey are in the financial services sector, often cited as one of the least trustworthy sectors. Of the eight, only JP Morgan Chase & Co. had less than 20% of women on their Board.

Nine of the least trustworthy companies are also in the financial services sector. Only one of the nine has a female board composition of over 20%.

This is why we like to say “Industry is not destiny.”

*Our FACTS® Framework

• Measures the trust “worthiness” of over 2000 public companies
• Across 16 sectors
• Over a period of 6+ years (since 2010)
• Including five quantitative indicators of trustworthy business behavior
• An audited portfolio performance track record vs. the S&P 500 is available for the period February 2013 to February 2016.
• Portfolio returns as follows: FACTS® returned 80% above S&P 500; FACTS® annualized 16.7% vs. S&P 500 9%

While our initial study supports The Peterson Institute’s findings, the hypothesis can only be proven, or disproven, with a more detailed analysis covering years of historical data and information. Further findings will be reported in the spring research issue of TRUST! Magazine scheduled for publication in late April and distributed at no cost to our Trust Alliance members.

Barbara Brooks Kimmel is the CEO and Cofounder of Trust Across America-Trust Around the World whose mission is to help organizations build trust. Now in its sixth year, the program’s proprietary FACTS® Framework ranks and measures the trustworthiness of over 2000 US public companies on five quantitative indicators of trust. Barbara is also the editor of the award winning TRUST INC. book series and the Executive Editor of TRUST! Magazine.

Contact: Barbara@trustacrossamerica.com

Copyright © 2016, Next Decade, Inc.

It’s Week #5 of 2016. This is our latest article in a series of weekly ideas to elevate trust in your organization, drawn from our third annual 2016 Trust Poster, 52 Ideas That You Can Implement to Build Trust.

Doug Conant of Conant Leadership and one of our 2016 Top Thought Leaders in Trust offers this:

Work tirelessly to dispel the illusion that trust is a “soft” skill.

Here are eight research-based reasons for taking Doug’s advice:

Trust Across America’s FACTS® Framework (an ongoing 3-year analysis) shows America’s Most Trustworthy Public Companies more than doubling the outperformance of the S&P 500 over that same period: FACTS 62.4% vs. S&P 29.5% in a live institutional portfolio.

A study by KRW International surveyed employees and CEOs in 84 companies about the character of their leadership teams and compared the results to their financial performance. The average ROA for the S&P 500 ranges from 2 – 3.25%. Character counts and pays off.

From Global Alliance for Banking on Values, (see more on the GABV in the first issue of TRUST! Magazine,) which compared values- based and sustainable banks to their big-bank rivals and found: 7% higher Return on Equity for values-based banks (7.1% ROE compared to 6.6% for big banks).

A 2013 study by Guiso, Sapienza and Zingales called “The Value of Corporate Culture” finds that proclaimed values appear irrelevant. Yet, when employees perceive top managers as trustworthy and ethical, firm’s performance is stronger.

And when trust is ignored or perceived as a soft skill, organizations suffer from the following and much more:

Less than one-third of US workers were engaged in their jobs in 2014, with millenials the least engaged. (Gallup) and this is costing the US economy $450-550 billion a year, which is over 15% of payroll costs. (Gallup, 2013)

The six biggest U.S. banks, led by JP Morgan Chase & Co. and Bank of America Corp. have piled up $103 billion in legal costs since the financial crisis. (Bloomberg, August 2013)

The PR firm Edelman finds in their 2015 “Trust Barometer” that Among the informed public segment of the 33,000-person survey — a group of 700 wealthy, well-educated, well-informed individuals — 57 per cent said they trusted business, down from 59 per cent last year. (Financial Times, January 20, 2015)

The Washington Post reported that “the federal government imposed an estimated $216 billion in regulatory costs on the economy (in 2012), nearly double its previous record.”

Do you still believe trust is a soft skill? Need more proof of the argument that trust is a hard asset?

How many readers took took the advice offered in January in our Weekly series?

Week #1 Kouzes & Posner 

Week #2 Bob Vanourek

Week #3 Barbara Kimmel

Week #4 Mark Fernandes

Barbara Brooks Kimmel is the CEO & Cofounder of Trust Across America-Trust Around the World whose mission is to help responsible organizations build trust. She facilitates the world’s largest membership program for those interested in the subject. Barbara also serves as editor of the award winning TRUST INC. book series and the Executive Editor of TRUST! Magazine. In 2012 Barbara was named “One of 25 Women Changing the World” by Good Business International.

Copyright 2016, Next Decade, Inc.