I wrote the book on Trust because I am understanding the huge cost of distrust. Every transaction, every conversation, every move we make is assumed to be distrusted until we prove we can be trusted. Sadly, many people in business say it’s getting worse. Mistrust causes everything to be more complicated, slower, and far more fragmented. Distrust hurts our businesses, adding extra costs to everything. Just take health insurance – distrust adds at least 20-30¢ to every dollar of health cost, for which we receive no health value in return.
What’s more, distrust puts a big limitation on collaborative innovation and teamwork. In other words, distrust is a major competitive disadvantage, whether it is manifesting in us, inside our companies, or externally in our relationships with suppliers, customers, stockholders, or our community.
Trust in America is declining; the evidence is everywhere. Recent polls show that by a margin of nearly 3 to 1 we distrust the media and unions, and by 4 to 1 distrust politics and big corporations. The majority of Americans trust neither Congress nor the Food and Drug Administration.
Just like H1N1 we are having an epidemic of distrust. The good news is we are still in control of this one and we know what we have to do. Lets get it started.
