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Starling Flocks and Organizational Trust

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A murmuration of starlings reflected in a lake.How do you build trust in your team or organization?

A lot of the “conventional wisdom” is that it must be a concerted effort, led by the Office of the CEO. I’ve written about this before, suggesting that the best way to create a trust-based organization is not to work solely at the organizational level (outside in), but (heavily) at the personal level (inside out).

Here’s another approach to the same question. Have you ever seen footage of the amazing phenomenon known as a murmuration of starlings? Unless you are lucky enough to have seen it yourself, check out this video.

Thousands of starlings fly in ever-morphing patterns, like a brilliant jazz improvisation with a thousand musicians. The birds fly in perfect synchronization, so much so that they resemble a distinct organism responding collectively in the moment to an ever-evolving plan.

Kind of like a truly trust-based organization, in which every employee instinctively behave in just the right way, in every situation, with everyone singing from the same hymnal.

What’s Going On Here?

It’s tempting to believe that there is a single “starling leader of the pack,” one bird who choreographs the entire show, one whom everyone follows implicitly, and without whom the entire show could not take place. Kind of like the conventional wisdom about establishing trust in an organization. Tempting–but demonstrably not true.

Instead, each bird is genetically encoded with a few basic rules of the flock; things like “if your neighbor turns right, left, up, or down, do the same.” And of course, being birds, none of this is conscious. But it works, gloriously.

An ingenious programmer named Craig Reynolds wrote a program called Boids to simulate the behavior of starlings (see it here). Notably, he did not program the flock from a top-down CEO-driven perspective; instead, each Boid operated from a very few behavioral rules; more of a bottoms-up approach. And it works; check it out.

But We’re Not Boids!

The top-down CEO-driven approach to organizational trust has a few implicit assumptions. One, that desirable behavior must be led and/or incentivized, preferably from “the top.” Two, that rules have to be conscious and cognitive. After all, we’re not Boids.

But hold on; actually, we’re a lot more like Boids than the top-down model might suggest. All of us as individuals have innate senses of things like fairness and trust. We are accustomed to behaving in reciprocating ways (responding to our fellows). All of that is at best semi-conscious, and not requiring leadership initiatives. It’s natural to our human (and animal) natures.

So, how do we get our trust initiatives to end up looking like a successful murmuration of starlings? Through top-down initiatives developed by smart strategy and OD consultants, with layers of principles, metrics, incentives and competency models?

Or by unleashing, bottoms-up, something that is already innate in us? Certainly that approach benefits from leadership and encouragement; but not in the ways we usually think.

Leadership of things like organizational trust doesn’t come from intellectually polished programs and initiatives served up by leaders like a corporate set of Ten Commandments. Instead, it comes from leaders who role-model trusting and trustworthy behavior, and by so doing, encourage people to do what they already know how to do: to be honest, transparent, vulnerable, collaborative, other-focused.

There’s room for both approaches, top-down and bottoms-up. But the bottoms-up approach doesn’t get anywhere near the respect it should. Rather than crafting elegant corporate initiatives, we should all learn to emulate the starlings. It ain’t all that hard; like the starlings, we already kind of know how to do this.

Unleash the murmuration of trust!

Trust-Based Resources to Maximize Your Team’s Potential:

Top Ten Reasons Organizations Don’t Teach Trust

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A little while back I was asked a simple yet profound question by Tom Hines from the Monitor Group. It’s a question that over the years, I continue to get from clients – and clients from all over the globe, no less.

It seems no matter where you are from or what services your organization offers, there is a focus on closing the sale through the official “sales process.” And yet, everywhere, people are either already aware or starting to take notice that its the softer side of sales that pushes the “sale” towards establishing a lasting client relationship.

So – why don’t more organizations teach trust? Well – here’s my top ten list that may shed a little light on the subject.

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This recently from Tom Hines of the Monitor Group.

“My question to you, Charlie, is simple, but something that I’ve been struggling with for some time now. If every CEO or other senior leader (or at least the great majority) seems to agree that success in selling is in some part attributable to trust based selling concepts, then why do they spend virtually all of their training $$ on sales process, closing techniques, etc. It seems like a dirty little secret that this is nothing but a waste of money.”

“I have worked with literally hundreds of sales people over my career and no process, qualification questions or closing technique ever works without establishing trust as the foundation of any client relationship. So the question then is why don’t organizations prioritize and invest in helping their organization understand the dynamics of trust and use that as the foundation of any other program they try to implement? It seems to me that they spend a great deal of money on “quick fix” programs that do nothing to change behaviors and belief systems about the importance of trust and how it is the only way to improve performance.”

Well, Tom, no surprise, you’re preaching to the choir. But I know you mean the question seriously too, and I too take it as a serious question.

Why is it that things are that way?

Here’s my Top Ten list for why organizations, especially sales organizations, don’t invest more in trust.

10. Fear–of looking wussy, as in Real Men Don’t Play Trust Games.

9. Thinking that business is about competition. It’s not. It’s about commerce.

8. Fear—of someone taking advantage of us; hence do unto others before they do unto you.

7. Bad long-term logic. We are dominated by financial logic, internal rates of return and present-value discount rates. That belief outlaws any investment beyond about 25 years. The parent of a child operates on a longer timeframe, not to mention entire nations in Asia.

6. Inability to defer gratification.

5. A Hobbesian hangover. The continued belief, fostered by ideologue economists and politicians, that the world is an evil place—life is nasty, brutish and short–and therefore the best defense is a good offense. Even if the premise were true (I have no position on it), the conclusion certainly is not.

4. The cult of rationality. Belief that only “scientific” management works; forget passion, belief, relationships—and trust.

3. Over-emphasis on measurement. The belief that “if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” Just think about that. False on the face of it.

2. The cult of short-termism. Here-now, bird-in-hand, payback time, fees-not-interest, outsource, monetize—it all adds up to transactions, not relationships. Not good for trust.

1. Fear—that someone will find out who you really are if you don’t manage your image. So tighten up, spin everything, and get out of Dodge before they can spot you for who you really are.

What’s your answer to Tom’s question?