Posts

Market Segmentation Does Not Equal Trust

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A piece from PharmaVoice caught my eye the other day. Titled Market Capitalization, it talks about how market segmentation can help pharma companies more precisely reach targeted audiences.

All well and good, until I saw this:

…just as personalized medicine is becoming a best practice for delivering optimal healthcare, personalized messaging to the physician audience is increasingly becoming a best practice for marketing.

Careful segmentation allows marketers to specifically target the audience with messages that speak directly to them. Segmentation helps deliver the right message to the right physician at the right time. Personalization shows physicians that they are intimately understood, which fosters trust and value.

No, it doesn’t.

Careful segmentation in messaging tells me there’s a better chance that your information will be relevant to me.

It does not tell me I’m intimately understood; it tells me you’ve got smart robots.

The difference matters.

Trust and Segmentation

Rifle-shot targeting and segmentation affects one out of four of the Trust Equation components: it speaks to your credibility. Credibility tells me you’re smart, credentialed, competent.

That’s helpful, indeed. But it doesn’t speak to the other three components: reliability, intimacy, and low self-orientation – particularly the latter two.

The casual conflation of credibility and intimacy is, I think, a hallmark of modern marketers. Most of them, I suspect, would say, “Oh come on, Charlie, that’s just a small matter of semantics.”

Not so. Our words belie our thoughts. When we easily slide from a mechanical formula to a claim of “intimate understanding,” we have lost something. And to trivialize the slide is to lose even more.

Trust and Understanding

The dynamic of personal trust is complex; part of it is rational and deductive. But much of it is psychological, interior, calling on other-than-frontal-lobe kinds of brain functions.

That sense of being connected, appreciated, and validated leads us to lower our guard, to accept deeper relationships, and be open to advice-giving, among other things.

In this sense of the word, we come to trust by way of being understood; and we come to be understood through the means of other people intentionally paying attention to us.

This business of paying attention to other people is what drives personal trust creation. Marketers using technology to develop rifle-shot segmentation schemes are doing perfectly good and useful work. But not in their wildest dreams does this make customers feel “intimately understood, which fosters trust and value.”

Please, marketing and communications people, let’s try and remember the difference.

Trust Tip Video: Nobody Gives a Damn–Fortunately

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On some level, we’re all insecure egomaniacs. We’re not happy unless people are paying attention to us. But at the same time, we get nervous when people pay too much attention to us.

Because we might not like what we think they might see.

All of which does a number on trusted personal relationships.

Did you know that the key to solving that problem lies with – Clark Gable?

To see why, listen to this week’s Trust TIps Video: Nobody Gives a Damn – Fortunately.

If you like the Trust Tip Video series, and you like our occasional eBooks, why not subscribe to make sure you get both? Every 2-4 weeks we’ll send you selected high-quality content. To subscribe, click here, or go to http://bit.ly/trust-subscribe

Trusted Advisor Fieldbook Wins Gold Medal in Axiom Business Book Awards

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We’re very proud to announce that The Trusted Advisor Fieldbook won the Gold Medal in the Business Ethics category in the 5th Annual Axiom Business Book Awards.

More about that in a moment, but first: congratulations to the 69 medalists in all 21 categories. Check them out: it’s a powerful reading list. And thanks to the Jenkins Group for putting together the competition.

Trusted Advisor Ethics?

You may be wondering, why the Ethics category?

We didn’t set out to write an ethics book, nor will you find that word in more than a few places in the book. And yet we find the honor of that category to be deeply satisfying, and very appropriate.

To understand why, read this commentary on Aristotle’s Ethics:

[Aristotle says that] what we need, in order to live well, is a proper appreciation of the way in which such goods as friendship, pleasure, virtue, honor and wealth fit together as a whole. In order to apply that general understanding to particular cases, we must acquire, through proper upbringing and habits, the ability to see, on each occasion, which course of action is best supported by reasons.

Therefore practical wisdom, as Aristotle conceives it, cannot be acquired solely by learning general rules. We must also acquire, through practice, those deliberative, emotional, and social skills that enable us to put our general understanding of well-being into practice in ways that are suitable to each occasion.

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, introduction to Aristotle’s Ethics

Exactly.

We hoped to write a practical book, grounded in fundamental principles, that would integrate client and provider, profit and professionalism, seller and buyer, leader and team player. Trust, we have found, is an excellent proving ground for such an endeavor.

We are grateful to the Axiom Book Awards for apparently seeing things in a similar way.

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Many Trusted Advisor programs now offer CPE credits.  Please call Tracey DelCamp for more information at 856-981-5268–or drop us a note @ [email protected].

Solving Knowledge Management with Speed Dating: Interview with Clay Hebert

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Most corporate discussions about knowledge management (KM) are about databases, software, and IT. One mid-sized law firm I know took a different approach – getting partners to interact over lunch. It was very effective.

It turns out the 1-to-1 nature of speed dating is perfect for mega-companies that want to improve KM.

That’s the kind of insight Clay Hebert has come up with. I met with him recently in his coffee-shop office so far on the West Side of Manhattan it might as well be in the Hudson. Here are excerpts.

Charlie: We’ll get to the speed-dating thing soon; but first, how’d you get to this point?

Clay: The quick story? I spent ten years at Accenture, a massive consulting company. Even though I was surrounded by smart, hard-working people, the work wasn’t stimulating. I was a “Mac” soul stuck in a “PC” company.

In January of 2009, I had my big break. My business hero Seth Godin offered a unique and exclusive MBA program, and I was accepted. There were more than 500 applicants and I was one of nine who were chosen. For six months, nine of us sat around a table in Seth’s office learning from the marketing master (and each other). It completely changed my life. After that, there’s no way I could go back to corporate America.

Now, I’m building a technology startup called Spindows.com – an enterprise video chat platform that will change the way organizations collaborate and share knowledge.

Sharing Knowledge

Charlie: I hear collaboration, I hear video-chat; I can infer speed-dating, I think. But tell me more.

Clay: After a decade at Accenture, I only knew about 100 colleagues, 1/20th of 1% of the company. This is astonishingly inefficient when you think about the skills and expertise that should be shared across the organization.

The single most valuable asset for most companies is the knowledge of its employees. Most companies understand this, but their current KM solutions consist of clunky file-shares and databases.

It’s a tremendous opportunity wasted.

Charlie: You’re right, it is an astonishing waste; every big company I know reverts to massive databases then worries about incentives to get people to load the data, or hires support staff to do it.  Lately, they’re all trying various social media. But it’s still kind of artificial, or time-consuming, or just not interesting.

So, what’s the answer?

Clay: Well, I’m hoping Spindows will be at least part of the answer.

There are three main problems with the current KM process:

    1. You need high quality information
    2. You need that information input into a system in a timely manner
    3. Other employees need to be able to find it.

In short, the KM process is broken due to quality, speed, and search. Here’s an example of each:

    1. Quality – Here’s a common KM scenario: the lowest level analyst or intern gets assigned the task of uploading project summary documents to a database or file-share. There is limited correlation between these often-insipid documents and the true learnings from the project. The KM process itself is treated like an administrative burden instead of a golden opportunity.
    2. Speed – This process often happens at the end of a long project. If anyone does find the information, it’s outdated at best. In our fast-paced world, knowledge transfer should happen in real-time, or close to it.
    3. Search – The search algorithms to find the knowledge are woefully inadequate. I recently heard that one big consulting firm actually outsourced these searches of their own KM systems to an outside vendor. Think about that for a second. The search algorithms are so bad that they pay a third party to help find their own internal information. Now that’s broken.

Spindows cures these three problems, through a video speed-networking platform where you rapidly meet relevant people in your own organization via a series of quick 1-on-1 video chats.

First, everyone fills out a user profile with simple attributes (tags) that describe their knowledge and skills as well as things like their title, industry and personal interests.

A Spindow is a completely new kind of meeting. Instead of inviting people, you invite these tags or attributes. Anyone matching these tags is invited to attend the session.

In the Spindow itself, the 1-to-1 video interactions are rapid and timed, say 4 minutes each, so at the end of a one-hour Spindow, you’ve met 15 relevant colleagues. By attending just one Spindow per week, over the course of a year, you can meet everyone in a 780 person division.

Spindows reduces friction and increases serendipity by being the easiest way to find and connect with relevant colleagues.

Charlie: Wow, very cool indeed! Where do you stand in terms of status? Have you gotten written up? Funded? Testing?

Clay: Spindows has received some great press from Business Insider, and excellent feedback from events like Startup Riot, Startup Camp, and Under 30 CEO’s startup pitch event, where we scored second place.

We’re thrilled. Right now we’re working with a minimum-viable product (MVP). It’s functional, and we’ve done some testing.

Going forward, we plan to invite a select group of early enterprise customers to try the product at discounted pricing. This is win-win because the early adopters will be allowed to take advantage of this great new technology before it’s available to the public. And it’s great for us because that early customer feedback will allow us to shape the product direction and roadmap.

Trust Works

Charlie: Let’s talk about why this makes so much sense. In my view, it’s allows super-high bandwidth – human interaction – in a socially acceptable casual wrapper. You can be ‘promiscuous’ with your interactions, and still get far deeper than if you just relied on databases and social media. You’re talking to real people. This has tons to do with trust.

Clay: Exactly. You’ve nailed it. I believe people will be more open and trustworthy when talking directly to their colleagues. We’re combining high bandwidth human interaction with big data and analytics. Companies will be able to track how many Spindows someone has participated in, who they have met and, who they still need to meet.

We’re working with PhD’s at Wharton to design valid tests to track how quickly the expertise tags are spreading throughout the organization, effectively proving that trust leads to better KM.

Charlie: Speaking of trust: you’re a heavy user of Airbnb, a Sharing Economy business whereby you rent out your apartment to others, and vice versa. Do you worry about people trashing your apartment? How do you prevent that?

Clay: It’s all about trust. Before they arrive, we establish a personal bond with the people who use our place. Before they come, we ask them what DVD’s they’d like us to get for them on Netflix. We leave a bottle of wine and neon Post-It notes all around the apartment encouraging them to drink the wine, read our books, surf the internet, etc.

We write notes to people on our white board and they always leave us notes when they leave, usually describing what they did on their trip. Airbnb is extremely safe in general, but these extra steps make the interaction inescapably, richly human.

Charlie: This is great social proof of “the best way to make someone trustworthy is to trust them.” Trustworthiness and trusting-ness are intertwined –

Clay: – You get what you give –

Charlie: – and each is both cause and effect.

Clay: – and you want to give what you get.

Charlie: Clay, no wonder you’re a leader in some of the new social media arenas. Next time we’ll talk about your experiences in some of the New York incubator labs for new technologies.

Clay: Can’t wait!

Truth In Talking: Calling Things By the Right Name

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I’m going to quote Confucius, something I’d never have done were it not for TAA friend Shaula Evans:

“A superior man, in regard to what he does not know, shows a cautious reserve. If names be not correct, language is not in accordance with the truth of things. If language be not in accordance with the truth of things, affairs cannot be carried on to success. When affairs cannot be carried on to success, proprieties and music do not flourish. When proprieties and music do not flourish, punishments will not be properly awarded. When punishments are not properly awarded, the people do not know how to move hand or foot.

Therefore a superior man considers it necessary that the names he uses may be spoken appropriately, and also that what he speaks may be carried out appropriately. What the superior man requires is just that in his words there may be nothing incorrect.”  [Via Wikipedia]

                         Confucius, Analects, Book XIII, Chapter 3, verses 4-7, translated by James Legge

When “language is not in accordance with the truth of things,” music does not flourish. (Neither do presidential campaigns). It seems rather clear and direct; and hard to argue with. Shouldn’t we all strive to speak the truth?

Exaggeration is nothing new. But Confucius is talking about a good deal more than hyperbole here.  He’s talking about a moral perspective on the way we conduct our social lives.

What would Confucius say about a few aspects of modern life?

The Cops and the TSA

Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) writes in Forbes that the TSA people who screen you in airports have gotten an upgrade in terms of uniform, badges, and title.  They look a lot more like Federal Law Enforcement officials.

However, says Rep. Blackburn, they’re still being recruited from pizza boxes, and are not being given federal law enforcement training. What you see is not what you get.

Rep. Blackburn didn’t cite Confucius, but she might well have: this is a case where “language is not in accordance with the truth of things.”

Does it matter? It does, Blackburn says, because the “language” of a Federal Law Enforcement uniform commands respect. But if a loosely-recruited TSA employee uses that uniform to get a woman to halt, and then sexually assaults her – well, there’s your harm. It matters greatly.

Confucius and Facebook Friends

At least twelve billion people have pointed out that Facebook “friends” are not quite the same as “real” friends. It’s obvious, right?

Well, when something becomes so “obvious” that we no longer comment on it, you might say it’s entered our subconscious. We still talk about real “friends,” and we still have Facebook friends.

The fact that it’s in-your-face obvious and mind-numbingly common doesn’t alter the Confucian fact that “the language is not in accordance with the truth of things.” It’s not. We are using one word to describe two very different realities.

In Confucian terms, when we speak in this double-speak manner, we are not behaving as “superior men.” If the shoe fits…

Confucius Meets Business Best Practices

Expectations.  One of the more common mundanities of management is the exhortation to “always exceed expectations.” This is – let’s be clear – considered a good thing according to the canons of management.

In other words, we should lead people to expect one thing – and then surprise ‘em by giving them something else. Again, this is considered a good thing.

Except by Confucius, who reminds us that this is a rather clear-cut case of “the language not being in accordance with the truth of things.” Indeed, the whole point of this ‘best practice’ is to intentionally do the opposite of what Confucius suggests.

Public Relations.  What would Confucius make of the public relations industry? According to the Encyclopedia of Business Dictionary:

“The point of public relations is to make the public think favorably about the company and its offerings.”

Perhaps the PRSA (the industry association) doesn’t care for language that so easily suggests manipulation.

The Arthur Page Society, “a select membership organization for senior public relations and corporate communications executives who seek to enrich and strengthen their profession” almost certainly doesn’t like it. Their first of seven principles of public relations is, “tell the truth.”

Well, which is it? Is the purpose of public relations to “tell the truth?” Or to “make the public think favorably about the company?”

Confucianism, like the Arthur Page Society, likes to emphasize the normative aspect of things. The truth of things, they both might say, should accord with the ideal meaning of “Public Relations.” And presumably the Page society strives mightily to bring that goal about.

Meanwhile, in the real world, the one in which the Encyclopedia of Business tries to make sense of common-language usage for the ordinary businessman, the ‘truth’ is “we want you to think of us this way.”

Let’s be honest about that: because that is the fact on the ground, and it’s known and understood by any man on the street. To deny that is to speak language not in accordance with the truth of things.

Confucius and Trust

I am no Confucian scholar. To be more in accord with the truth of things, I am ignorant of Confucian teachings. He may have written on trust, and I don’t know of it.

But any of us can plainly see the eloquence and truth of his words to us, written 2500 years ago. There is a place in life for exaggeration and hyperbole. That place encompasses art and literature, inspiration and motivation. In that context, it is good.

But if we fail to keep our social and commercial interactions grounded in fundamental notions of honesty and candor – if we let our language stray from the truth of things – the music does not flourish. Nor do we, along with it.

What’s the Link Between Trust, High IQ and Investors?

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A recent Journal of Finance article suggests there’s a high correlation between IQ and participation in the stock market. Now, what does that mean?

Yale Economics Professor Robert Shiller explores the theme in a NYTimes column. He posits an interesting link between intelligence and trust.

The Smarts To Do What?

IQ tests are notorious for being good at measuring what IQ tests measure. What that is, is another question. But let’s stipulate that mathematical intelligence is somewhat correlated with IQ tests, and that intelligent investing requires more math than buying milk at the supermarket. That might explain why only half of American adults have money in the stock market.

But does it explain why higher-IQ people also seem to construct better-performing portfolios than do lower-IQ people? As Shiller points out, it’s not that high-IQ people are better stock-pickers – they just do a better job of following the basic rules of investing, namely diversify your risk.

But why should ‘rule-following’ correlate with IQ, anyway?

The Smarts to Trust

Shiller cites another study, this one from the Netherlands, that finds “those who indicated a high level of trust were 50 percent more likely to invest in the stock market.”

Further studies indicate low stock market participation may be the result of fear and suspicion – low trust prevents people who don’t understand the stock market from approaching those who do.  Namely investment advisors, brokers and the like.

Now the link gets clearer. It may not take a high IQ to understand diversification, but if you don’t trust the people who talk about diversification, you’re not going to learn about it.

Shiller makes another leap here that I’m not so sure about: as he puts it, “Knowing whom to trust, and relying on those who are trustworthy, is itself an aspect of intelligence.”

Intelligence, Education and Trust

I’m not going to get involved in defining intelligence, but I do know this. The tendency to trust others has been shown by trust researcher Eric Uslaner to be positively correlated with optimism, and with a sense of control.

People who feel the world is basically going downhill – and that others are controlling their lives – are untrusting people. By contrast, those who feel that the world is generally moving in a positive direction, and who feel some degree of control over their own lives, are more likely to trust other people.

And what drives those distinctions? Uslaner points out the biggest drivers are income inequality and education. In other words: uneducated people in a society of high inequality are at the greatest disadvantage.

The Vicious Circle of Trust, Education and Investment

The less that uneducated people in an unequal society are willing to trust those who understand financial planning, the more likely they are to stay doomed to low income, thus driving perceptions and reality ever downward toward greater inequality. So what’s to be done?

Of course, it would help if the financial industry got more trustworthy. Josh Brown, in Backstage Wall Street, notes that “93% of all investors didn’t understand that their broker didn’t have a fiduciary responsibilty to them.” Yet the industry continues to advertise an image of trustworthiness, while opposing legislation to make them subject to fiduciary standards.

Such behavior definitely drives mistrust, and it’s the industry’s own fault.

But other policies are society’s fault. In the rush to cut our deficits, I heard a few weeks ago that the School District of Los Angeles no longer employs any music teachers. Certainly education has become a far lower priority these days in our rush to what we think is fiscal rectitude. A casualty is trust.

And finally, inequality itself breeds distrust. That simple fact is very uncomfortable for a great many of haves, and a lot of political ideologies. But the fact is, economically egalitarian societies have higher trust levels. Inegalitarian societies have lower trust levels. The trends are self-reinforcing.

Do we want a vicious circle? Or a virtuous circle? If we’d like people to participate in the stock markets, we’re not going to get there by advertising or by cutting school budgets.

We’ll get there through trust. And it shouldn’t take a high IQ to figure that out.

Trust Tip Video: Managing Blame and Responsibility

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Blaming other people is generally recognized as bad behavior. Not much disagreement there.

But the flip side of avoiding responsibility is – trying to take responsibility that doesn’t belong to you – is equally ugly. We know it by names like “control freaks,” “micro-managers,” or just plain obsessively neurotic people.

That’s what this week’s Trust Tip video is about: Managing Blame and Responsibility.

For more on the subject of blame and responsibility, you might enjoy reading “A Tendency to Blame and an Inability to Confront.”

If you like the Trust Tip Video series, and you like our occasional eBooks, why not subscribe to make sure you get both? Every 2-4 weeks we’ll send you selected high-quality content. To subscribe, click here, or go to http://bit.ly/trust-subscribe

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Many Trusted Advisor programs now offer CPE credits.  Please call Tracey DelCamp for more information at 856-981-5268–or drop us a note @ [email protected].

Story Time: It’s Trust, Therefore It’s Personal

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Our Story Time series brings you real, personal examples from business life that shed light on ways to lead with trust. Our last story illustrated how one conversation changed everything. Today’s selection highlights  the value of making a personal connection.

A New Anthology

When it comes to trust-building, stories are a powerful tool for both learning and change. Our new book, The Trusted Advisor Fieldbook: A Comprehensive Toolkit for Leading with Trust (Wiley, October 2011), contains a multitude of stories. Told by and about people we know, these stories illustrate the fundamental attitudes, truths, and principles of trustworthiness.

Today’s story is excerpted from our chapter on selling to the C-suite. It vividly demonstrates the value of paying attention to more than just the task-at-hand, and taking the risk to put personal before business.

From the Front Lines: Taking a Chance on Connection

Gary Celli tells a story of the business value of building trust quickly with a C-level client.

“I was working in California for a multi-national high-tech company. I was a project manager at the time, and the project I was leading was rife with difficulties—nothing atypical, just the usual stuff. We were also trying to position additional work with the customer.

“One day, the CIO asked specifically to meet with me. Until that point I had been dealing with his directors, so he and I hadn’t spent any time together beyond a brief interaction at the big project kickoff meeting. You can imagine I was a little on edge about the meeting.

“The first thing I noticed when I arrived at his office was what a mess it was. There were papers all over the place. One chair was so stacked with stuff it wasn’t usable. I glanced around and noticed a copy of the Scranton Journal on the floor—the magazine for my alma mater, the University of Scranton, a small Jesuit university in Pennsylvania. I looked around for a diploma on the wall, but didn’t see anything. So I asked about the magazine.

“It turns out that we were both graduates, now living nearly 3,000 miles away in California. Talking about that really helped break the ice and took the edge off. We spent 30 minutes reminiscing about the school, the campus, the local hang-out bar that all the kids went to. Then we spent about 15 minutes talking about project issues.

“It was a very successful meeting. The bond we had established made it possible for me to glean more information from him and he seemed very open to hearing my perspectives on the project. We got to the heart of the matter in no time. My company also got the follow-on work, and the CIO was a loyal client for years to come.”

—Gary Celli

What’s your next opportunity to make it personal?

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Read more stories about trust:

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Many Trusted Advisor programs now offer CPE credits.  Please call Tracey DelCamp for more information at 856-981-5268–or drop us a note @ [email protected].

Manufacturing in China: Back to the Future?

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I talked to Joe in San Francisco recently. Joe is 96, living with his daughter and son-in-law Jean and Fred. He talked about what happened when he was 18 years old, and wondered why it couldn’t happen now.

Good question, as you’ll see.

The Civilian Conservation Corps

Roosevelt was elected in November of 1932. In those days, inauguration didn’t happen until March – March 4, 1933. In his speech that day, he outlined his New Deal.

17 days later, he proposed the massive Emergency Conservation Work act, which would put a quarter of a million Americans to work. He sent the bill to Congress the same day.

10 days later, on March 31st, Congress approved the bill – by voice vote. Roosevelt signed it the same day, and issued an executive order setting up the Civilian Conservation Corps.

By the end of June – just over three months since inauguration – 1500 camps had been created, employing over 300,000 people building and rebuilding infrastructure like parks, roads and conservation programs. The program lasted for 8 years, shutting down in 1942.

“The pay was $30 a month,” Joe said, “and you had to send $25 of that back home to your family.”

“So, what was $30 worth back then?” I asked.

“Oh quite a bit,” said Joe. “I wooed my wife on that money. Saturdays we’d go to the movies – a dime for the two of us. And I’d buy us both coffee, and her a piece of pie. That was a nickel. And she’d share the pie with me. We got married, and stayed married for 64 years.”

“I don’t really understand,” says Joe, “why Obama can’t do the same thing now?”

Back to the Future

Fast-forward to January 22, 2012. The New York Times started an explosive series with an article called “The iEconomy: How the US Lost Out on iPhone Work.” It’s an inside look at FoxConn City and the Chinese manufacturing nexus in Shenzhen – and why American manufacturing is completely incapable of competing against it.

“Basically slave labor camps,” shouted one US headline. FoxConn employs over 200,000 workers, a quarter of whom live in dorms, often working up to six days per week, and “many workers earning less than $17 per day.”

But notice:

  • FoxConn’s $17 per day is about $350 per month.
  • In today’s dollars, Joe’s $30/month would be worth $501.94/month.  Triple that for room, board and other expenses (paid by the CCC), and you’d be somewhere around today’s US poverty line.
  • Assuming room and board are far less in China, these numbers are not orders of magnitude apart.

I’m not an economist. I don’t even play one on TV. But this much I can say: the distance between China today and the US just a few years ago is not nearly as great as we make it out to be.

Indeed, David Pogue, the NYTimes’ technology editor, writing about an ABC Nightline program, said, “It didn’t look like a sweatshop, frankly.” And ABC itself said, “…when I asked, ‘What would you change?,’ we heard the kind of complaints you might hear in any factory anywhere.”

Joe believes he was always a free American, never a slave. Indeed, to the American ear, his voice is an authentic one, drenched in traditional American hard-working virtues.

What a difference a few decades make in our perceptions. How easy it is to believe that the Chinese and we inhabit such different worlds.

Joe’s Question

“Why can’t we do the same thing now?” asks Joe.

Three reasons I can think of:

1. A politically significant group of Americans have come to believe that a road built as a government job is “worth” less than a road built as a private sector job. So in the name of “cutting government” we are cutting jobs in the face of a recession, adding a half-million government workers to the unemployment rolls. This is already not ending well.

2. Today’s Americans look at Joe’s CCC experience and see it as a treasured part of our history – but not relevant to today. In today’s terms, they look at a program like that and see FoxConn, not the life-forming experience that Joe had. And they don’t want any part of it.

Fair enough: but in a global market, global pay disparities will exist, and jobs, like water, will seek out the lowest level.

3. Roosevelt created 300,000 jobs in less than three months. The nation has lost its ability to move at anything remotely near that speed. There are many reasons for this, but a failure of trust is one of them.

Of all the critiques posed by the less-government crowd, the one that rings most economically relevant is the substitution of process and procedures for trust and collaboration.

The absence of trust is itself a massive economic anchor dragging us down; the belief that our system is consistently ‘better’ is an expensive delusion.

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Many Trusted Advisor programs now offer CPE credits.  Please call Tracey DelCamp for more information at 856-981-5268–or drop us a note @ [email protected].

Trust Tip Video: Truth is More Than Not Lying

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We all think lying is bad. Pretty much, mostly, usually. We think of lying as saying something that is not true. But not saying something that is true can get us in even more trouble.

We underestimate the power of truth-telling.

That’s what this week’s Trust Tip video is about.

For more on the subject of truth-telling, lies and untold truths, you might enjoy reading Truth, Lies and Unicorns.

If you like the Trust Tip Video series, and you like our occasional eBooks, why not subscribe to make sure you get both? Every 2-4 weeks we’ll send you selected high-quality content. To subscribe, click here, or go to http://bit.ly/trust-subscribe

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Many Trusted Advisor programs now offer CPE credits.  Please call Tracey DelCamp for more information at 856-981-5268–or drop us a note @ [email protected].