Trust Across America-Trust Around the World™

If a brand genuinely wants to make a social contribution, it should start with who they are, not what they do. For only when a brand has defined itself and its core values can it identify causes or social responsibility initiatives that are in alignment with its authentic brand story. Simon Mainwaring

We know that trust is built in incremental steps via a holistic approach that begins with leadership voluntarily choosing to make trust a business imperative. In other words, trust and trustworthiness become core values. Many companies, however, choose to view trust through the narrow lens of corporate social responsibility. They measure their good citizenship according to the number of boxes they check on the various independent surveys and standards of “proper behavior,” and then they use the awards and rewards in their messaging to their stakeholders. Sadly a good percentage of these programs in no way reflect the overall health of the company, and fall very short on gauging the trustworthiness of the organization. One need only look at some of the corporate names that rise to the top of annual “Best of CSR” lists to reach the same conclusion.

Over the past ten years much has been written and debated about corporate social responsibility programs and check the box practices:

2005 The Myth of CSR 

Corporate Social Responsibility A Study of Key Features, Benefits, Criticism and the Various Initiatives.

CSR, The Dangers of Doing the Right Thing

Corporate Social Responsibility: An Overview

At Trust Across America-Trust Around the World, we have been tracking the trustworthiness of almost 2500 public companies over the past five years using our proprietary FACTS Framework. In reviewing the data, what’s often clear is that many of the companies using CSR success as the gold standard of good business are falling far short in other areas of corporate health. Let’s not forget that Enron claimed to have one of the best CSR programs.

Where does CSR end and moral responsibility begin? Does CSR distract the public from asking deeper ethical questions. Does it similarly distract Boards of Directors and C-Suites?

Many claim that any corporate program that “betters” society is good, but not everyone agrees on what is “better” or good. We argue that the betterment of society is not enough. Core values hold the key.

It would behoove leadership to look deeper into trust as a holistic business imperative. Exercising does not ensure good health. Eating well, lowering stress and getting enough sleep are just as important.

Barbara Brooks Kimmel is the Executive Director of Trust Across America-Trust Around the World whose mission is to help organizations build trust. She is also the editor of the award winning TRUST INC. book series. In 2012 Barbara was named “One of 25 Women Changing the World” by Good Business International.

Nominations are now being accepted for Trust Across America-Trust Around the World’s 5th annual Global Top Thought Leaders in Trustworthy Business.

                                                                                               Coming Soon!

Should you wish to communicate directly with Barbara, drop her a note at Barbara@trustacrossamerica.com

Copyright © 2014, Next Decade, Inc.

We value virtue but do not discuss it. The honest bookkeeper, the faithful wife, the earnest scholar get little of our attention compared to the embezzler, the tramp, the cheat.–   John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley: In Search of America

Those of us who work in trust know all too well the ABC’s and equations. They are helpful tools, reminders and mnemonics for leaders who have taken the first step- acknowledgement that trust is a business imperative. While we assume broad acceptance of this concept, it’s actually a faulty assumption.

Some recent conversations have lead to a startling realization. When it comes to trust, most leaders haven’t even learned the basic language. We assume they have mastered their ABC’s,  grasping the value of trust as a “hard” business metric, but realistically, the word “trust” has never even crossed their minds, at least not as it relates to their leadership strategy.

It’s been proven time and again, and by multiple sources, that the most trustworthy organizations are run by trustworthy leaders and the rewards are immense and tangible. I wrote about this in a recent blog post called Trust & the Blinder Effect at the Top.

So what will it take? I assert that it will require a global awareness campaign, reinforcing the multiple benefits of high trust leadership and high trust organizations. At Trust Across America-Trust Around the World, we began this campaign over five years ago, and it has been growing. Is trust important to you? Would you like to join us?

Very shortly, we will be announcing a new initiative for November, but in the meantime, these are just a few quick ideas:

• If you are a leader, consider what role trust plays in your organization. Our free Leader’s Survey may be helpful.
• If you know someone who is a leader, ask them what role trust plays in theirs, or share the link above with them.
• Read a book on organizational trust and buy one for a colleague. You will find many ideas in our Reading Room.
• Join a regional trust group by joining our Alliance.
• Take advantage of all the free resources on our website.
• Email us at barbara@trustacrossamerica.com and we will direct you to an expert to assist you if we can’t.

Earlier this year Dov Seidman, the founder and CEO of LRN, called for a leadership Apology Cease-fire via the NY Times Dealbook. As Dov explained,  “You need to earn back trust and change your behavior in a way that proves, without question, that you mean it.” He was speaking about authentic leadership apologies, containing specific components outlined in the article. That was in February and since then Dov has been searching for examples. He reported on his findings early in September, having identified one authentic apology back in 2008. It came from a political leader.

Last week I wrote about the “apology” offered by Home Depot’s CEO after the latest in a string of corporate data breaches. He must have missed Dov’s apology cease-fire request in February. I suppose the CEO of General Motors  and the CEO of GlaxoSmithKline did too.

The global crisis is not one of trust, but actually one of leadership. Until executives and their respective Boards or advisors learn how to build trust by incorporating it into their DNA and then placing trust on the daily docket, we will continue to hear empty apologies. Yes, culture change takes time, perhaps a year or eighteen months, and since bad behavior rarely gets punished, there is little to no incentive to alter the status quo.

The good news, industry is not destiny. There are many organizations with high trust environments. They are rewarded with increased profitability, more loyal stakeholders and long term enterprise sustainability, among other benefits.  And, most important, by building trust into their DNA, they rarely find themselves having to apologize at all.

In the practice of tolerance, one’s enemy is the best teacher-  Dalai Lama

October is Tolerance Month 

according to Trust Across America’s

2014 Calendar

A trusted leader is open to new ideas that may not align with his own. Tolerance empowers stakeholders with ownership and leads to higher engagement at all levels.

During the  52 weeks of 2014 you can build trust in your organization by thinking about, discussing and following the advice of the experts. Below are weekly reflections on trust for October 2014.

• Week 1: Leaders committed to candor will create and build trust. LJ Rittenhouse, Rittenhouse Rankings

• Week 2: Trust produces trustworthy behavior, not the other way around. Carol Sanford, Author

• Week 3: Managers gain employees’ trust by discerning and distrusting impostors, bootlickers, and liars.Dr. Reuven Shapira, Western Galilee Academic College, Israel.

• Week 4: Higher performing organizations depend on the ability to predict the behavior of others accurately, requiring deep trust. David A. Shore, Harvard University.

Barbara Brooks Kimmel is the Executive Director of Trust Across America-Trust Around the World whose mission is to help organizations build trust. She is also the editor of the award winning TRUST INC. book series. In 2012 Barbara was named “One of 25 Women Changing the World” by Good Business International.

                                                                                                 Coming Soon!

Should you wish to communicate directly with Barbara, drop her a note at Barbara@trustacrossamerica.com

Copyright © 2014, Next Decade, Inc.

I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers. –

L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

October is an important month for Trust Across America-Trust Around the World.

October 1: The season officially gets underway for our 5th Annual Global Top Thought Leaders in Trustworthy Business, honoring those with thought leadership expertise from around the world.  If you are unfamiliar with our program and want to read more about the honor or how to apply, please access this link. The nomination period will remain open until December 1.  Our 2014 Honor Roll can be view at this link.

October 27: During the week of October 27 we will be publishing the first edition of our quarterly publication TRUST! The Magazine of Trust Across America-Trust Around the World. The theme for the fall 2014 inaugural edition will be:

Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. ~ Aldous Huxley

We all know someone who has suffered a health scare and subsequently chose to get healthy. A new diet, exercise program and education in stress reduction. While most times the outcome is a holistically healthier individual, the choice is only made in the face of a crisis.

Five years ago Trust Across America-Trust Around the World developed a framework for organizational trust called FACTS. It operates off the same principles as holistic health. Our theory is a simple one. Just like the human body, all it takes for organizational failure is one diseased organ.

The healthiest people I know don’t wait for a crisis to get healthy. They practice it proactively. And in our research of over 2000 companies spanning 5 years, the most trustworthy companies follow the same strategy. Rather than reacting to a crisis, they build trust into their DNA. The healthy individual enjoys a longer and higher quality of life,  and the trustworthy company has greater profitability and longer-term sustainability. And while most people do not practice health proactively, neither do most companies.

Why not? As a CEO told me the other evening over a glass of wine, “I like that word trust. I never considered it as a business strategy.”

Don’t wait for the next crisis to get healthy. Build trust into your business agenda, and practice it proactively.  If you don’t know how, we can help.

Barbara Brooks Kimmel is the Executive Director of Trust Across America-Trust Around the World whose mission is to help organizations build trust. She is also the editor of the award winning TRUST INC. book series. In 2012 Barbara was named “One of 25 Women Changing the World” by Good Business International.

                                                                                                  Coming Soon!

Should you wish to communicate directly with Barbara, drop her a note at Barbara@trustacrossamerica.com

Copyright © 2014, Next Decade, Inc.

There is only one boss. The customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else. Sam Walton

The email I had been waiting for arrived earlier this week, not from Home Depot, but from my credit card company. Without referencing the specific data breach, it simply stated that a new card was being sent to me. I’m still waiting for a similar note or letter from Home Depot.

Does the company care about maintaining trust with it’s customers?  Apparently not so much.

This was the “stock” statement released by the CEO:

“We apologize to our customers for the inconvenience and anxiety this has caused, and want to reassure them that they will not be liable for fraudulent charges,” said Frank Blake, Home Depot’s chairman and CEO.

I wrote about the home improvement industry in a blog post in July called Sorry Our Policy Doesn’t Permit It. At the time, it was unclear why the customer seemed to come last on their stakeholder value chain. But a few days ago, this article appeared on CNN Money and the answer became a bit clearer.

Why Home Depot is Not the Next Target

Apparently, if the stock price doesn’t suffer too much, all is well.

And in case you missed this article, there is even a suspicion that the breach may have been an “inside job.”

As in most similar crises, the company has now announced that they will enhance their security. And so the beat goes on….

I will get my new card and work through the maze and hassle of changing the information with companies on “autopay.”  That will only take me a few hours. But then I’m only a customer, not a stockholder, so my time has little value and the heck with trust.

The important takeaway should be obvious. Even in quasi monopolistic industries, customers always have a choice to spend their money somewhere else. What choice will you make?

Barbara Brooks Kimmel is the Executive Director of Trust Across America-Trust Around the World whose mission is to help organizations build trust. She is also the editor of the award winning TRUST INC. book series. In 2012 Barbara was named “One of 25 Women Changing the World” by Good Business International.

                                                                                                  Coming Soon!

Should you wish to communicate directly with Barbara, drop her a note at Barbara@trustacrossamerica.com

Copyright © 2014, Next Decade, Inc.

We must reinvent a future free of blinders so that we can choose from real options. David Suzuki

Question: What role does trust play as a business imperative when senior executives are unable to remove their blinders?

Answer: No role.

On two separate occasions, I posed the following questions to two senior executives at Fortune 500 companies:

Question #1:  How is trust in your organization?

1. Answer from Executive #1: We have no trust issues

2. Answer from Executive #2: We have no trust issues

Question #2: How do you know?

1. Answer from Executive #1: Our revenues are exploding and we are expanding globally.

Note: I call this the “shareholder value” answer.

2. Answer from Executive #2: Weren’t you listening during my speech? Our CSR and philanthropy program is one of the best.

Note: I call this the “corporate window dressing” answer.

Ask almost any C-Suite executive these questions and most likely you will get one of these answers.

Now let’s take a deeper dive

Executive #1 works for one of the largest health insurers in the world. Over 500 employees posted the following comments on Glassdoor.com. Overall, the employees rate the company a 3 out of 5.

• Horrible health benefits (the company is a health insurer)
• Huge cronyism issues
• Tons of corporate politics and red tape
• Poor appraisal process
• High stress
• It paid the bills
• Management by fear
• High turnover rates

Executive #2 works for one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies. Let’s see what over 200 employees have to say about their work experience. Overall, the employees rate the company a 3 out of 5.

• We played cards to reduce our workday from 8 to 6 hours
• Employees not allowed to talk to each other
• Too many company meetings and policies
• No decent leadership
• No morale
• Leaders are inept
• Bureaucracy and never ending process

Do these sound like “high trust” companies to you?

The Costs of Low Trust

• Gallup’s research (2013) places 13% percent of workers as engaged (87% disengaged.)

• The disengaged workforce (Gallup, August, 2013) is costing the US economy $450-550 billion a year, which is over 15% of payroll costs.

• According to The Economist Intelligence Unit (2010), 84% of senior leaders say disengaged employees are considered one of the biggest threats facing their business. However, only 12% of them reported doing anything about this problem.

• According to Edelman globally, 50% of consumers trust businesses, but just 18% trust business leadership.

• And finally, in the United States, the statistics are similar, but the story is a bit worse for leadership. While 50% of U.S. consumers trust businesses, just 15% trust business leadership.

Building a trustworthy business will improve a company’s profitability and organizational sustainability.

A growing body of evidence shows increasing correlation between trustworthiness and superior financial performance. Over the past decade, a series of qualitative and quantitative studies have built a strong case for senior business leaders to place building trust among ALL stakeholders (not just shareholders) high on their priority list.

According to Fortune’s  “100 Best Companies to Work For”, based on Great Place to Work Employee Surveys, best companies experience as much as 50% less turnover and Great Workplaces perform more than 2X better than the general market (Source: Russell Investment Group)

Forbes and GMI Ratings have produced the “Most Trustworthy Companies” list for the past six years. They examine over 8,000 firms traded on U.S. stock exchanges using forensic accounting measures, a more limited definition of trustworthy companies than Trust Across America’s FACTS Framework but still somewhat revealing. The conclusions they draw are:

• “… the cost of capital of the most trustworthy companies is lower …”
• “… outperform their peers over the long run …”
• “… their risk of negative events is minimized …”

From Deutsche Bank:

• 85% concurrence on Greater Performance on Accounting –Based Standards (“… studies reveal these types of company’s consistently outperform their rivals on accounting-based criteria.”)

From Global Alliance for Banking on Values, 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).
•  51% higher Return On Assets for sustainable banks (.50% average ROA for sustainable banks compared to big bank earning 0.33%)

These studies are bolstered by analyses from dozens of other respected sources including the American Association of Individual Investors, the Dutch University of Maastricht, Erasmus University, and Harvard Business Review.

Do you think the two companies cited about have trust issues? How can we help them remove their blinders? How can we help them move beyond quarterly numbers and corporate window dressing?

As my friend Bob Vanourek likes to say. “Leaders must place trust on their daily docket.”

Business leaders may choose to ignore the business case for trust but the evidence is mounting, not only for the business case but also the financial one.  Trust works.

Barbara Brooks Kimmel is the Executive Director of Trust Across America-Trust Around the World whose mission is to help organizations build trust. She is also the editor of the award winning TRUST INC. book series. In 2012 Barbara was named “One of 25 Women Changing the World” by Good Business International.

                                                                                                  Coming Soon!

Should you wish to communicate directly with Barbara, drop her a note at Barbara@trustacrossamerica.com

Copyright © 2014, Next Decade, Inc.

“The rotten apple spoils his companion.” Benjamin Franklin

Yesterday John Baldoni published a thought provoking article in Forbes  Trust Matters Even to the NFL, and he was kind enough to include some of my thoughts.

At Trust Across America-Trust Around the World we believe that often the most well-deserving, shiniest apples are not those that get the most press coverage. The Manning family, and Eli in particular, have been vocal about the issue of domestic violence and its negative impact on the NFL’s image. Eli is not alone. There are many players in the NFL with high integrity and character. We should not forget this.

Regardless of the organization, when a crisis occurs, it become the problem of every stakeholder, whether they are innocent or guilty. It is important to remember that trust is built in incremental steps. In the course of doing so, the organization, and its leadership, bank trust. When a crisis strikes, they are better prepared and the blow is softened.

Let’s not blame the Eli Manning’s or the NFL “team” for the bad apples, or the resulting fallout from the latest scandal.

This story is really no different than General Motors. Rotten cultures produce rotten apples.

The NFL did not take the proactive steps required to bank trust in their organization, nor to build a trustworthy culture.

Quite simply, that’s a leadership issue. If trust is embraced as a business imperative, the next crisis just might be avoided.

Barbara Brooks Kimmel is the Executive Director of Trust Across America-Trust Around the World whose mission is to help organizations build trust. She is also the editor of the award winning TRUST INC. book series. In 2012 Barbara was named “One of 25 Women Changing the World” by Good Business International.

                                                                                                  Coming Soon!

Should you wish to communicate directly with Barbara, drop her a note at Barbara@trustacrossamerica.com

Copyright © 2014, Next Decade, Inc.

“I’m not upset that you lied to me, I’m upset that from now on I can’t believe you.” 
― Friedrich Nietzsche

Today’s blog topic jumped right out of the headlines from the past 24 hours:

Football Must Regain the Public’s Trust

Trust Vital Between Officers & The Community

State Audit of Fayette Schools Shows Need to Restore Public Trust

Restore Public Trust

These headlines rarely change. Everyday we hear about the need to restore trust in education, communities, sports, business and government. The story is the same, only the names of the violators change. I can’t think of a single headline that ever read something like this ” We are Embracing Trust as a Business Imperative and Building it Into Our Foundation.”

There is enormous societal confusion swirling around the term “trust” that stems from this “restoration” approach. It is based on the assumption that trust was present before the crisis. In almost every case it wasn’t. Building a foundation of trust is a proactive decision made by the leaders of an organization, and it is built in incremental steps. In every one of the headlines above, I will venture to guess that trust was never a component of the leadership agenda, nor its Board of Directors.

Unfortunately, trust is taken for granted. It is assumed that it just “exists” when, in reality, it rarely does. Some leaders might argue, “Why bother? Maybe we’ll get lucky and never face a crisis.” I would respond that it’s much less expensive to build a foundation of trust, than it is to “manage” a crisis and attempt to build trust after the crisis. Building a foundation of trust also brings tangible and intangible benefits. These are just a few:

• Improved collaboration driving decision-making speed, efficiency and innovation
• Greater personal effectiveness for all involved, improving team projects and the odds of their coming to fruition
• Increased employee responsibility and competence
• Improved morale
• Faster/more efficient new business development
• Win/win opportunities both internally and externally

These are some pretty good reasons for building a foundation of trust. Don’t you agree? And remember, you CANNOT regain or restore something that never existed.

Barbara Brooks Kimmel is the Executive Director of Trust Across America-Trust Around the World whose mission is to help organizations build trust. She is also the editor of the award winning TRUST INC. book series. In 2012 Barbara was named “One of 25 Women Changing the World” by Good Business International.

                                                                                                  Coming Soon!

Should you wish to communicate directly with Barbara, drop her a note at Barbara@trustacrossamerica.com

Copyright © 2014, Next Decade, Inc.