The February Top 5

February had a number of popular posts, and if you didn’t have a chance to read them when they were up, this is a second opportunity. Please join in the conversation to any of these posts.

Number One The Best in the World. What traits do they seem to have in common?

Number Two Have You Stopped Beating Your Wife? Luck? Or hard work? Like the infamous question, it’s a false choice.

Number Three Trust Tip 32: Answering "Why Should We Choose You? It’s a question we all get asked at times. Here’s how to answer it.

Number Four Seductive Statistics. If you measure trust, and true and manage it through those measurements, will you kill it as the management obsession with loyalty did to that virtue?

Number Five Trust, Freedom and Democracy. It seems to be a tradition that every month, one of the top 6 is actually from the prior month. The question of whether narrowing the definition of freedom to economic freedom has damaged democracy seemed to have a lot of legs and kept pulling in readers long after it was posted.

Truth, Lies and Unicorns

Following is a synopsis of an article—"Truth, Lies and Unicorns"—that I just published with Andrea Howe of BossaNova Consulting Group in RainToday.com. You can read the complete article here.

What is lying?

On a conversational level, we take “lying” to mean speaking an untruth; overtly saying something that is not the case. Webster’s first definition is “to make an untrue statement with intent to deceive.” “To lie” is an active verb, with a connotation of intent.

But Webster’s second definition is far broader: “to create a false or misleading impression.” That definition includes lies of omission; it even extends beyond speech.

By that definition, business advisors (or for that matter, people) who don’t lie are like unicorns: not inconceivable, but pretty infrequent. In the same sense, Diogenes never found an honest man.

The article goes on to describe five common ways we lie to clients. It then explores just why it is that we lie. Our contention is that we fool ourselves.

The article examines the costs and benefits of lying, separating the purely utilitarian consequences from any ethical treatment. The article argues that when humans analyze lying as a purely utilitarian practice—we tend to get the analysis wrong.

Specifically, we underestimate the utilitarian value of truth-telling, and of the cost of disapproval if caught.

Meanwhile, we overestimate the benefit of the false perception our lie gets us, the cost of disapproval for truth-telling, and the probability of getting away with it.

On purely arithmetic grounds, then, lying is often accompanied by self-deception. It’s speculation on my part, but I suppose it has to do with over-estimating present pain vs. future good—a saber-tooth tiger in one’s face gets a lot of attention. It’s all fear-based in any case.

The article goes on to discuss the very real economic costs of lying, and to suggest some practical ways of doing a better job of truth-telling.

If the article interests you, you might also want to read Sissela Bok’s excellent book Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life. She makes a wonderful case that, while “always tell the whole truth” may be an overly strict rule, it is far closer to correct than what we usually do.

Finally, as long as I’m self-promoting in this post, let me dump it all at once. I got a very nice book review of my book "Trust-based Selling" from Mike Schultz. Full disclosure: Mike is also publisher of RainToday.com, of which I’m a contributing editor. Mike was taken by the use of lists in the book.

There, all done.

The Opportunity Cost of Mistrust

How much money do you leave on the table by trusting customers?

Case 1.
David Maister
wrote about his service guarantee.  His precise words are, “If you are anything less than completely satisfied, then pay me only what you think the work was worth.”

One commenter on the posting said, “I like the post quite a bit, but I’m surprised that no one has commented on the first thing that came to my mind on the guarantee – those customers who will take the opportunity to stiff you on good work simply because of the opportunity via the guarantee."

David’s reply:

“It has never, ever happened to me. And if it did, I’d apply that old slogan "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."
I don’t work for cheats or people I don’t trust. And if it ever happened by mistake, I wouldn’t be tempted to change the pricing policy to accomodate it! A pricing policy designed to accomodate SOBs sounds like a disaster to me.

Case 2.
I have myself on three occasions offered a complete refund of my fees because I felt the result wasn’t good enough. The client refused in each case and paid in full.

Case 3.
Joel Spolsky posts Seven Steps to Remarkable Service,

Step Seven is, “Greed Will Get You Nowhere,” wherein he talks about Fog Creek Software:

I asked what methods they found most effective for dealing with angry customers.

“Frankly,” they said, “we have pretty nice customers. We haven’t really had any angry customers.”

I thought the nature of working at a call center was dealing with angry people all day long.

“Nope. Our customers are nice.

“Here’s what I think. I think that our customers are nice because they’re not worried. They’re not worried because we have a ridiculously liberal return policy: “We don’t want your money if you’re not amazingly happy.”

“Customers know that they have nothing to fear. They have the power in the relationship. So they don’t get abusive.

“The no-questions-asked 90-day money back guarantee was one of the best decisions we ever made at Fog Creek. Try this: use Fog Creek Copilot for a full 24 hours, call up three months later and say, “hey guys, I need $5 for a cup of coffee. Give me back my money from that Copilot day pass,” and we’ll give it back to you.

Try calling on the 91st or 92nd or 203rd day. You’ll still get it back.  We really don’t want your money if you’re not satisfied. I’m pretty sure we’re running the only job listing service around that will refund your money just because your ad didn’t work. This is unheard of, but it means we get a lot more ad listings, because there’s nothing to lose.

Over the last six years or so, letting people return software has cost us 2%.

2%.

And you know what? Most customers pay with credit cards, and if we didn’t refund their money, a bunch of them would have called their bank. This is called a chargeback. They get their money back, we pay a chargeback fee, and if this happens too often, our processing fees go up.

Know what our chargeback rate is at Fog Creek?

0%.

"I’m not kidding.

"If we were tougher about offering refunds, the only thing we would possibly have done is pissed a few customers off, customers who would have ranted and whined on their blogs. We wouldn’t even have kept more of their money.

"I know of software companies who are very explicit on their web site that you are not entitled to a refund under any circumstances, but the truth is, if you call them up, they will eventually return your money because they know that if they don’t, your credit card company will. This is the worst of both worlds. You end up refunding the money anyway, and you don’t get to give potential customers the warm and fuzzy feeling of knowing Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong, so they hesitate before buying.  Or they don’t buy at all.

How much money are you leaving on the table by not trusting your customers?

American Secret

If you haven’t heard about “The Secret,” you will soon. It’s a phenomenon.

It’s a 90-minute streaming video, a DVD, and a book. It’s ranked #2 on Amazon at the moment of this writing. It was on Oprah and The Ellen Show. It’s part DaVinci Code, part Blair Witch Project, and part Tony Robbins.

For the basics, see Wikipedia’s entry.  Or, The Secret’s website.

To some, The Secret is deeply spiritual—to others, egregious hucksterism. To some, it’s a rich message of empowerment—to others, a setup for disappointment.

But mostly, it’s a classic American blending of upbeat self-reliance with the promise of material success. (Yes, it has Australian roots—but the Aussies often out-American the Americans).

The “secret”—ostensibly guarded closely by some of the great leaders of all time—is the "law" of attraction—if you envision it, you help create it.

Variations on the theme: you create your own reality; your thoughts influence your health; your attitude affects how others react to you; to be positive, act and think and feel positive; be the change you want in the world.

Said this way, it’s a great message. It empowers people to take responsibility for their own lives, to lead their own change program. It’s a message of possibility, and of capability. It accords with folk wisdom, commonsense, and has a good measure of scientific support.

By encouraging responsibility, it feeds gratitude, while it reduces blame-throwing, conflict, and disharmony. This is good spiritual stuff, among other things.

So far, so good. That’s the first American part—the "good."

Then there’s the other part.

The Secret pushes “your attitude matters” across the metaphysical divide into the realm of inanimate objects. It says—literally—you can envision your way into having an empty parking space waiting for you on the street; you can envision and win the lottery; a kid can get a bicycle if he envisions it strongly enough.

It suggests starting small—“make it your intention to attract a cup of coffee.” (Hey Joe, I was walking down the street, envisioning a coffee, and darned if a Starbucks didn’t show up in just three blocks! Miracle!)

The Secret says, “Ask the universe—believe it’s yours—receive it… If it’s money you need, you’ll get it…It literally moves into reality, and that’s by law… It works every time, for every person… You will get what you want…”

Problem 1—Physics. Pushed to this level, this is spoon-bending, yogic flying, junk science. Not going there, uh uh. The Secret is (very) bad metaphysics; worse physics.

Problem 2—Logic: At various places in the video, you can hear all four possible logical forms of the statement:

a. If you envision it, it will happen (original conditional)
b. If it didn’t happen, you didn’t envision it (contrapositive)
c. If it happened, then you envisioned it (converse)
d. If you didn’t envision it, then it didn’t happen (inverse)

Affirming all four statements is what you call a closed system. All cults have them. (So does the system of mathematics, if I understand Godel correctly, but we generally give math a free pass. But only math).

The Secret isn’t necessarily wrong—but when it becomes immune to disproof, as well as the sole explanation of all that happens in the Universe, you gotta wonder.

Problem 3—Bad Capitalism: I don’t mind materialism per se. (Hey I went to HBS, the West Point of Capitalism!) But this is not about founding a wealth-creating business; that would be a value-creating and value-sharing materialism.

Winning the lottery—one of the visuals in the The Secret—is pure zero-sum materialism. Now suppose The Secret were true, and I envisioned so well that I won a $10 million lottery. Result—a whole lot of income redistribution—but no new value created. Not much of an economic program.

Now, suppose that 10 million people envision it equally well—and all win the lottery too! Result—we’d each win $1. Again, no value added. Not even any income distribution.

If you were the first to have The Secret, maybe you’d hoard it to avoid scenario 2. Which is exactly what The Secret claims the 5% knowledgeable did to keep the other 95% from finding it out.

If me getting mine means you don’t get yours, then it’s not much of a spiritual principle either.

This willingness to engage in zero-sum self-aggrandizement puts The Secret smack in the middle of a grand American tradition: helping people by giving them some good tools, promising to help them get rich, and letting them pay well for the privilege of trying. It’s been done before: “God wants you to drive a Cadillac! Leave a donation on your way to the dealership!”

Dale Carnegie wrote, “Success is getting what you want. Happiness is wanting what you get.” The American tradition is to focus on the former.

But there’s an irony.

In business, if people trust you, you’ll make a lot of money. Yet many clients turn the outcome into the goal—they try to be trusted in order to make a lot of money. And it doesn’t work in that direction.

The parallel: if you think positively, good things will happen to you. But if you turn the outcome into the goal—using positive envisioning just to make a lot of money, irrespective of the effect on others—it may bite you.

I propose the “law" of un-attraction: if you fake it, you will not make it. We don’t trust those who are in it for themselves. So we don’t buy from them. So they don’t get rich after all.

Watch out what you envision—it may backfire on you!

(For further reading, I recommend John Stackhouse’s blog.  Stackhouse is a theologian, an academic who explores contemporary culture and its interplay with religion.  See his comment on The Secret here ).

Trust Tip 51:When They Say You’re Too Expensive

You know what it’s like.  You dread it.  You’re still not sure just how to handle it.  “It” is mentioning price, and getting this reaction:

• “Frankly, that’s just not in line with what we are thinking.”
• “Uh, that’s gonna be a little too expensive. A lot, actually.”
• Raised eyebrow…pained look…

Most sales books call this an “objection.” But “objection”—to most of us—sounds like a debate, or a trial.  It seems to call for a counterpunch, or a way to “overrule” the objection.

Instead, think of it as a cry for help.  Here’s someone who sounded pleased at the prospect of buying something, until—they felt a roadblock.  The name they give the roadblock is “price”—but they themselves often don’t know what that means.  They need your help.

You don’t know what it means either—but you know it’s one of five things.

a. That’s more than I had expected, I’m disappointed;
b. That’s more than we had budgeted for;
c. This [product/service] is not worth that much to us;
d. That’s more than your competitors have been quoting us;
e. I will not pay more than the lowest price anyone else pays.

In certain situations, every one of these meanings can be overcome.  In others, any one of them can shut down the sale.

Your job is not to get the sale.  Your job is to help the client figure out what “too much” means, and then jointly arrive at the right answer.  Which may include a sale for you—or not.

The point is to do the right thing for the customer—that starts with helping clarify what “too much” means.

How do you clarify which meaning the customer intended?  Well, you could print this blog out , carry it with you, and hand it to the customer.  Or jot down the list.  Or read it aloud.

The point is to honestly say, “look, there could be several meanings to what you just told me.  Please help me narrow it down, and let’s talk about it.”  Then talk about it—as if you were trying to help a friend decide.

The trust principles of collaboration and transparency apply here.  If you help them make the best decision, and are open in doing so, then you gain trust.  If you gain trust, you slightly improve your odds for this sale; but you go to the front of the line for when they do need what you have.

If it’s more than they expected, help them understand the market.

If it’s out of budget, explore the usual options—other funders? Next year’s budget?—and gracefully accept the answer, whatever it may be.

If it’s value, you can have a fine conversation about the source of value—and again gratefully accept the answer, whatever it may be.

If it’s about competitive perceptions, be as open as legally permissible, explain exactly how you price, how and why you discount. If you don’t have a good explanation, be prepared to gracefully accept…

Finally, if the customer just wants to get a “deal,” share as openly as you legally can just what your deals have been. Acknowledge and validate the need to “get a deal”—give them the best deal you can, and explain why it’s the best you can do.

Trust-based Selling doesn’t guarantee you the sale.  Of course, neither does hard-sell or bargaining techniques.  What it does do is greatly increase your chances of sales you should be getting—both current and future.  Not to mention helping your clients.

You become trusted by becoming trustworthy—worthy of trust. And you do that by always doing the right thing for the customer.

The “New Economy” of Internet Volunteers

Time Magazine, Feb. 26, has an article called “Getting Rich off Those Who Work for Free.” It talks about highly visible new-digital-economy success stories that rely heavily on volunteer labor—Linux, Wikipedia, Firefox notable among them.

Is this the benevolent side of humanity emerging? Altruism? Cyber-generosity?

Chief guru for this movement-trend-whatever is Yochai Benkler, currently of Yale Law School, author of “Wealth of Networks”—downloadable for free, as befits the spokesperson for the “gift economy.” I downloaded it last year—all 515 pages of it. (I got through some of it).

Benkler talks about the economics of peer production, and what it’s good for. Is this the Next Big Thing?

Benkler says, “The question for the past decade was, Is this real? The question for the next half-decade is, How do you make this damned thing work?”

Not so fast—I’m still back in the last decade on this one.

First of all, Benkler’s a good example. He’s not a volunteer. He’s being paid—probably quite well—by Yale. He gets a lot out of writing free books and chatting up Web 2.0-erati. Office; health care; pension; tuition for the kids; that sort of thing. His potential consulting rate, whether he has used it yet or not, is pretty high.

His free book got him a lot of publicity—because free’s unusual for books. Try putting out a free CD of music. Not so unusual.

What does Yale get in return? Less talk about being the alma mater of a C+ president. More identification with a hip guru of the new economy. As the commercial says, priceless. I sense a sensible economic transaction.

What looks like volunteering is often just financing. Linux programmers are often paid by large companies, and/or are themselves investing in job training.

At the front end of new markets, high tech labor has its own version of venture capital. The “volunteers” are making investments; the cash flow problem is solved by financing—either through employment at old companies, or in the form of a loan to be paid back by greater job marketability later.

Back in the day (way back) when AOL begin outdistancing Compuserve, AOL had volunteer sysops for all the topical areas. My guess is, that role is no longer done by volunteers. (Any AOL’ers still out there to confirm?) But I’d bet there are a lot of ex-sysops whose experience with AOL helped them quite nicely, thank you.

Then there is the “Carr-Benkler” wager. Carr is a business writer who bet Benkler that, by 2111, sites like Digg, Flickr and YouTube will be run by paid people, not volunteers. Shades of the Simon/Ehrlich bet of 1980 (check the link, it’s really interesting).

Benkler’s no dummy—Harvard Law, Yale Law, Supreme Court clerkship—but I think he’s playing the Ehrlich role here (Ehrlich lost. Big time.)

Generosity is in fact an under-appreciated driver of human behavior, and linked to trust. We can see dozens of tiny examples of generosity every day on a small scale, and sometimes on a large scale.

I’m just not sure we’re seeing it here.

I’m happy to volunteer on cool cutting edge stuff—because it lets me get in on the cool cutting edge. And oh yeah it helps save the world. But hey I’d like some credit for my volunteering after I graduate, or when I make the VC rounds to do my own IPO. Or at least a job interview.

It’s the same old Invisible Hand at work here, we don’t need to invent a new one.

 

From Our Legal Experts…

From Business Week’s SmallBiz magazine, February/March 2007:

The table of contents (print version only) features a small box titled Today’s Tip. This issue reads:

Today’s Tip
“Any sale should include a written statement to protect the interests of your business. In retail sales, even the wording on a sales receipt is important.”

—-from our legal experts.

Ah, where to begin, where to begin…

Let’s start by asking rhetorically, what does the world need more of?

a. businesses willing to take accountability for their actions, be customer-focused and deliver delight or,
b. businesses that let lawyers design sales slips so as to insure against lawsuits by disgruntled customers?

Another: do you think a customer can tell the difference between:

a. a company willing to take risks in pursuit of product and service excellence, and
b. a company focused on reducing risks from its customer base?

And another. Which company do you think employees prefer working for?

a. A company that believes in written statements surrounding every transaction, or
b. A company willing to honor the spirit more than the letter of its word?

Finally, which company do you think will be more successful?

a. One whose primary goal is to protect its own interests, or
b. One who sees its own interests as being fulfilled by serving its customers and employees’ interests?

Now, SmallBiz looks to be a good publication, with good thinking in it—as one would expect, given the BusinessWeek pedigree. And this is a tiny feature. But it’s what comes up in our unguarded moments that can be most revealing. Come on, now, BW—is this really what you want to be putting out?

Waddya, Nuts?

Several years ago, I met someone who’s now a good friend. When we met, we talked about business for a bit. She was very well-informed, and I asked her if she had an MBA.

“What, are you nuts?” she replied. (Actually, more like “Waddya, nuts?”).

I was initially hurt. After all, I had meant it as a compliment. And it wasn’t a dumb question, I thought; no need to be insulting about it.

It happened a few more times. “Who’s the male lead in that movie?” “Waddya, nuts?” “Would you like some more chocolate cake?” “Waddya, nuts?”

She seemed like a perfectly nice person—gregarious, intelligent, giving to others. She had a lot of friends. Had overcome some challenges in life to become successful. Volunteered. Voted. Gave to charity.

“Would you like a free ticket to the hottest Broadway play?” “Waddya, nuts?”

How could the rest of the world not notice this glaring defect in an otherwise delightful human being? It was like having an annoying laugh, or wearing a big scarlet letter. Still, you couldn’t help but like her; everyone did.

One day it dawned on me. This was another of those cases. Those darn, dratted, doggone cases where I had things precisely, exactly, backwards.

She wasn’t annoying—I was annoyed. She wasn’t being hurtful—I was feeling hurt.

She wasn’t even out of line. She was leading with her inner New Yorker; I was countering with my inner Nebraskan.

I initiated linguistic research. I untangled her twisted syntax. Turned out she had evolved a very complex language system, whereby one single phrase could signify a number of subtly different exclamations, including:

“Wow, I never would have thought of that!” and
“Oh, how flattering, I don’t see myself that way,” and
“Oh, lucky me, I get to the be the first one to tell you about XYZ!” and—occasionally—
“What planet are you from? It sounds different from mine!”

I noticed none of the connotations were mean-spirited; in fact, they were all said in a friendly tone. And everyone else seemed to take it that way.

Pogo’s dictum, rediscovered yet again: "We have met the enemy, and it is us.”

So it is with trust.

It’s hard to be trustworthy if you yourself can’t trust. And part of trusting is not thinking that everything—good or bad—is about oneself.

Thank goodness for patient and tolerant friends.

Have You Stopped Beating Your Wife?

Maura O’Neill—lecturer at Berkeley’s Haas School of Business—writes an article about women in business called “Luck or Hard Work?” in Forbes’ February 26 edition (members only, but it’s free).

Ms. O’Neill says she has studied the glass ceiling, and concluded that the common explanation—women opting out to have children—does not add up. It is “rarely the real reason, and never the only reason…The more nuanced explanation is that many women think getting to the top job pivots more on luck and connections than on hard work.”

In examining the World Values Survey, she thinks she finds support. She says:
 

The 1995–97 survey asked people whether they attributed success in life to luck and connections or to hard work. We found a significant gender perceptions gap that gets wider the higher you look in the professional hierarchy. Twelve percent more working men than women think it is hard work, rather than luck, that determines success. When you look at men and women who hold supervisory roles, 30% more men than women believe it’s hard work that determines success.

And Ms. O’Neill’s conclusion:
 

…the old boy network trumps 60-hour workweeks. And when women believe this, their inability to land the top job becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy…
I worry that if women don’t think that the workplace is a level playing field where effort generates promotions, they will not feel compelled to invest their best efforts. As a result, corporate America will lose out on a vast reservoir of talent.

 

Ms. O’Neill’s logic is tortured in two places—and manages to perpetuate a misconception about getting ahead.

First: if the premise is true—that networks do trump work weeks—then the last thing that women should do is disbelieve it. And the next-to-last last thing they should do is continue to invest in long work-weeks.

But Ms. O’Neill seems to be saying both: women should believe something she thinks to be false, and women should continue to do something that hasn’t worked. This fits the well-known definition of insanity—doing something over and over, expecting different results.

Second: Ms. O’Neill quotes the Values study as asking women “whether they attributed success in life to luck and connections or to hard work.” My emphasis on “luck and connections—” because they are surely not the same thing.

Yet—in the rest of her article—Ms. O’Neill then talks only about “luck.” "Connections" are left behind, or assumed to be a matter of luck.

Not so fast.

“Connections” are relationships that are particularly helpful for success. Relationships massively affect business success, and will do so even more as the world gets more connected.

Who you know is vital to success—Ms. O’Neill is right about that. If you have no relationships, you are dead in the water. Certain people have a walking-in advantage in relationships—those who are connected.

Is that “fair?” Certainly not. But nor is it “luck.”

Ms. O’Neill conflates luck and connections. She then suggests women substitute a belief in hard work for a belief in luck. Both points are misguided.

It’s men who are more likely to believe hard work explains success. Yet men lie.

In a world of haves and have-nots, the haves are more likely to attribute success to their own hard work, rather than having been born a) rich, b) white, c) male, d) in a good neighborhood, e) having successful parents, etc. Those who have connections are more likely to deny their importance.

Ms. O’Neill seems to want to believe in a meritocracy based on hard work alone. But that doesn’t work even as a utopian idea. It matters what you work on. 60 hour weeks on technical or desk work will—and should—get you a decent bonus and sunshades to go with your glass ceiling—but no more.

At higher levels of business, if someone—man or woman—does not develop relationships and turn them into connections, then (s)he doesn’t understand leadership, nor deserve the right to be promoted into it.

The meritocracy that does exist past middle manager level values relationships more than technical mastery—as any of a thousand books on leadership will attest.

Luck is not the issue—relationships are. If luck were the driver of success, women would be equally favored. Ironically, relationships are area where women (fairly or unfairly) may have an advantage.

If a woman (or a man) believes they are being held back by “luck,” (s)he is sadly misguided. If a woman believes she’s being held back by lack of connections, she’s probably right. To believe "luck" is the same thing as "connections" is to be confused about the role of human nature in business. Hard work does not triumph over connections, nor should it at the higher levels. To suggest otherwise is tragic for women.

The world simply is not the “level playing field where effort generates promotions” that Ms. O’Neill would have women believe. It’s not about sexism, it’s about humanity. Perpetuating the lie to women just leads them to internalize their oppression.

Luck or hard work? Do you walk to school or carry your lunch? Have you stopped beating your wife?

It’s a false choice. In the real world, it’s about relationships, connections and trust—not 60-hour work weeks or lucky stars.

The Cost of Freedom, the Savings of Trust

Kathy Sierra has a great post on the degree to which software designers should design in user freedom.

On the face of it, freedom is good. More freedom is better. In fact, if it doesn’t threaten us bodily harm, then more freedom is way better. Isn’t it?

Not so. Sierra offers a 2×2 matrix relating payoff to effort. The payoff is good for things like Tivo or Amazon. But digital home thermostats and new stereo systems give us too much freedom for the payoff. They’re just a pain.

There is a limit beyond which freedom of choice generates shutdown. Barry Schwartz’s The Paradox of Choice explores it well. After a while, complexity overwhelms the desirability of choice.

Sierra and Schwartz happen to illustrate the economic relationship between freedom and trust. In a nutshell, we give up freedom of choice in return for more efficient use of our time. We do it with trust.

Branding is the corporate version of trust. Rather than analyze every brand of bottled water, every version of jeans, or every make and model of HD-TV, we abdicate our freedom to do so in return for the security of a brand name. We trust Sony, or Coke, or Amazon, to make acceptably acceptable selections for us—so are freed to make other decisions.

But trust is about more than branding.

The last two centuries of global economic development have been driven by the search for division of labor. Adam Smith’s pin-makers organized around 19 specialized operations; it was far cheaper to assign individuals to distinct operations than to have each operator do all operations.

The transaction cost of coordination was well below the benefits of specialization.

At a corporate level, transaction costs remained high at the turn of the 20th century; early US auto companies made their own tires rather than incur the cost and risk of buying tires from others.

As transaction costs declined, it became more feasible to contract work out—the history of the auto industry is one of moving from integrated manufacturers to contract assemblers.

In recent years, we’ve seen diverging trends: lower unit transaction costs, and higher volumes of transaction costs. The net effect has been driven more by volume than by unit cost. Transaction costs as a percent of GDP have been going up. By one estimate, they now exceed 50% in the US.

We are reminded constantly of the internet’s effect on lowering unit transaction costs; but we don’t notice that the total of such costs is rising.

Here’s what it means: for further economic efficiency, the ability to reduce transaction costs is going to become more critical than further division of labor.

The more technically and globally integrated we get, the more freedom of choice we get. But at some point, freedom of choice becomes overwhelming.

If I want to make and sell jeans, I probably have dozens (hundreds? thousands?) of ways to contract the work out. Past some point, I don’t want more options—I want someone I can trust to make that decision for me.

In other words, I’ll give up freedom in return for lower transaction costs. The currency of that exchange is trust.

In an economy where half the costs are transaction costs, the currency of trust is massively valuable. Think of the transaction costs between auto producers and their suppliers: lawyers, agreements, contracts, specifications, bonus systems, QC, compliance, etc. Suppose they were 100% obliterated by trust. What kind of marketplace cost reduction would that provide?

Trust is not soft stuff. In a world that is getting massively more connected, greater trust has a very real economic role to play.

Giving up freedom for trust can be, paradoxically, a very freeing thing.