Ten years have passed since I first wrote the following thoughts on New Years resolutions. Frankly, it was good. And frankly I haven’t been able to write a better one. Next year, maybe. So, apologies to those who have read it year after year—though I suspect some of you won’t mind. Happy New Year. ——————————————- […]
The NYTimes reported a few years back on a Harvard Business School study of venture capital-backed entrepreneurs to test whether or not we learn from our mistakes. The results are confounding to many—including me. Here’s the story. Several thousand VC-backed companies were studied over 17 years. First-timers had an aggregate success rate of 22% (success […]
We don’t usually think of trust and freedom as existing in a trade-off relationship. But in an important sense, they do. Thinking about the two factors this way allows us to view trust from an unusual perspective. —— Kathy Sierra has a great post on the degree to which software designers should design in user […]
Much has been written about trust. However, it’s often not clear in the writing whether the subject is trust, trustworthiness – or trusting. If trust in the government is down, does that mean that the government is less trustworthy? Or does it mean that people are less inclined to trust? Most of my work has been about trustworthiness […]
I was in Munich for a one-day stopover en route to Bucharest. I left New York a day earlier than planned to avoid some weather. And I realized yet again – travel has a way of doing that – what an extraordinary level of trust we all take for granted in our modern world. Yes, […]
Is technology killing trust in your organization? Are we heading for a dehumanized, low-trust business world? Can technology itself come up with trust-enhancing ways to guard against this trend? I’m getting asked these questions lately. And while there’s some merit to the question as framed, the news is not nearly as bad as it sounds – […]
There are two kinds of mistakes we make with trust. One is to trust mistakenly – the other is to fail to trust at all. One is a failure of commission, the other a failure of omission. The former gets all the press – but it’s the latter that is the bigger problem. Let me […]
Know Yourself. It seems a timely topic these days – musically speaking, educationally speaking, pop-culture speaking. It’s also an old adage, from Socrates’ “know thyself” to Shakespeare’s “to thine own self be true.” We learned it in high school, but maybe we lost sight along the way. What do you think? Do you know yourself? Are you willing […]
Today’s interview is with a significant player in the world of those who seek to improve trust in the business world – Barbara Kimmel. Barbara is CEO and co-founder of Trust Across America – Trust Across the World. She is also the co-creator of the proprietary FACTS® Framework – a unique methodology measuring the trustworthiness […]
In the spirit of the season, I recently started thinking about a question I used to get asked frequently: what are some tricks to becoming more trusted? Here’s the thing: Trust is a Treat. Not a trick. Let me elaborate. — When I give seminars or training sessions, I often begin by asking for participants’ […]