Trust Across America-Trust Around the World™

When trust is low, fear is high, and fear is very costly.

Numerous studies have shown that:

• High-trust organizations consistently outperform their rivals
• Trust is the foundation of high performing teams
• Trust reduces employee turnover and increases engagement
• Trust increases productivity and innovation
• High trust leads to long-term business success, beyond just short-term “home runs.”

What is your organization doing to cut the losses of low trust?

The “fix” is relatively easy and inexpensive. And it begins by acknowledging that low trust is costing you money. Like a disease, if low trust is ignored, it continues to spread.

Our newest Trust Tool is based on our Trust Alliance Principles (TAP), the result of the collaborative efforts of dozens of the world’s leading trust scholars and practitioners. Since April, these principles have been accessed over 40,000 times in 16 languages. This tool will provide any team (including the Board of Directors,) or organization of any size in any industry, with a simple roadmap to track and elevate trust.

Want to learn more? Contact barbara@trustacrossamerica.com

Barbara Brooks Kimmel is an award-winning communications executive and the CEO and Cofounder of Trust Across America-Trust Around the World whose mission is to help organizations build trust. A former consultant to McKinsey and many Fortune 500 CEOs and their firms, Barbara also runs the world’s largest global Trust Alliance, and is the editor of the award-winning TRUST INC. book series and TRUST! Magazine.  Barbara holds a BA in International Affairs and an MBA. Don’t forget to TAP into Trust!

Copyright(c) 2019, Next Decade, Inc.

Around this time every year, the news “treats us” to the top leadership failures, and 2018 is certainly no exception. “The trust buck” certainly stopped on the CEO’s desk at Facebook, Uber and Theranos, to name just a few.

While the media may continue to believe that only “bad” sells,  I launched Trust Across America-Trust Around the World more than ten years ago, with one objective of directing attention to the “good” because their stories rarely get told. Perhaps they are just too “good” to get air time, and just maybe the media is ignoring the stories that people want to hear.

This list is not about CEOs taking stands, feel good philanthropy, “check the box sustainability” or CSR projects, but rather about high integrity leaders who believe that a long-term holistically trustworthy strategy will positively impact ALL stakeholders.

Top Ten Stories of 2018

(presented alphabetically)

• *Chip Bergh runs Levi Strauss and continues his focus on building a long-term culture with great success. (And BTW: Chip and I share the Lafayette College alma mater.
• Many people like to throw darts at Jeff Bezos at Amazon for “disrupting” retail, yet he also gives back in a big way. This is his newest preschool initiative.
• Larry Fink Blackrock’s CEO rattled the business world in his letter to CEOs by announcing a new model for corporate governance.
• David Kleis is St. Cloud Minnesota’s longest serving Mayor, who, over the past 3 years, has been hosting monthly dinners at his house and almost 700 town halls to get to know his constituents, complete with a mobile bus!
• *Rose Marcario at Patagonia is using the company’s $10 million tax break to help save the planet.
• *David Reiling is CEO of St. Paul-based Sunrise Banks. Under his leadership, Sunrise became Minnesota’s first bank certified as a community development financial institution, a legal benefit corporation, and a member of the Global Alliance of Banking on Values. As David says “At the end of the day, if the community succeeds, we will be able to thrive along with them.”
• Physician Kylie Vannaman runs MDPCA (Midwest Direct Primary Care Alliance) a group that is buying back medical bills from those who cannot afford to pay them.
• Martin Van Trieste, a former Amgen executive is the CEO of Civica RX. Never heard of them? This mission driven company plans to stabilize the soaring costs of prescription drugs.
• Bob Wilson an 89-year old California business owner just wrote 1085 checks, each for $1000. Find out why.
• Jeff Yurcisin, a former Amazon executive who recently became president of Zulily, talks about why trust is the #1 leadership imperative.

Let’s celebrate these trustworthy leaders and their organizations. Let’s work together to continue to build organizational trust in 2019.

* Chip Bergh, Rose Marcario and David Reiling also appeared on this list in 2018.

Barbara Brooks Kimmel is the CEO and Cofounder of Trust Across America-Trust Around the World whose mission is to help organizations build trust. She also runs the world’s largest global Trust Alliance and is the editor of the award- winning TRUST INC. book series. In 2017 she was named a Fellow of the Governance & Accountability Institute, and in 2012 she was recognized as one of “25 Women who are Changing the World” by Good Business International. She holds a BA in International Affairs from Lafayette College and an MBA from Baruch at the City University of NY.

For more information visit our website at www.trustacrossamerica.com or contact Barbara Brooks Kimmel, CEO and Cofounder

Barbara@trustacrossamerica.com

You may also join our Constant Contact mailing list for updates on our progress.

October 17, 2018:

Trust Across America-Trust Around the World announces the Country Trust Index™, the first ranking of national trustworthiness 

Today, the Carnegie Council is celebrating its 5^th annual Global Ethics Day, with organizations, including TAA-TAW joining forces to recognize ethics as an essential societal imperative.

What better day to announce our new rankings, honoring countries that are putting their citizens first.

For almost ten years Trust Across America-Trust Around the World (TAA-TAW) has been tracking the trustworthiness of America’s largest public companies through a proprietary ranking framework called FACTS®. The Framework measures companies on five indicators of trust using independent third party data. Companies do not know they are being ranked, nor do they participate in our analysis. We recently published a 10^th anniversary research report called “Trust & Integrity in Corporate America 2018” summarizing not only our findings, but those of over twenty major institutions who have been studying the impact of trust and ethics on business success.

Piggybacking on the release of our 2018 Trust Alliance Principles (TAP) this past spring TAA-TAW assembled a small global team of Trust Alliance members to advise on creating a similar ranking system for countries, using FACTS® as the framework, and aggregating the most current data from reputable third party providers. We identified fourteen indicators of societal trustworthiness including corruption, competition, reputation, sustainability, economic freedom, healthcare and women’s rights, to name just a few. The data was culled from global organizations including the World Bank, the Economist Intelligence Unit, The Heritage Foundation, The World Health Organization and Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security. This comprehensive data collection and fact finding process allowed us to create the 2018 rankings. Almost seventy countries were analyzed with scores ranging from 66 to 1432. The lower the score, the higher the country ranked. Incomplete data precluded some countries from being included.

Switzerland wins by a landslide scoring a “66” and making the “top five” in ten of the fourteen categories. The country’s lowest score was in healthcare, ranking #20. After Switzerland, the scores took a relatively steep drop. The “Top 5” countries are listed in descending order:

1. Switzerland
2. Norway
3. Denmark
4. Canada
5. Sweden

The United States ranks #20 with a total score of 369, and a relatively poor showing in reputation, healthcare and safety.

Some of the countries trailing the Country Trust Index™ rankings include:

Saudi Arabia, Brazil, India, China, Russia and Nigeria.

While this index may reveal some surprises, similar to our FACTS® Framework ranking of public companies, it’s purpose is to highlight the “best in breed.” Whether one is thinking about or discussing companies or countries, elevating trust and ethics is a win/win for all stakeholders.

To view the full rankings please visit www.trustacrossamerica.com and click on the “Research” tab or access directly at this link.

Barbara Brooks Kimmel is an award-winning communications executive and the CEO and Cofounder of Trust Across America-Trust Around the World whose mission is to help organizations build trust. A former consultant to McKinsey and many Fortune 500 CEOs and their firms, Barbara also runs the world’s largest global Trust Alliance, and is the editor of the award-winning TRUST INC. book series and TRUST! Magazine. In 2012 she was named one of “25 Women who are Changing the World” by Good Business International, and in 2017 she became a Fellow of the Governance & Accountability Institute. Barbara holds a BA in International Affairs and an MBA. Don’t forget to TAP into Trust!

For more information contact barbara@trustacrossamerica.com

Copyright (c) 2018, Next Decade, Inc. All rights reserved.

Many models of (un)ethical decision making assume that people decide rationally and are in principle able to evaluate their decisions from a moral point of view. However, people might behave unethically without being aware of it. They are ethically blind.

As organizations are comprised of individuals, Ethical Blindness naturally extends into the workplace. Some business sectors appear to be more ethically blind than others, and this creates enormous enterprise risk. This chart shows the trustworthiness of the major sectors for the Russell 1000 companies based on Trust Across America’s FACTS(R) Framework.

Ethical blindness can be corrected if leaders choose to be “tuned in” to the warning signs described below:

• The Board of Directors does not have established long-term policies or procedures in place to elevate ethical and trustworthy behavior with their internal and external stakeholders. For more information see the Spring Issue of Trust Magazine.
• Leaders, unless they are ethically “aware” by nature, are not proactive about elevating trust or ethics as there is no mandate to do so. When a crisis occurs, the “fix” follows a common “external facing” script involving a costly and unnecessary PR campaign. Wells Fargo’s latest “building trust” television commercial provides a timely example. Meanwhile internally, it’s “business as usual.”
• Discussions of short term gains and cost cutting dominate most group meetings. The pressure to perform is intense and the language used is very strong.
• The Legal and Compliance departments are large and growing faster than any other function.
• The organizational culture is a mystery. No clear “ownership” of ethical or trustworthy business practices or decision-making exist. Think “hot potato.”
• Discussions/training on ethics and trust rarely occur and when they do, they are lead by either the compliance or legal department and focus on rules, not ethics and trust.
• Ethical considerations/testing are not part of the hiring process and fear is widespread among employees.

Is Ethical Blindness at the organizational level fixable? Absolutely. But the first order of business requires leadership acknowledgement and commitment to elevating organizational trust and ethics.

These 12 Principles called TAP, were developed over the course of a year by a group of ethics and trust experts who comprise our Trust Alliance. They should serve as a great starting place for not only a discussion but a clear roadmap to eradicating Ethical Blindness. As a recent TAP commenter said:

An environment /culture that operates within this ethos sounds an awesome place to me , I would work there tomorrow if I knew where to look for it. 

Barbara Brooks Kimmel is the CEO and Cofounder of Trust Across America-Trust Around the World whose mission is to help organizations build trust. A former consultant to McKinsey and many Fortune 500 CEOs and their firms, Barbara also runs the world’s largest global Trust Alliance, and is the editor of the award winning TRUST INC. book series and TRUST! Magazine. In 2012 she was named one of “25 Women who are Changing the World” by Good Business International, and in 2017 she became a Fellow of the Governance & Accountability Institute. Barbara holds a BA in International Affairs and an MBA. For more information contact barbara@trustacrossamerica.com

Copyright (c) 2018, Next Decade, Inc.

Organizations are being challenged to become more trustworthy. We often hear about trust in the context of rebuilding it after a crisis. But to maintain long-term, positive stakeholder relationships, leaders must make trust an intentional organizational imperative.

According to Barbara Kimmel, CEO and Cofounder of Trust Across America-Trust Around the World, “In order to effect change, trust can no longer be taken for granted. It is not a “soft skill” but rather a proactive intentional business strategy. Leaders must become trust “activists.” Those who choose to take a reactive approach are creating unnecessary enterprise risk.

How does the trust dialogue begin?

Prepared in collaboration with the Trust Alliance, the world’s largest group of trust scholars and practitioners, the Trust Alliance Principles (TAP) can be applied and practiced in any organization of any size. By adopting TAP, trust is built one person, team, project and organization at a time.

Take a look at these twelve words. They form the TAP INTO TRUST acronym. Each one of them can stand alone as a starting place to elevate trust in any size group in any organization anywhere.

For more information on TAP and the Principle behind each word, click on the “TAP INTO TRUST” blue button to the right.

Access our press release announcing this new program at this link.

Copyright 2018 Next Decade, Inc.

Our ongoing research at Trust Across America points in the direction that over time trustworthy public companies outperform their peers and the “markets.” This relatively small universe of well-governed companies goes beyond just meeting the needs of its shareholders to recognizing the importance of all its stakeholders.

Why Does this Make Sense?

Based on numerous studies high levels of trustworthiness are correlated with:

• Ethical leadership
• Happy employees and lower turnover
• Faster decision-making
• Higher innovation
• Better community engagement
• Decreased risk of corporate crisis

to name just a few benefits. And all of these factors impact the long-term bottom line.

Every year since 2012 Trust Across America has publicly announced its “Top Ten Most Trustworthy Public Companies” via an annual article on our blog. The following table displays the current cumulative returns of the companies selected each year vs. the S&P 500 since the date of the blog publication.

FACTS(R) Framework Annual Returns “Top Ten”

Note: FANG companies have never appeared in any of the “Top 10” selections.

How are these Companies Chosen?

In 2010 Trust Across America introduced the FACTS® Framework, a comprehensive unbiased barometer of the trustworthiness of America’s largest 2000 US public companies. The Framework (based on 5 equally weighted indicators) identifies companies whose leadership has intentionally chosen to govern in a manner that goes beyond doing just what is legal to choosing what is right in meeting all stakeholder needs. Now in its 8th year the FACTS® Framework is the most comprehensive and data driven ongoing study on this subject. We analyze companies quarterly and rank order showing trends by company, sector and market capitalization.

Whether one calls this great culture, high integrity “ESG,” or simply trust, the business case has been made. Leaders who choose to ignore trust are setting themselves up for not only a crisis, but a sudden decline in their stock value. Just ask Mark Zuckerberg.

Barbara Brooks Kimmel is the CEO and Cofounder of Trust Across America-Trust Around the World whose mission is to help organizations build trust. A former consultant to McKinsey & Company, she also runs the world’s largest global Trust Alliance and is the editor of the award- winning TRUST INC. book series. In 2017 she was named a Fellow of the Governance & Accountability Institute, and in 2012 she was recognized as one of “25 Women who are Changing the World” by Good Business International. She holds a BA in International Affairs from Lafayette College and an MBA from Baruch at the City University of NY.

For more information visit our website at www.trustacrossamerica.com

or contact barbara@trustacrossamerica.com

You may also join our Constant Contact mailing list for updates on our progress.

Copyright (c) 2018, Next Decade, Inc.

Have you noticed that as LinkedIn has grown, the user focus has shifted away from relationship building to individual advertising? I don’t know about you, but sometimes I feel like I am rowing alone in a sea, and it’s not the Caribbean.

As a LinkedIn user, have you considered the benefits of first building trust with your connections?  After all, LinkedIn is a great way to develop relationships that may lead to new business or collaborative opportunities down the road. Under the theory that trust is built over time and in incremental steps consider adjusting your LinkedIn “strategy” using some of the following trust-building suggestions.

Connecting

• Before accepting a new connection, take a minute to view the profile of the party who is reaching out. If there are no clear personal or professional synergies, consider passing on the invitation.
• When accepting, send a note indicating that you have spent a few minutes reviewing the profile to get to know the new connection. Ask whether the other party had a specific reason for wanting to connect.
• When sending an invitation, add a personal note showing some level of interest in the work of the potential new relationship.

Posting

• First consider the usefulness to your connections of your next post. Are you posting for your benefit or for theirs? Cheap advertising isn’t always the best marketing strategy! (Same goes for posting to groups.)
• Drop the insincere platitudes like “honored and humbled” when trumpting your minor successes. Save those words for the appropriate occasion.
• Review your past posts. How many times do you use the words “Me, my, I?”
• Don’t forget to acknowledge every comment on your post and also to reciprocate.

Networking

• Periodically review connections and send a note to those who you might want to get to know better.
• If you haven’t had any interaction beyond the first connection, never send a private message that is nothing more than an advertisement (usually an invitation to attend an event that involves paying a fee.)
• Do not use your connections to create a mailing list. Ask for permission first.

What other suggestions do you have for building trust on LinkedIn? Please leave your comments below.

Barbara Brooks Kimmel is the CEO and Cofounder of Trust Across America-Trust Around the World whose mission is to help organizations build trust. A former consultant to McKinsey & Company, she also runs the world’s largest global Trust Alliance and is the editor of the award- winning TRUST INC. book series. In 2017 she was named a Fellow of the Governance & Accountability Institute, and in 2012 she was recognized as one of “25 Women who are Changing the World” by Good Business International. She holds a BA in International Affairs from Lafayette College and an MBA from Baruch at the City University of NY.

For more information visit our website at www.trustacrossamerica.com

You may also join our Constant Contact mailing list for updates on our progress.

Copyright (c) 2018, Next Decade, Inc.

Trust Across America-Trust Around the World (TAA-TAW), global leaders in organizational trust honors its 2018 Top Thought Leaders in Trust. The awards program, now in its 8th year, celebrates professionals who are transforming the way organizations do business.

While a growing number of global “top” lists and awards are published every year, no others address organizational trust, perhaps because the word “trust” itself presents a definitional challenge. For almost 10 years TAA-TAW has been working with a team of cross-functional professionals to study, define and quantify organizational trust, integrity and trustworthiness.

According to Barbara Kimmel, CEO and Cofounder, “The publication of this year’s honors comes shortly before the official commencement of our 10^th year anniversary celebration. In collaboration with global members of our Trust Alliance, we will be creating several new programs and tools to help organizations build trust.”

This year we recognize 91 global professionals from a broad functional base including integrity and trust, leadership, culture, compliance and ethics, reputation and risk management, governance, CSR, communications, employee engagement, sales and customer service. Approximately 27% of our 2018 honorees are women.

We are presenting our honorees in five categories:

2018 Lifetime Achievement Award Winners (8)

Lifetime Achievement Award Winners 2015-2017 (29)

Multi-year honorees (22)

CEOs of Public Companies (7)

Newcomers (25)

This year we are honoring eight professionals with a Lifetime Achievement Award. These deserving individuals have maintained Top Thought Leader status for five years. We congratulate all of our honorees whose work is shining a spotlight on the importance of trust and providing a roadmap for others to follow. They inspire organizations to look more closely at their higher societal purpose…to create greater value for, and trust from all of their stakeholders, and acknowledge that trust is a “hard currency” with “real” returns.

The 2018 Lifetime Honorees can be accessed at this link, while complete details including our methodology, judges, award winners, articles and additional trust resources can be found in the free digital Winter 2018 issue of TRUST! Magazine.

Trust Across America-Trust Around the World™ is a program of Next Decade, Inc., an award-winning communications firm that has been unraveling and simplifying complex subjects for over 20 years. TAA-TAW helps organizations build trust through an abundance of resources and ever expanding tools. It also provides its proprietary FACTS(R) Framework to help public companies improve their trustworthy practices, and showcases individuals and organizations exhibiting high levels of trust and integrity.

For more information contact Barbara Brooks Kimmel at barbara@trustacrossamerica.com

Copyright (c) 2018, Next Decade, Inc.

Question: If elevating organizational trust improves profitability, what stops senior executives from placing trust at the top of every business agenda?

Possible Answers:

• Trust is taken for granted or overlooked
• No silo “owns” trust so there is no budget
• Trust is soft and intangible
• Trust is not regulated
• External stakeholders are not demanding trust
• Executives believe that the business case for trust does not exist
• Organizational trust is completely misunderstood by just about EVERYONE

I recently posed the following questions to two senior executives at Fortune 500 companies:

Question #1:  How is the level of 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 programs are some of the best out there.

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

Ask almost any C-Suite executive these two questions and most likely you will get a similar answer.

 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? Do perceptions match reality?

Trust Across America has been researching and measuring the trustworthiness of the 1500 largest US public companies for almost eight years via it’s FACTS® Framework. This, by order of magnitude, is the most comprehensive and fact-based ongoing study on this subject. We analyze quarterly and rank order by company, sector and market capitalization. We are particularly interested in tracking individual companies and sector trends over time.

While Trust Across America continues to make the business case for trust, it remains quite common for perceptions of organizational trustworthiness to remain misaligned with reality. Most times, the trust “wake up call” and the residual fallout unfortunately occur AFTER a crisis, and as a direct result of a blatant abuse of stakeholder trust. Just ask Wells Fargo, Mylan and Volkswagen.

It’s a lost opportunity when business leaders wear their trust blinders while the evidence mounts not only for the business case but also the financial one.  Trust works.

Barbara Brooks Kimmel is the CEO and Cofounder of Trust Across America-Trust Around the World whose mission is to help organizations build trust. She also runs the world’s largest global Trust Alliance and is the editor of the award- winning TRUST INC. book series. In 2017 she was named a Fellow of the Governance & Accountability Institute, and in 2012 she was recognized as one of “25 Women who are Changing the World” by Good Business International. She holds a BA in International Affairs from Lafayette College and an MBA from Baruch at the City University of NY.

For more information visit our website at www.trustacrossamerica.com or contact Barbara Brooks Kimmel, CEO and Cofounder

Barbara@trustacrossamerica.com

You may also join our Constant Contact mailing list for updates on our progress.

Purchase our books at this link

Copyright 2017, 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.