The Dance of Trust

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Much has been written recently about trust.  Not so much, however, about just exactly how it gets created. Think of it as a dance—the dance of trust.

Trust is the end result of a dance between two people. Like ballroom dancing, the roles are not the same. In ballroom, one person leads, the other follows. If each plays his her role, it’s a beautiful thing. If, however, both people try to lead, you get feet stepped on and general ill will.

Trust also has two differing roles. One is the role of trustor—the one who does the trusting. The other is the role of the trustee—the one who is (more or less) trusted. And just like in ballroom, if the roles aren’t played cleanly, you get something of a mess. (And if both follow, well, you get nothing.  No risk, no gain).

The Dance of Trust Starts with the Trustor

The dance of trust is initiated by the trustor—the one who does the trusting. It is (s)he who takes the first step—and the one who takes the biggest risk.

By contrast, the trustee role (being trustworthy) is low-risk, but requires more work. It’s also more passive; being trustworthy is a strategy of attraction, not action.

An example: Let’s say BioPharm wants to hire an accounting firm to do some systems work. BioPharm interviews several candidate firms, and ends up deciding to choose Jones&Jones. BioPharm can justify the decision, but also says that “it was basically because we trusted these people to know us and to be straight with us.”

BioPharm is the trustor, initiating the dance and taking the larger risk–the risk of time, money and commitment spent on a new relationship.  Jones&Jones is the trustee, having been (successfully, in this case) trustworthy enough that it got asked to dance.

At this point, we have to lose the pure ballroom dance metaphor, because in trust, the roles have to change.  In ballroom, one person generally leads.  Not so in trust: you have to swap roles constantly.   So if not during the sales process, then shortly thereafter, Jones&Jones is going to have to take some risks and trust BioPharm.

If Jones&Jones doesn’t go out on a limb with some ideas, share its technology, offer a point of view, prepare to collaborate and be transparent, then BioPharm will pretty quickly be unsatisfied. Because once the initial trustor action is taken, it is up to the trustee to reciprocate, and offer to take some risks as well.

The Dance of Trust Requires Shifting Roles Between Trustor and Trustee

This frequent change of roles—back and forth—is what distinguishes the dance of trust. If Jones&Jones never takes a risk or trusts BioPharm, it will wear out its welcome quickly. And if Jones&Jones does take risks but BioPharm never reciprocates, it may be a mildly successful engagement, but it’s not likely to generate repeat business.

Here another metaphor applies: personal relationships. No good relationship lasts long (or stays healthy) if one side always gives and takes the risks; any good relationship needs the healthy back and forth provided by reciprocity.

Trust is, after all, a mutual relationship. But it is one generated by constantly shifting roles. The dance of trusting and being trusted is what generates the state of trust we hear so much about.

 

What the Obesity Dilemma Tells Us About Corporate Change

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Breakfast at the Dolphin, Disney World.   I’m seated next to two women, each about 5’6”, each 250 – 300 lbs.  They’re tucking into their French toast with syrup, bacon-cheese omelets and sticky buns with butter, when one woman’s cell phone alarm goes off.  “Oh, time to take my pills,” she cheerfully announces to her companion.

Many of you will read the above paragraph with some degree of moral disapproval; I wrote it to elicit that reaction. Others of you will blame Big Food.  Others, who sympathize with the difficulty of losing weight, can be further broken down into those who seek:

a. better drugs for appetite suppression,
b. various forms of group or self-help programs, or
c. self-worth through affirmations—“Fat Power.”

All of which suggests total lack of agreement about how to address obesity.

But maybe it suggests even more.  The obesity problem is a subset of a larger problem: how to get human beings—and companies–to change.

Options for Dealing with Obesity

It is a statistical fact that we have suddenly—like in the last 20 years—gotten significantly, massively, undeniably, across-the-board fatter.  If you have any doubts about this at all, read the New Yorker’s XXXL: Why Are We So Fat?   Believe it.  The Dolphin is America.  We have recently  become Big Time Fat.  And we are dying way younger, driving up health care costs massively, and lowering life quality by doing so.

You could, of course, go for the structural solution.  The Dolphin also has a store called Sugar3. The Dolphin doesn’t offer microwaves, and they don’t sell plain popcorn. But you can buy caramelized, sugared popcorn in the stores.  Change all that.

But fixing an industry that is laser-focused on profitable hi-calorie product creation is just not gonna happen in the US.  We believe too strongly in other values—self-will, freedom of choice, individual responsibility. When these iconic values get into the hands of purely self-aggrandizing corporate profit machines, we are putty.  We do not have the aggregate political self-will to systemically ‘just say no’ to the purveyors of deep-fried-quad-stacker-twinkies.  

(It isn’t just the food itself, either. Bra sizes (I’m told) have been gradually getting smaller (i.e. the old B is the new C).  Lady’s dress sizes have gone the other way (the old 8 is the new 6); I heard of one (highly educated) woman who only shops at one store, because only there is she a size 2.)

If the social and political system is inadequate to deal with this public health issue, then how about self-will?  The growing magnitude of self-help books is testimony to the failure of self-help books. 

What about groups?  Whether Nutri-System or Weight-Watchers or Overeaters Anonymous, it works if you work it.  (Oh, that darn ‘if’ clause).  And we watch motivated, powerful people like Oprah or Kirstie Alley fail to work it—publicly, all the time.

Drugs?  Been to a managed care facility for seniors lately?  There is a several-times daily routine; the wheelchairs line up at the meds-dispensing window like obedient dairy cattle.  Many of us very much want to believe there is a penicillin for everything; if the evening news tells us we can treat restless-pinky syndrome, then weight-control ought to be a piece of cake (sorry). 

The obvious truth is: none of these solutions works with anything near dependability.  There are no silver bullets; bullet peddlers also rep lines of snake oil.  For a few souls, one solution works; but even then, it’s after having tried others.

The best answer seems to be: d. all of the above. 

Now–what’s this got to do with organizational change?

Options for Dealing with Organizational Change

How do you change an organization?  How do you improve sales, customer service, or total quality?  How do you increase employee engagement, customer loyalty, or trustworthiness?

  • •    Structure helps.  Close the sugar-cubed stores, aka monetized mini-metrics and weekly quotas; sell fruit next to the Fatitos, i.e. talk to customers, role-model good behavior.  Make it easier to be good.
  • •    Keep it simple.  Every diet ever invented is subject to Newton’s Law of Conservation of Energy—it is simply about calories.  Every company ever invented has to sell something good to someone who wants it.  The further away you get from the basics, the more people forget the basics.  
  • •    There is no pill.  There is no pill.   There is no pill.
  • •    Fat Power is no better than Alcoholic Power, Smokers Power or Victim Power.  The Brotherhood of the Similarly Fat is just another self-deluding drug.  Spandex is not your friend.   
  • •    Will power alone is necessary but not sufficient: white-knuckling is sometimes required, but it’s a helluva way to live a life.  Make the daily stuff of business itself the carrot, then use fewer sticks. 

Corporate change isn’t only like personal change, it is personal change.  Becoming fully adult and fully human is a lifelong pursuit.  Ditto for companies.

Choose d. all the above.

 

August Carnival of Trust is Up

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Back by popular acclaim, David Donoghue reprises his Carnival host-ship of last year in this month’s Carnival of Trust. 

For those who don’t know, the Carnival of Trust is hosted on a rotating basis by excellent bloggers, who themselves select what they consider to be the leading posts of the past month.  The host–not me–selects from submitted posts and those of their own searching; they choose how many, and from what walks of life, the posts represent. The only requirements are that the posts be good, the host be scintillating, and the subject has something to do with trust.

David’s blog–the Chicago IP Litigation Blog–of course brings a legal perspective.  But he hasn’t let that restrain him.  In this month’s Carnival, he has selected some excellent posts ranging from leadership (in the US Patent office) to restoring corporate trust, to Walter Cronkite, to an Amazon response to a crisis.

Rich and varied stuff, the food of good thought.  Many thanks to David. 

Blog-jog on over to David’s site to savor this month’s Carnival of Trust.

 

 

When Arrogance Feigns Humility

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At my seminars, one of the actions I suggest to increase perceived trustworthiness is to speak truthfully.

Sounds great in principle, until you get into just which truths you discuss.

Speaking conventional, obvious truths (“how ‘bout them Bulls”)  doesn’t do much to create either distinction or deeper trust. Hence the usefulness of talking about things that don’t get said by others (“Joe, I’m sensing some hesitation here—is that right?”).

At this point, attendees often raise the issue of propriety, as in, “Some things should best be left unsaid—you don’t want to embarrass people or make them uncomfortable.  And if people feel uncomfortable or embarrassed, they’re not likely to trust you anyway.”

I tell them my experience is that most businesspeople don’t suffer from telling too much truth, but from telling too little. And so on. We generally have good discussions about the issue.

But occasionally that discussion goes to a higher plane. So it was recently, when an attendee and I talked at a break:

“I buy what you’re saying about our general hesitation to take personal risks in the workplace,” she said, “and you’re right—we’re making the client take the hit for our own insecurities.”

“But what about those cases where it’s actually true? Where to hear something really would be upsetting to the client, even if it’s true, and potentially important for them. Maybe it’s an issue I’m not totally sure of.  Maybe it’s a situation where I can get by with just saying most of the truth; or maybe the risk of embarrassment to me truly does exceed the benefit of truth-telling to the client. Aren’t you really helping the client by taking into account what you know of their reactions and ability to hear tough truths, and packaging them accordingly?”

I thought to myself, “Those are good questions: and we do have an obligation to our clients to say important things in ways they can hear them. But we have another obligation, to figure out how to say those tough truths, rather than deep-six them.”

Yet, how to say that to this thoughtful and insightful person?

I suddenly remembered a wonderful quote from Martha Graham: 

“There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique, and if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium; and be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is, not how it compares with other expression. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open."

I said to the participant, “I’m sure you don’t think of it this way, but is it conceivable that your genuinely good intentions and insights are nonetheless making you behave arrogantly? In the sense that you are depriving your client of the right to make this decision for him- or herself? And if you don’t trust your client to handle the truth–doesn’t that ultimately degrade their trust in you as well?”

I didn’t need to elaborate.  She reacted immediately with shock at the suggestion that she, a most pleasant person, could conceivably be thought arrogant; but in half a second I saw quickly saw in her eyes that she ‘got’ it, and understood the meaning, and the truth, of the question.

Then, I think, she smiled a bit. Which, I suspect, Martha Graham would have appreciated.
 

Trust and the TransAm

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My husband Mark doesn’t come to trust easily in the everyday world, but in some special realms he can build surprising bridges of trust with total strangers. Take the selling of one of his treasured Trans Ams to someone 2000 miles away, whom he never met.

Mark had his last two in a long line of muscle cars – all Trans Ams – in the garage, a ’71 and a ’78. He concluded one day that they deserved better homes because he wasn’t driving either of them more than a few hundred miles a year. The ’78 he sold immediately to a neighbor; we can still see it in their garage by looking from our front porch. The second one he held onto while he debated about keeping or selling.

In October, in the course of his “sell” research, Mark found a ’72 Trans Am for sale on e-Bay and contacted the seller to talk about how he, The Seller Guy, had set the price. (All the sellers and buyers in our e-Bay world are “The Guy”, as in “The Guy selling the Trans Am.”) As it turned out, The Guy was only selling a Trans Am for a friend, and was himself interested in buying Mark’s ’71. They continued their dialog offline.

The Guy then sent a hundred dollars or so – earnest money – as they negotiated. The Guy wanted to see more pictures; Mark posted 172 shots of the inside, outside, underside and every inch under the hood on his FTP site. The Guy sent another $3000 as they concluded the deal and tried to make arrangements for shipping the car and a considerable assortment of parts from New Jersey to Montana.

I don’t know how many cars you’ve shipped, but it seems that shippers take either parts or cars, but not both.

Months ticked by, and nine months later, in July, Mark got an email that The Guy had found a friend delivering a car to PA who was going to stop and pick up the ’71 in NJ to haul it back to Montana. The Guy wired the rest of the money. In August The Pick-up Guy showed up and the car and parts were lovingly handed over to the care of another stranger.

If you asked Mark (I did) what made him trust The Guy he’d never met, hold onto the car for months, and then load the car onto the truck of another stranger, he’d say it was that he didn’t do anything until he had money in hand. The Guy had to do all the trusting (and Mark was of course trustworthy.)

I think it goes deeper: they were members of the same tribe, who spoke the same language, and could be trusted because they established that each was what he said he was – part of the Trans Am tribe.
 

If We’re So Rational, How Come We Don’t Believe It?

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From Australia’s news.com comes the story of how positive thinking can make things worse.   

REPEATING positive statements such as "I am a lovable person" or "I will succeed" makes some people feel worse about themselves instead of raising their self-esteem, a study says.

Positive self-statements make people who are already down on themselves feel worse rather than better, according to the study conducted by psychologists Joanne Wood and John Lee of the University of Waterloo and Elaine Perunovic of the University of New Brunswick.

For the study, the psychologists asked people with low self-esteem and people with high self-esteem to repeat the phrase: "I am a lovable person," and then measured participants’ moods and feelings about themselves. What they found is that individuals who started out with low self-esteem felt worse after repeating the positive self-statement.

Hmm.  So much for mantras, affirmations, cognitive therapy and NLP?  Now now, don’t bother writing in, the research also says those things can work in the context of a larger program.  But that just means it’s a helluva job to change our beliefs, no matter how irrationally we got there.  The head is a weak instrument with which to heal the heart.  Syllogisms are powerful only in computer programs.

Dan Ariely’s excellent book Predictably Irrational  uses an opening story/example  involving a nursing practice to show how people behave irrationally. 

Curiously, when he explained the irrationality of the practice to the nurses themselves, they agreed about the irrationality.  And then kept on doing it.

In the “same only different” vein, we have Tim Harford’s Logic of Life.  An economist, his purpose is similar to Ariely’s—to show that apparently emotionally driven patterns in life actually demonstrate very rational behavior, meaning they make perfect sense when explained in terms of the pursuit of self-interest.

Harford has his own curious moment.  He shows how juvenile delinquents’ criminal behavior demonstrate rational decision-making based on the relative severity of juvenile vs. adult laws.  So much for adolescent impulsive crime, he says.  Higher penalties actually do deter criminals.  The data show it.

As Harford puts it, “the policy recommendations that emerged from…the theory and data are strikingly clear and precise…Unfortunately, politicians prefer simple ideological answers.”

Well, duh!

I think both these books are superb—great reads, and very insightful.  I’m not making a fundamental critique of them at all, I agree with them.  I’m just high-spotting a side moment in each book.

But what moments!  Here are two deservedly respected experts on the subject of how apparently irrational behavior actually makes sense.  Yet each of them is flummoxed when faced with people who nod their heads at the experts’ logic—and then proceed to completely ignore it!

Hey guys–aren’t those the folks you wrote the books about?  So–why are you flummoxed?  And where’s the explanation?

I think Ariely and Harford are quite right—as far as they go.  But I think there’s also something still out there, beyond explaining the perversely expressed logic of self-interest.

It’s the reason it takes a couple of generations to work out family neuroses. It’s the reason dieting is so hard, prejudice is so persistent, and why more people trusted Madoff than the IRS.

And it’s the reason mere affirmations can backfire.  Maturity comes upon us at the pace of molasses.  Change is a bitch.
 

Soul Trust

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From Reuters, a most curious story.
Would you pledge your soul as loan collateral?

RIGA (Reuters) – Ready to give your soul for a loan in these difficult economic times? In Latvia, where the crisis has raged more than in the rest of the European Union, you can.  Such a deal is being offered by the Kontora loan company, whose public face is Viktor Mirosiichenko, 34.

Clients have to sign a contract, with the words "Agreement" in bold letters at the top. The client agrees to the collateral, "that is, my immortal soul."

Mirosiichenko said his company would not employ debt collectors to get its money back if people refused to repay, and promised no physical violence. Signatories only have to give their first name and do not show any documents.

"If they don’t give it back, what can you do? They won’t have a soul, that’s all," he told Reuters in a basement office, with one desk, a computer and three chairs.

Think of all the literary touchstones this story elicits.  Gogol’s Dead Souls?  No, these souls are living.

How about the Robert Johnson Mississippi Delta myth of selling one’s soul at the crossroads; which led to Clapton’s Cream mega-hit Crossroad (and the comically serious Hollywood version, with Ralph (Karate Kid) Macchia doing the Robert Johnson role, with Ry Cooder standing in for Johnson/Macchia, and monster guitarist Steve Vai frankly blowing them all away as the devil).

Apparently, Mirosiichenko is not kidding. 

Mirosiichenko said his company was basically trusting people to repay the small amounts they borrowed, which has so far been up to 250 lats ($500) for between 1 and 90 days at a hefty interest rate.

He said about 200 people had taken out loans over the two months the business was in operation.

What does this say about trust?  The lender isn’t accepting collateral in the traditional sense (unless a rebuyer of souls, a la Gogol’s plotline, shows up).  Rather, he’s betting on the meaning of the oath to those who take it. 

Soul-pledging: the antithesis of asset-based lending.

Does this amount to a fear-based manipulation of primitives?  Or is it a sophisticated form of appeal to a character-based sense of honor?

Somewhat less seriously, what would Wall Street add to the question?

•    Are some souls more bankable than others?  Can a fair virginal maiden of 18 pull down a bigger loan than an aging prostitute?  
•    Are soul contracts assignable?
•    What’s the value of a tranche of securitized soul contracts?
•    Can you short soul contracts?  (Unfortunately, as of yesterday, naked shorts are now illegal).  
•    Is the soul sufficient consideration for a loan?
•    How do you foreclose on a soul?
•    What happens if the market value of a soul drops to the point where you’re underwater vis a vis the loan?  Can you go soul-bankrupt?
•    What if you commit a mortal sin after you sign the contract, thereby reducing the value of the collateral?

(co-author credits on this blogpost go to Susan Kleiner and Stewart Hirsch, specialists in soul law).
 

Sotomayor Was Right the First Time: A Wise Latina Does Know More

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Supreme court nominee Sonia Sotomayor now-famously said, in 2001, that she would hope a “wise Latina would make better decisions because of her life experiences than a white male.” 

As she noted, those have become her most-quoted words, overwhelmed by a firestorm of opinion characterizing her as racist or worse.  Before long, she was forced to eat her own words (as in a Boston Globe headline, “Sotomayor Repudiates ‘Wise Latina’ Comment.")

She was right the first time.  A Wise Latina woman does know more. 

Notice your own reaction in this instant, after reading this blogpost title and that last sentence.

Most of you had a quick emotional reaction—negative for most, positive for some.  You interpret it as a political statement, and you probably made an inference about my own political views.

Let me try to find the rarified air wherein that statement has nothing to do with racism or politics, and should not provoke any emotions at all.  It is simply a statement about the dynamics of human beings when they are cast in roles of minority and majority.  It should provoke no more adrenaline than an observation about the feeding habits of penguins.

The Dance of Majority and Minority

People observe and believe very different things based on whether they are members of a minority, or of a majority.  One group, I suggest, notices more, and knows more, than the other.

This isn’t about race per se: it’s about a mixture of numbers and power.  Suppose Group A constitutes 70% of a culture’s population, and 85% of its economic and political wealth.  Groups B and C each represent 10% of the population, and 5% of its economic and political wealth.

All groups—A,B and C—will view Group A as the dominant culture.  The habits, opinions, styles, language, likes and dislikes, family patterns and ideologies of Group A will dominate in institutions, advertising, government, etc.

If you’re a young A person, you conclude that your culture is the norm.  Mathematically, you are absolutely right.  Emotionally, you conclude that you are also “right,” and that other cultures, being in the minority, are odd, unusual, out of the ordinary.

If you’re a young B or C person, you see the same facts.  You also know that A people are the norm–you can do the math too.  Unfortunately, you likely also internalize the majority view that B-ness or C-ness is somehow odd, unusual, out of the ordinary.

It is but the tiniest of steps from the above for an A person to judge a B or C person as “weird,” wrong, or inferior–and to simply not notice many differences. More insidiously, it’s also a tiny step for Bs and Cs to think the same of themselves.  (Being a minority is a helluva psychic challenge).

Each group understands the As.  But the As impute mainstream characteristics—which happen to be their own–to everyone.  Hence they literally do not notice many characteristics of Bs and Cs, assuming them to be identical to mainstream (and their own) ways of life.  The most “normal” Bs and Cs, to an A, are those who most resemble As.  (“But you don’t look Jewish…”)

An example: look at the photo on the top right of this page (go to the URL if you’re getting this by text).  In this picture, those are the feet of a white person.

Of all the feet on all the dashboards of all the cars in the US, what percentage of the time are those feet likely to be the feet of a black person?

a.    0%
b.    5%
c.    10%
d.    25%

If you’re a white person, you’re likely to guess a number in line with the black percentage of the US population.

But if you’re a black person, you know the answer is a, or just about 0%.  In the black community, putting one’s bare feet up on a car’s dashboard, or a table, is considered just plain rude. 

The reason white people don’t know this is that black people know what happens if they try to explain it.  Picture yourself as an African American, trying to explain to a white senator  that his kids are rude because they see nothing wrong with putting their feet on the dashboard.  Will the Senator hear it as anthropological information?  Or as insulting racist talk?  Take a wild guess. 

So we have:

1. Minority people (black, in this case) know what to expect from everyone on the foot test. 

2. Majority people (white in this case) do not know what to expect from everyone on the foot test. 

3. QED: minority people know more than majority people.  Sotomayor was dead right.

Then why did she repudiate herself?  Because majorities tend to hear statements of minority knowledge as insults to the majority.

And, since majorities can’t see what minorities can, it’s a losing battle to protest.  Easier to repudiate yourself.

If you’re white, and think that blacks overstate racism, then ask yourself: how emotionally disturbed was I by this headline?  If the answer was, ‘a lot,’ but you also see the point of this blog, then that tells you how deeply embedded majoritism (racism, sexism, etc.) is in this society.  Your gut instinct was to hear the truth as an insult.  Just like a Senator who heard "a double minority person knows more then a white male."

Very sad, perhaps.  Yet also, simply very true.
 

Markets, Relationships and Trust

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Dan Ariely’s Predictably Irrational is one of several in the “Malcolm Gladwell” category of books.  Such books point out the counter-intuitive, and debunk the rational, linear, deductive explanations that we so often assign to social phenomena.

It’s an antidote to any professional (economists come to mind) who believe man is a rational, transacting, self-interest-maximizing calculator.

One of his most compelling points happens at the intersection of relationships and markets.  In his example, imagine a great Thanksgiving dinner at your mother in-law’s—all the fixin’s.  And then you offer to pay her, say $150, for the experience.  To your surprise, she feels insulted!

You are now persona non grata at your in-laws’.  As Ariely explains, you reacted to a social situation with a market response. 

What happens when social norms collide with market norms?  As Ariely says: “the social norm then goes away for a long time.”

Ariely channels Alfie Kohn, who 15 years ago in Punished by Rewards  pointed out the de-motivating effect of monetary rewards.  The intrinsic pleasure children took in games was destroyed when researchers paid the kids to play the same games. 

Extrinsic incentives work, said Kohn: they work to incent more extrinsic incentives.  But at the cost of destroying intrinsic motivation.

Ariely cites a day care center where parents occasionally came late to pick up their kids.  To reduce tardy pickups, a penalty was assessed.  Whereupon tardiness increased.  Parents were grateful for the “permission” to pay a fine rather than incur social guilt.

On the face of it, then, companies ought to use more social incentivizing.  Or should they? Companies built around devotion to shareholder value and metrics that devolve to financials are asking for trouble when they try to play an honest game of relationships. Then the social norms are gone, for a long time.

Markets do two great things: they tend to make things less costly or more efficient.  And, they require more transparency.

Take my blogpost of two days ago, A Case Study in Low Trust, about untrustworthy behavior in the financial planning sector.  The problem with industry associations like NAPFA is that, despite failing the public, they insist on concocting arguments to transparency.  Here’s a case where markets—in the sense of freely available information, and a reduction in personal relationships—is precisely what’s required.

Too many policy debates these days take place on the ideologically rigid dimensions. 

-in finance, “markets” vs. “relationship” is a useless debate; it depends
-in health care, it isn’t “markets” vs. “socialism;" it depends
-“government should be run like a business” vs. “government should be run for the people” is a red herring; it depends.

Where corruption exists we need markets and transparency.  Where children are educated, as Ariely suggests (and Gladwell and Kohn tend to agree), we need focus on relationships and intrinsic motivation. 

Trust is not automatically the province of either one–again, it depends.  Market-driven transparency  can increase our trust in financial planners.  More relationships can increase our trust of suppliers.  It depends.

How about your issue?  Is it better served by markets, or by relationships?
 

A Case Study in Low Trust: NAPFA

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Industry associations occupy a rare and privileged status in our society. Associations serve two masters: their industry membership, and the consumers those industries serve. 

Largely unregulated themselves, if they do a good job they can avoid regulation for their industry.  If they do a bad job, they can accelerate abuses–and end up getting regulated.  You’d think most associations would want to avoid regulation.  And so, they trumpet their service to the consumer.

The question is, what do their actions say? 

All too often, it’s food for cynicism.   The National Association of Personal Financial Advisors  has lately exhibited such cynical behavior. 

Last week NAPFA’S chairwoman Diahann Lassus represented the Financial Planning Coalition in front of the House Committee on Financial Services.  She testified strongly in favor of a fiduciary standard for all individual financial planners.  So far, so good.

Then yesterday NAPFA issued a press release sounding a different tone, commenting on proposed custody-related SEC regulations put in place partly to curb Madoff-like abuses.  One clause in particular proposes spot-audits of RIAs (registered investment advisers) who deduct their fees directly from clients’ accounts.  

NAPFA Says It’s Pro-consumer, but it’s Hard to See How.

To read NAPFA’s press release headline, you’d think they were the Consumer’s Friend:

NAPFA Believes SEC Mission for Custody Rule Changes is Commendable, but views Commission’s Proposed Changes as Not a Proper ‘Means to an End’

OK. The SEC would like to audit certain advisers.  NAPFA thinks that’s a bad idea.

Why?  Get this.  Because, NAPFA says, audits:

1.    won’t protect consumers
2.    would cost more than they’re worth
3.    will cost consumers additional expense and inefficiency.

Are you kidding me?  In this post-Madoff  environment you’re telling us that spot-auditing some RIAs won’t help consumers?  Tell it to Madoff whistle-blower Markopolis, who clearly disagrees. Cost more than it’s worth?  I think a few Ponzi schemes prevented or uncovered would easily cover costs.

NAPFA’s better idea?  Leave it to NAPFA.

The industry, including NAPFA, suggests that instead of the SEC, we rely on a professional oversight board made up of–the industry.

A little problem with that.  There are NAPFA members out there today who have been convicted in court of professional malpractice–with no NAPFA action taken.  There are RIAs out there who violate ethics guidelines by lending to their clients.  In fact, just recently a former NAPFA president was sued by the SEC for accepting $1.2M in kickbacks. 

The response of NAPFA chairwoman Diahann Lassus to that last one? “’The reality is that this situation, in comparison to the Madoff scheme, and many other things that have happened out there, is very small,’ Lassus said.”  Well that’s a relief.  And Nixon wasn’t a crook.

Not a good track record.  So just what does NAPFA suggest?  Hold on to your hats.

  1. Encourage consumers to thoroughly read and review all statements to identify all questionable account activity
  2. Offer incentives for whistleblowers who bring to light dishonest advisor activity
  3. Provide means for consumers to report fraudulent activity anonymously

In other words: the way to protect consumers is to encourage the consumers to read more fine print, find financial Dog the Bounty-Hunters, and offer an anonymous tip line.

Enforce ethical and fiduciary standards?  Do audits themselves?  Nah, that’d cost the planners too much.

Suppose this were legislation about child abuse at daycare facilities, and the government proposed spot-audits to prevent it.  How would parents react to a daycare association recommendation that, instead of audits, parents read the fine print of their daycare contracts, and phone any concerns into a tip-line?

If NAPFA won’t even discipline its own court-convicted members–arrogantly flunking a rather basic test of ethical self-enforcement–what right do they have to claim that they’re better qualified to protect consumers than the SEC?  I cannot see it.

There are many very fine, ethical financial planners.  There are of course a few bad apples as well (Lassus herself says she hears "nightmare" stories, and "sadly, these stories are not unusual").  But when it comes to NAPFA, you can’t help but notice the rot in the barrel itself.

Can Financial Planning Avoid More Regulation?

I’m all in favor of industry associations behaving responsibly, realizing that the long-term health of the industry depends on feeding the long-term and short-term health of the consumer, rather than serving short-term member greed.  That means self-enforcement, and I would love to see it happen. 

But at some point, an industry forfeits its right to be trusted anymore on its own.  The financial planning industry–as represented by its associations–has about crossed that line.  It’s hard to take seriously the idea that they have earned the right to self-enforce.  Bring on the SEC.