Trust Across America-Trust Around the World™

Trust Across America (TAA) receives frequent inquiries from the financial media. Here’s how the conversation usually goes.

TAA: Hello TAA. How can I help you?

Media: Hi! This is Debbie Downer from major financial news network. We understand that TAA ranks public companies according to their trustworthiness. Is that correct?

TAA: Yes we maintain a database of approximately 2500 public companies and our FACTS® Algorithm can measure the major drivers of trustworthy business behavior. We can even show you how each company ranks according to its market cap, industry and sector peers.

Media: Great. Can we get a list of the lowest ranked companies?

TAA: Just to clarify. You want a list of the least trustworthy companies?

Media: Yes

TAA: Sorry but TAA’s mission is to highlight the good guys. How about if we give you some examples of companies doing good and doing well at the same time?

Media: Good guys? No thanks. The public is not interested. Only bad news sells.

Click.

Jonathan Low at www.lowdownblog.com recently wrote about the disappearance of the small investor, and with the help of Barry Ritholtz www.ritholtz.com/blog/ listed 10 reasons why. I propose #11.

#11 The financial media industry is obsessed with bad news and scandals of the day. How will confidence in the financial markets ever be restored if this cycle continues? Jonathan and Barry, it’s really not a matter of poor returns. There are great companies who are meeting the needs of all their stakeholders including their shareholders.

It’s the responsibility of the financial news networks to refocus. Report to the public about companies that are behaving in a trustworthy manner. A few names that come to mind are Accenture (Symbol: ACN) and United Natural Foods (Symbol: UNFI). We are not suggesting that these companies are perfect. They may trip along the way.  But our research shows that they will also recover much faster. They have “banked” trust.

So to all the Debbie Downers of the financial news networks. Here’s my suggestion. Try highlighting a few of the good guys. Treat the public with more respect. Use this as an opportunity to be a positive role model for the rest of your industry. Don’t be part of the race to the bottom. Don’t be that guy (or gal)!

What do you think? Should the financial news networks report more good news? Send your comments to barbara at trustacrossamerica.com

TRUST ACROSS AMERICA™ RELEASES FIRST FINDINGS FROM ITS STUDY OF TRUSTWORTHY BUSINESS PRACTICES IN PUBLIC COMPANIES

While there may be a continuing and complex trust crisis in America, our research shows that there is a direct relationship between business performance and trustworthy behavior. And while a universal definition of trust may not exist, it’s not really a problem,—it’s just the way things are. We love to put precise metrics in place that describe and explain, in linear and causal terms, things like human behavior. But reality doesn’t always cooperate. And because what can’t be measured also gets overlooked, trust, which is absolutely critical in business relationships, needs measuring.

A 2008 paper written by the Economist Intelligence Unit entitled “The Role of Trust in Business Collaboration” concluded with the following statement:

“Even though best-practice corporate governance has been on the corporate radar for some time now, it seems that the trust element of governance, despite being so closely linked to ethics, has yet to become a business standard.”

We believe that many important concepts cannot be reduced to a single metric, and that is certainly true for trust. However, what can be defined and measured are various contributory components of trustworthy behavior in business—factors that we can all agree are definitely somewhere in the trust neighborhood. And when these factors are evaluated and aggregated, there are some encouraging results about companies that somehow seem to be “doing the right thing.” We may not be able to precisely measure trust; but that doesn’t mean we can’t rate it, test it, evaluate it, and above all—manage it. What we have recently done is removed the ‘yet’ out of the Economist’s description.

In 2007 we set a goal of developing a rigorous approach to better understanding and evaluating trustworthy business practices. We began laying a foundation for a trust ecosystem, and Trust Across America™ (TAA) was hatched. Through our professional relationships, LinkedIn group, and our radio show, we have spoken to dozens of academic and corporate experts and consultants across the wide range of specialized silos relating to organizational trust- ethics, integrity, reputation, ESG, CSR, accounting, and sustainability to get their feedback on this elusive concept of trust. From this collaborative effort, we have developed a methodology that we think approximates the most holistic and comprehensive definition and measurement of trustworthy corporate behavior to date. We named it FACTS™. It allows us to provide meaning, definition and measurement to both the business and behavioral side of trust.

FACTS™ is an acronym. It stands for:

Financial strength and stability
Accounting controls
Corporate governance and community impact
Treatment of Stakeholders and Transparency
Sustainability

We ran the FACTS model again historical public data for thousands of public companies from 1998-2009, and eliminated those that did not have complete data. In essence, our methodology analyzes hundreds of data points from three independent providers, and with equal weighting, arrives at a cumulative FACTS™ trust score for almost 2000 of the largest publicly traded companies. Currently, thirty nine companies reach the Gold Standard of 50 points or more in each of the FACTS data categories.

Some other noteworthy findings from this study:

•The company with the highest trust ranking (across sixteen sectors) is in the same industry as BP Global. We find this somewhat timely since it is a goal of TAA to have the most trustworthy companies share their best practices.

•The companies with the highest scores in all data categories come from six different industry groups, so no single industry dominates in the “trust” category.

•The retail sector has the highest average trust rating of the sixteen.

•When we rank the 1954 companies, the top 10% are almost evenly split between large and small (over and under $2 billion market cap).

•Only two hundred companies in the database scored above a “50” in sustainability efforts.

Over the next few weeks we will be populating the Trust Across America website Link to Website with the following material:

-An alphabetical listing of the names of all 1954 companies for which we have complete data.
-An alphabetical listing of the top 10% of all companies.
-Company specific and industry reports that will allow C-Suite executives to anticipate “surprises”, manage risk, and better protect their company’s reputation; provide a workable framework for enhancing organizational trust and reputation; and provide meaning, definition and measurement to both the business and behavioral side of trust..
-Reports for consumers and other professionals.
-Additional resources for public companies that wish to delve deeper into internal and external behavioral assessments.

We will also begin conversations with the media (both print and broadcast) about our findings and will start to contact some of the top companies for interviews and further involvement. Our mission is to highlight companies that are “doing the right thing”, refocus media attention away from the negative, and provide opportunities for companies to share best practices.

I look forward to your comments and feedback. The best initial method to communicate is via email: barbara@trustacrossamerica.com

Barbara Kimmel, Executive Director Read more…

TRUST ACROSS AMERICA™ MONTHLY UPDATE JULY 2010

A close family member likes to remind me that “Slow and steady wins the race”…as long as you are heading in the right direction. Our VISION is slowly and steadily reaching its lofty goal as our trust ecosystem continues to expand, and collaboratively we elevate the discussion and develop solutions for building a more trustworthy world.

Over the past month we have spent much of our time finalizing our study on trustworthy business practices in public companies. Look for a major announcement in August and a special newsletter explaining our methodology and some of our observations.

Our core programs continue to grow:

• Our LinkedIn Group called Trust Across America launched in mid-April. It’s a place for discussion, dialogue and debate on trustworthy behavior in business. Most of our members are thought leaders from academia, consulting and corporate America in the fields of ethics, trust, reputation, leadership, integrity, CSR, ESG, sustainability and impact investing. If you have not already done so, please join the group and take a minute to introduce yourself. Please invite a professional colleague to join the group as well.

• The Trust Across America Blog for July includes interviews with Brian Moriarty from the Business Roundtable Institute for Corporate Ethics; Jeffrey Seglin, the NY Times Ethics Columnist; Karen Mishra, a Michigan State Professor who, along with her husband Aneil, has spent the past twenty years studying trust; and Tony Simons a leadership and management professor at Cornell, and an expert in business trust and integrity. I also wrote a few pieces on how companies can damage their reputation through poor marketing and customer service, and you can follow my fender bender saga navigating the auto insurance industry. Our blog index has grown to almost forty covering trustworthy behavior in business from various viewpoints including ethics, trust, reputation, integrity, sustainability, ESG, CSR and leadership. Click on link

• Trust Across America Radio Show: We had a surprise visit from Jeffrey Hollender of Seventh Generation on July 21. We continue to be honored by the outstanding thought leaders who have appeared, and will be appearing on the show. All past shows are archived, so you can listen at your convenience: Click on Show Link
Our guests for the month of August, all leading experts in various aspects of organizational trustworthiness, include: (August 4) Steve Farber, the President of Extreme Leadership and author of Greater than Yourself; Paula Marshall the CEO of Bama Companies, a Malcolm Baldrige Award Winner and author of Finding the Soul of Big Business; (August 11) Fran Maier, the founder of Match.com and the President of TRUSTe that currently certifies the privacy practices of over 3,000 websites; Traci Fenton, the Founder and CEO of WorldBlu, Inc., whose mission is championing the growth of democratic companies worldwide. WorldBlu publishes the annual WorldBlu List of Most Democratic Workplaces™; (August 18) Bob Schoultz, Director of the Master of Science Program in Global Leadership at the University of San Diego; Art Stewart, a consultant, educator, and purveyor of a strategic framework – the ‘New Responsibility Paradigm’; (August 25) Nick Andrews, Managing Director North America for the Centre for Sustainability and Excellence; and Karen Mishra, a clinical professor in the Broad College of Business at Michigan State University. Karen’s research focuses on how organizations build trust with employees through internal communication.

• Consultant’s Collaborative Our Consultant’s Collaborative is growing. It is another opportunity for experts to highlight and share their knowledge with visitors to our site, as well as serving as a centralized internal and external resource for consulting, media and program referrals. We hope to expand the Collaborative to include professionals with expertise in Organizational Trust, Leadership, Ethics, Integrity, Reputation, Accountability, Sustainability, CSR, ESG, Governance/GRC and Impact Investing. Special programs are being developed for those who participate through enhanced listings. Click for Consultants Page

• Reading Room Looking for a book on organizational trust? Our Reading Room should be your first stop. Books are written by experts from corporate America, academia and consulting. We added several new titles for August. Click Here to Go to the Reading Room

We hope you will choose to get involved and stay involved in some of the following ways. Trust Across America is a collaborative effort. We cannot do this alone.

• Join our Linkedin group called Trust Across America. We have also started a group on Facebook by the same name but have not quite figured out what we will do with it!

• Be a guest on our radio show.Refer a colleague to appear on the show. Please have them send an email to
Barbara@trustacrossamerica.com with their expertise and contact information.

• Link your blog to our site – Follow the format on the existing blogs at the link below and send it back in an email-we will add your blog within a few days.

• Be listed in the Consultants Collaborative- Please email me for more information on various listing options. (Barbara@trustacrossamerica.com)

• Suggest a book for our Reading Room

• Collaborate in some way we have not yet considered.

Thank you for your interest in Trust Across America. We look forward to continuing to build our trust ecosystem and in providing valuable resources to both individuals and companies. Please feel free to forward this newsletter to others who may be interested.

Barbara Brooks Kimmel, Executive Director
www.trustacrossamerica.com
Copyright © 2010 Next Decade, Inc.