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Being Right is Vastly Overrated: Part I

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Of all the frailties and follies we share as human beings, this one belongs among the greatest: the belief in being right.

In business life, it’s vastly overrated.  In personal life, it’s a major source of misery. Part I, today, is about business. In Part II, tomorrow, I’ll look at the personal.

Now, I’m not talking about being on the right side of history, or being right about from which direction the sun rises. I’m talking about winning-arguments-right. Debating right. Plaintiff vs. defendant right.   The kind of right where you are right and the other guy is wrong.

Being Right is Seductive

We are raised, most of us, in an “enlightened” approach that—relative to the past and to some non-Western-mainstream cultures, anyway—celebrates science, rationality and competition. In such a world, our schools and society teaches us the way to get ahead is through knowledge (not wisdom).

Knowledge is taught as a means to an end: success. We measure success in progressive steps of achievement and we measure mini-steps in a series of tests of quizzes. To see if we got it right. 

Growing up in this world is heavily built around, “Good for you, Johnny, you got the right answer first! Gold star for you!” You get ahead by getting ahead of other people, and you do that by being more right, more often. Being right means you’re a winner, being wrong means you’re a loser. No wonder it’s seductive. With behavioral training like that, who wants to be wrong?!

But Being Right Backfires

But there’s another rule at work in business too, in many ways more powerful than being right, because it’s more primal. We seriously do not like it when other human beings tell us what to do—particularly when we think they don’t have a clue about who we are, where we are coming from, and what we think about the issue at hand.

Reciprocity is what this dynamic is about, explained very well by the increasingly popular Robert Cialdini. If you do for me, I will do for you, he explains. It’s what underlies etiquette, even culture. And it plays out in business in the guise of listening.

If you listen to me, I will listen to you. If you do not listen to me, I will not listen to you. If I didn’t listen to you, it was probably because you didn’t listen to me first.   And if I did listen to you, it was probably because you did listen to me first.

Simply put: if you try to persuade me to do something by telling me what I should do—I won’t do it. And not because I’m an ornery sonofabitch—but because I’m a typical human. We don’t respond well to being told what to do—unless we first feel heard.

All that stuff we learned in school about being right? Wrong. A dead end. Wasted.

Consultants: how often do your clients take your advice?   Parents: how’s that lecture with your teenager workin’ out for you? Lawyers: notice how the world’s always full of those clients who are just out to annoy you by questioning your advice? Salespeople: notice how tips ‘n tricks and massive product knowledge just don’t seem to cut it?

It’s all the same problem. When you’re focused on being right, winning the argument, showing others how smart you are—they just sort of ease away from you. And when you try to tell them what’s right without first listening—well, it just pisses them off.

Being right is vastly overrated. Being right too soon just pisses others off.

The antidote? Simple. First, listen. Seek first to understand, not to be understood. Listen not to understand; listen so the Other feels understood. Listen not for what you’re waiting to hear; listen for what the Other wants to say.  

How do you know when you’re done listening? When the other person says, ‘that’s it, I’ve got nothing more.’ Then, perhaps, you’ve earned the right to be right.

The Rule of Non-Recurring Events

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Conventional wisdom—in fact rules of any kind – are a challenge to me. In Myers-Briggs terms, I’m a very high “N” (Intuitive), and in our own Trust Temperaments,
I rate as a Catalyst. Some rules are fine, like the laws of gravity, and the requirement that in the US we drive on the right-hand side of the road. Others, like speed limits, I tend to see as merely suggestions or guidelines.

That having been said, there’s one “rule” for decision-making that I’ve found enormously useful over the years.

That is The Rule of Non-recurring Events, and its corollary, Eat Outdoors Every Chance You Get.   Simply put, this means that every time you get a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, you take it. Attending the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics in person or watching it on television? No contest. Dragging yourself to your 20th high school reunion or going to a movie? The reunion wins; the movie will be out on Blue-ray, but your 20th reunion will never come again.

What makes this rule so worthwhile? First, it vastly simplifies decision-making when two or more events conflict. You just ask yourself: which is closer to being a non-recurring event, and your decision is made. It helps clarify tradeoffs.

Second, it reduces your regret quotient to almost nothing. The Beijing Olympics example comes from a friend of mine from Singapore, who opted to stay home rather than hassle the trip to China, and missed the world-class spectacular. And if your 20th reunion is about as much fun as senior English class was (no fun at all) at least you went, and have no regrets about missing it. And you’ll probably get a few funny stories out of it. It’s like a bad blind date; the worst experiences often yield the best funny stories.

The third, and probably biggest, benefit is that it helps us live in the moment, to have adventures, to stay out of ruts. It helps answer the question from the poet Mary Oliver: “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”  

So I’m going to grab my sandwich and cup of coffee and eat outdoors; this particular perfect sunny day will not come my way again.

The Language of Moral Education in Business: a NYTimes Moment in Time

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Yesterday, May 2, the New York Times initiated an interesting global experiment: asking huge numbers of people, all around the planet, to take a single photograph—all at precisely the same time, 15:00 GMT. Read more about it here. 

A cool experiment? Indeed. Imagine the impression of thousands (hundreds of thousands?) of photos, all of precisely the same moment in human history. I can’t wait to see it.

But that’s not what I want to point out. Because the way in which the Times announced the contest tells us about how to develop a sense of morality, a shared sense of ethics, in a large group: in this case, a world population.

Here’s that link again:

If you read it, you’ll be struck by the language, as were many of the early commenters on the article. Here is some sample language:

Do I have to take my picture at exactly 15:00?
No. We don’t expect atomic-clock precision. And we’d rather you send a good picture taken one minute after the hour than a mediocre picture taken exactly on the hour.

What if I cheat?
Come on. Why would you?

Look, we trust you. Besides, there aren’t enough cups of coffee in New York to keep our tiny staff awake for the time it would take to peruse the metadata in every single JPEG we receive. So we’re relying on you to understand that any significant departure from the benchmark hour only subverts the communal enterprise.

Of course, if we’re presented with evidence that your entry wasn’t taken close to 15:00, we’ll remove it from the gallery.

What about adding or subtracting or combining elements?
Again, don’t…

And if I do so anyway?
Really, why would you? We’re not going to pore over submissions looking for fakery and fraud. But we will remove any photographs that are demonstrably manipulated. Please, just spare us.

The Language of Moral (Business) Education

The Times is attempting to deal with a group. In this case, a remarkably global, diverse, and very loosely connected group. If even small numbers of people behave badly, they have the power to subvert the project.

I suggest this is a typical situation for moral education. What do you do to encourage members of a group to behave in a way that encourages the greater good for all?

  • You could simply depend on the free market of ideas, believing that if the photography idea is a good one, it will survive the market; and it doesn’t survive the free market, then it was a bad idea that didn’t deserve to live in the first place.
  • You could define a set of incentives to encourage the right group behavior, define metrics to measure the right group behavior, then tune the incentives to maximize it. 
  • Alternatively, you could enact a set of regulations about the contest. You could then have a government agency enforce them.

Or–you could choose the tools of moral education.

You acknowledge your powerlessness to compel the behavior of others. Instead, you appeal to their conscience.

What about cheating? You go directly to the potential cheater and say, ‘Really, why would you?’ What’s to keep someone from cheating? Again, make it personal: say, ‘Look, we trust you…We rely on you…to not subvert the communal enterprise…Please, just spare us.’

This is the language of moral education. Appeal directly to the individuals. Appeal to their innate sense of community. Acknowledge the absence of your power to compel their compliance. Indeed, acknowledge your dependence on their willingness to comply.

That’s the language of moral education. It’s disarmingly honest, transparent, and vulnerable. It acknowledges an individual conscience.

And it works.

Amazing, isn’t it, how infrequently we think of applying it to our challenging business situations.
 

The Goldman Hearings: Who’ll Take Home the Iconic Moment Award?

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The Army-McCarthy Hearings

On June 9, 1954, in what was known as the Army-McCarthy Hearings, Senator Joseph McCarthy was dramatically taken down by Joseph Welch, a Hale & Dorr lawyer representing the Army, after McCarthy’s attack on a young associate of Welch for associating with an alleged communist front, famously saying:

"Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator. You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?"

(Do not miss the video here).

It didn’t take long for that several minute interaction to become an iconic moment—the downfall of a demagogue, and the inflection point in a nation’s shift from shrill commie-phobia to a lower-temperature Cold War.

The Watergate Hearings

Cut to the summer of 1973. Tennessee’s Senator Howard Baker captured the iconic moment of the Watergate Hearings when he first said “The question is—what did the President know, and when did he know it?”

That phrase encapsulated the disbelief and revulsion that a nation felt as it’s head of state was deeply implicated in an ongoing illegal coverup of a sleazy burglary.

To me, the Senate Iran-Contra Hearings didn’t measure up to the previous two. The only statement I remember is, “What am I, a potted plant?” voiced by Ollie North’s lawyer.

And now we have the Goldman Hearings. Will they measure up? Will they stand the test of iconic history?

Do the Goldman Hearings Measure Up?

To become a top-ranked iconic Senate Hearing, two things must happen at the same time: there has to be a major shift going on in society, and someone must utter a clever turn of words that encapsulates the shift. Only history will tell if the Goldman Hearings end up in the top ranks: but if they do, which moment will turn out to have been the clincher?

The awards in this category are called The Ikes, for Iconic Moment. There are three nominees for the Ike in this hearing.

Log in below to vote for your favorite. Vote for:

Candidate Moment A: Caveat Emptor vs. Fiduciary Responsibility

Senator Susan Collins: Could you give me a yes or no to whether or not you considered yourself to have a duty to act in the best interests of your clients?
Daniel Sparks: I believe we have a duty to serve our clients well.

If this moment takes the Ike, it will be because we have evolved away from the deification of market forces as self-correcting to a view that businesses have some social responsibilities, particularly to customers. As a corporate business model, the trader’s ethos of pure competition and markets will have been judged in adequate to run serious economy-critical business organizations.

Candidate Moment B: The Legal vs. the Ethical

Senator Carl Levin: If your employees think that it’s crap—that it’s a shitty deal—do you think that Goldman Sachs ought to be selling that to customers…when you heard [your employees saying] what a shitty deal, god what a piece of crap—when you read about those emails, do you feel anything?
Goldman CFO Viniar: I think that’s very unfortunate to have on email.

If this moment wins the Ike, it will be because the nation is fed up with hair-splitting legal defenses in response to unethical behavior. Viniar’s instinctive response belied a selfish and self-oriented view of navigating the legal thickets, unimpaired by ethical concerns.

Candidate Moment C: Ego and Hubris Gone Wild

This is actually an email preceding the hearing, from “Fabulous Fab” Goldman VP Fabrice Tourre: The whole building is about to collapse any time now. Only potential survivor, the fabulous Fab.”

If this becomes the Iconic Moment Winner, it will be because “Fab” personifies the abstract: this is what the “best and brightest” have figured out to do? And this guy is what they turned into?

So, what’s your vote? What moment will take home the “Ike” Award for Iconic Moment of the Goldman Hearings?
 

David Gebler on Ethics in Business (Trust Quotes #10)

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David Gebler is a thought leader, speaker and seminar leader on the subject of ethics in business. Trained as a lawyer, David is a Senior Lecturer at Suffolk University where he teaches Business Ethics and sits on the International Advisory Board of the Graduate Program in Ethics and Public Policy; he is also a principal at Skout Group, a firm focused on culture change.

With globally significant public and private sector clients on his resume, David brings a broad perspective to questions of ethics in organizations.

CHG: David, thanks for joining us here. Tell me, why is it so hard for companies to get their heads around thinking about ethics?

DG: While ethics issues are of critical importance to organizations today, “ethics” as a business function is perceived as quite amorphous and hard to define. In many organizations ethics is synonymous with “compliance,” narrowing the focus to ensuring adherence to stated standards of conduct. In other organizations “ethics” is treated as a vague platitude without clarity as to how it drives behavior.

CHG: You told me once there were three approaches to business ethics: behavioral, philosophical, and legal. Can you briefly explain what those categories mean?

DG: Philosophical business ethics focuses heavily on the intention of one’s actions. Aristotle wrestles with character and virtue, while Kant is unequivocal in the need to always do the right thing, regardless of the consequences. A theoretical look at intent is often irrelevant to business which is more focused on employees’ actual behavior.

American businesses often look at ethics through the lens of compliance. “Doing the right thing” only means observing the law and the company’s code of conduct. However, there may be conflicting “right things” about which employees need guidance.

Behavioral ethics draws from social psychology and looks at what motivates behavior and what an organization can do to remove roadblocks to employees being honest.

CHG: You have come to view ethics in business as largely a function of corporate culture; you looked at the top 20% and the bottom 20% of companies in an ethical cultural study—what did you find?

DG: Most employees have a good sense of their moral values and actively seek to live those values at work. Ethics risk emerges most often when employees face pressures and external influences that drive them to do things they regret.

If an organization surveys employees only to find out if they know what they should do (i.e. the top 20% knows there is a code of conduct and a helpline), they may be missing key data on whether employees would even raise an issue if it arose.

I worked with a large global company that asked me to conduct focus groups with divisions in the top 20% and bottom 20% based on results of an ethics survey. In meeting with employees at one of the top 20% divisions, it was true that when I asked if they would report misconduct everyone said yes (i.e. top 20%).

However, my very next question was “If you found out early in the quarter that you were not going to meet your plan, would you report that to your boss?” And no one said yes. Doing such a thing would be a “CLM” (Career Limiting Move). Open communications and a willingness to raise difficult issues are more critical ethics determinants than knowing whether there is a helpline.

CHG: What kinds of culture, then, are associated with high ethical behaviors? And what can a serious manager do about it?

DG: There are several common traits of ethical cultures:

1) Open communication and respect – employees at all levels feel that they are spoken to truthfully and are respected as people.

2) Personal responsibility and a sense of control – employees are held accountable for their actions and their commitments to others and are engaged in tasks that matter.

CHG: I was surprised to hear you cite the Federal Sentencing Guidelines as a key source for investigating ethics in business. Can you say more?

DG: While business ethics and ethical companies have been around for many, many years, the focus in the US began in earnest in the 1990’s. As a result of the defense industry scandals in the 1980’s, the US Sentencing Commission developed guidelines for corporations to avoid criminal liability if they put into place an effective compliance program. These guidelines have become best practices for US companies. In 2004, as a result of the Enron legacy of scandals, the Guidelines were revised to add language focusing on ethics and organizational culture.

CHG: You mentioned that you were struck by the lack of remorse in post-financial melt down financial industry executives. Say more?

DG: The bottom line is that today’s financial market is only a numbers game. Concepts such as the fiduciary responsibility of one party to another have been lost. While leaders talk about the need for trust to grease the wheels of capitalism, there is very little of it in the system today.

CHG: What’s the difference between ethics and morals?

DG:  Social psychologists have long told us that behavior is a function of the person and their environment. Morals address one’s character, the person. Ethics addresses the ethos, the environment in which we make decisions.

CHG: I was shocked when you first told me, “In my 15 years of work, only one client once asked, "How do we define the right thing?"  So business ethics is largely about how do you get people to concur with what the agreed upon guidelines are.”

DG:  Many companies use the “newspaper test” as a decision-making model. How would you feel if your actions were reported on the home page of cnn.com? While we have a societal set of standards, there are often tough issues that pit right vs. right. Superficial guidelines of being honest may not be enough. For example, every company takes certain risks, even with quality and safety. What guidance do leaders have to know what is “reasonably” safe enough to go to market with a product?

CHG: What’s the difference between ethics and compliance? And does anyone care about the former?

DG: Compliance is the adherence to prescribed standards of behavior. Compliance training educates people on what behavior is expected of them.

Ethics is the determination of whether people will engage in the desired behavior and what should be done to encourage people to do things they know they should do, but often don’t.

CHG: Here’s a biggie for mid-level people in a number of my clients; what should an individual mid-level manager do in the face of what they perceive as “tough” behavior by their superiors, i.e. the “career-limiting move” of speaking out about things?

DG: When faced with a tough situation, managers often look at the issue as being black or white: “Do I do what’s expected of me or do I do what’s right?” Effective use of ethics would be to see whether the issue can be reframed so that it’s not so drastic a choice. Managers in tough spots need not be heroes, but they do need to be savvy:

  • Who else can I bring into this situation to guide me?
  • Who else in the organization would support me in doing the right thing?
  • How can I have a conversation with the person who is forcing me into this situation? Perhaps there is a “third-way” I haven’t thought of.

CHG: What seems to be the American take on ethics in business?

DG:  Americans are unique. We combine a rules-based culture (ever seen the NFL Rule Book?) with a cowboy heritage of heroes and independence. Americans are very results-oriented and in general, are less focused on how we got the results than are other more social cultures.

Therefore, I find that American business leaders are more interested in ethics when they can see that being ethical helps the bottom line: less time and money spent on investigations and fines, and more time spent by engaged employees doing productive work.

CHG: Doesn’t that create a tension—justification of ethics by subordinating it to the bottom line? Or are you saying it’s not so much about particular actions as it is about a culture—creating an ethical environment, which in turn tends to be more profitable?

DG: Let me give you an example from today’s headlines. Toyota shouldn’t be forced to make a trade off between safety and profit. Both are necessary because each one supports the other. Toyota’s brand is based on safety. It won’t sustain its profitability if its products aren’t safe. Similarly, safety has to be addressed in the context of products consumers can afford. We are willing to accept some degree of risk.

Ethics comes in to guide how Toyota balances these two objectives. In leading up to the recent scandal key questions must be answered: Who had information but didn’t report it up to senior leadership? Why not? Which stakeholders, internal and external, were not included in the decision-making process?

This is number 10 in the Trust Quotes series.

The entire series can be found at: http://trustedadvisor.com/trustmatters.trustQuotes

Recent posts in this series include:
Trust Quotes #9: Chris Brogan
Trust Quotes #8: LJ Rittenhouse
Trust Quotes #7: David Maister

Collateral Benefit on the “A” Train

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‘You must take the A train,’ is the opening lyric to Billy Strayhorn’s signature Duke Ellington song.

Last night I did just that, enjoying the company of the very wise Peter Firestein.

We were returning from a delightful book party to celebrate the publication of LJ Rittenhouse’s  new book Buffet’s Bites.  I was telling Peter that he really needed to read Chris Brogan, who was the subject of last week’s Trust Quotes interview. (And yes, this is a lot of self-referential links, but it’s all true).

“What’s Brogan’s message in a nutshell?” asked Peter.

I pondered that. “I guess it’s that great marketing and customer relations in the new media age is same as it ever was: the best of it comes from unsolicited testimonials from customers.  And the best way to get that is to focus on the customers and on serving their needs. If you do that, they’ll then market you.”

“And,” I said, warming to the subject, “the paradox is that your own success cannot be a goal—it is a byproduct, a secondary result, an outcome–but not a goal.”

“Sure,” said Peter, “I get it. Like collateral damage—but collateral benefit.”

“Yes!” I said, “Collateral benefit.  It’s what you and I and LJ and (Warren) Buffet believe too. Buffet’s best stock picks are great companies. And great companies are built on relationships—with stockholders, customers, employees. If you serve them, everything works—including your own results. But only as collateral benefit.”

I thought “collateral benefit” was a pretty cool phrase. I still do, hours later. I warned Peter I might blog about it.

So here’s to you, Peter; thanks for the world’s next mega-catch-phrase: collateral benefit.

The rest is up to the rest of you.

The Changing Face of Capitalism: Schizophrenia in the Apple Store

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The other day I was in one of the Apple Stores. The hinge had broken on my MacBook Air, which meant the top of the computer, the screen part, had to be replaced. It was to be done for free, which I love about Apple.

The store was crowded; I asked the young lady salesperson if using my Mac ProCare card would move things along. She looked at my card, told me it was out of date, and offered to go update it.

When she came back, she was apologetic. “The thing is,” she stammered, “I think they’re kind of going to be de-emphasizing the ProCare program.”

“Huh?” I said. “Is it continuing, or not?”

“Well, I think they’re maybe going to be phasing it out,” she squirmed.

“As of when is it phasing out?” I asked, “ and is there a replacement program? I just want to know how to get premium service.”

“Well, I think they’ve already stopped it, really,” she stammered. This was getting nowhere fast.

Fortunately, the store manager came by and took over; he assured me I’d get the repaired computer by day’s end (which I did, by the way).  I asked him, “What’s up with the ProCare program?”

“Oh,” he said, “we’re discontinuing it.”

“Why?”

“Well, it was so popular that everyone was buying it, and then you have a problem with, like, who do you let at the head of the line, and who do you have to say no to, and all that sort of hassle.”

This boggled my mind. “Why not just raise the price?” I asked.

He laughed. “You know, several other people have suggested that too.”

“Well no wonder they have,” I said. “If everybody wants something at one price, raise the price—you make more money, and it very easily sorts out to whom it’s worth more and to whom it isn’t.”

“Yeah, but it’s kind of unfair that way too, you know,” he said, in a ‘you clearly don’t get it, do you’ sort of a way. And I left, bemused again at the curious mix of capitalism and west-coast do-goodism that is Apple Computer.

No company is better at in-your-face planned obsolescence than Apple; just trying getting a replacement battery for an iPod. No company is better at aggressive pricing; and how many mature companies can claim a stock price growth of ten fold in five years?

All this, in spite of echoes of PC (not the computer) instincts and shades of tie-dyed Deadhead ethos in the stores. Or, is it because of said instincts and ethos?

Changing Ideologies in Business: From Competitive Capitalism to Collaborative Capitalism

Then again, why should Apple be unique in its schizophrenia about capitalism? Business in general is in the midst of a paradigm shift in business, away from shareholder-centricity toward stakeholder-centricity. An excellent article in the Economist  summarizes this ideological shift, citing several current business thinkers.

Business, I think, is undergoing some serious foment with respect to some very fundamental beliefs. Milton Friedman, Michael Porter, Michael Jensen—these are the thought leaders of the past, championing neo-classical economics, the purification of competition, and the primacy of shareholder wealth respectively.

The new thought leaders remain to be definitively enumerated, but the issues are emerging. They rhyme with collaboration, trust, networking, flat organizations, and Gen Y. To name a few.

Stay tuned, it’s getting interesting. And Steve Jobs may end up, once again, looking pretty prescient.
 

Ten Steps to Positioning Your Firm for the Recovery

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The stock market called the recovery 12 months ago.

The GDP is now rebounding. It certainly looks like a recovery. And if it looks like a recovery, quacks like a recovery, and walks like a recovery—well, you know the rest, and it might not be too soon to think about how your firm is positioning itself to take advantage.

Exactly when your business, or at least segments of it, will experience the recovery probably differs from other businesses. This looks to be a slow, differentiated recovery; your mileage may vary.

But whatever your timeframe, there are certain general rules that may help you take advantage of the turn when it does come around.

Ten Steps to Capitalizing on the Emerging (Economic) Recovery

These thoughts, courtesy of an occasional discussion group I’m part of (see author list) are aimed mainly at professional services firms, but in many ways will fit general business as well.

1.      What changes are now needed in your business acquisition strategy? Which relationships should you seek to strengthen, and where do you selectively want to plant new ones? 

2.      Business developers: Do a searching and fearless inventory of your past clients and high probability past prospects (particularly those who almost said yes but postponed).   Allocate responsibilities—get ready to triage.

3.      Service offerings: which of your offerings best helps which of your client types to build their performance in early recovery? Which of your clients’ businesses are poised for growth first?

4.      Help define your clients’ recovery-driven issues together with your clients. They may still be in siege mentality.  How is this recovery different, for them, from previous ones—what’s is new this time around? How take advantage of those differences? Again—discuss this with your clients.

5.      Pricing: move to mildly more aggressive; say no to discretionary discount requests.

6.      Raise your minimum size, scope, and duration thresholds for saying ‘yes.’

7.      Figure out to whom you’ll say ‘no.’ Use relationship-propensity as a screen–turn down the one-offs.

8.      The scarcest resource is always good people, so the best time hire is early in the recovery cycle. For many of you, that means now.

9.      What do you want to do more of? What have you been doing during recession that you’d like now to do less of? Is it time to re-balance and re-align selected resources from the likely conservative assumptions of a budget you built six months ago?

10. As others of your clients move into recovery mode—how can you become a prospective partner? What can you do in advance to set the stage?

Chris Brogan on Trust and Social Media (Trust Quotes #9)

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Chris Brogan needs no introduction to some TrustMatters readers. Some of you caught him at the Trust Summit last fall; Others may never have heard of him. I’m about to do the second group a huge favor.

Chris is co-author (with Julien Smith) of Trust Agents, CEO of New Marketing Labs and an active speaker and blogger. 

But that’s nothing. Chris is a guru in the new social media space; a Twitter deity; and an all-round major influence in the emerging new world of commerce and social interaction.

I find Chris doubly interesting; not only does he have solid things to say about trust, he lives them in a most authentic and high-integrity way. He is a genuinely, really, really nice guy—and I think he’s as famous for that as for anything.

We caught up with him right around his 40th birthday; rather young for the life he’s lived already.

CHG: Chris, how do you define your work these days: is it new social media? Marketing? Trust? Public speaking? Who is Chris Brogan anyway?

CB: My work is divided into a few camps right now. My company, New Marketing Labs, LLC, works as marketing consultants providing strategy and execution for online and social media marketing for Fortune 100/500 types. My media business, currently thought of as ChrisBrogan.com, is where I do public speaking, blogging, book authoring, and the like.

A few months after this interview, I’ll be announcing something that will make it just a bit more streamlined and unified. But my work, if I were to tidy this answer up, would be to educate and equip others for success in doing what I call “human business.”

CHG: You finished writing Trust Agents nearly a year ago. It hit NYTimes best seller territory, and is still ranked #3,000 today. That’s very successful. For the uninitiated, what is Trust Agents about?

CB: Julien and I wrote Trust Agents about how to be human on the web. We wrote about this new type of business application for social tools, which, when used by talented individuals (either in a company, or a church, or a nonprofit, or as a solo entrepreneur) can help people gain awareness, build reputation, and earn trust. We talk from the high concept all the way down to actionable steps about what elements people seek to attain trust via the extended digital world.

CHG: Have you developed some perspective on it yet? Do you see some aspects of it as more important now than when you wrote it? Less?

CB: Great question. I think both Julien and I believe that the most important part of Trust Agents is in building and maintaining your network. We’ve learned since the book came out that the most applicable parts for people to follow were about the way they interacted with others, and how they transferred value back and forth along their network (and we could define “value” as anything that improves the experience of a person in the network – such as helping a friend find a job).

CHG: My impression is you’re synonymous with Inbound Marketing. Is that right? More importantly, my strong impression is that in any case you conduct your life according to those principles. Can you share a little about both the definition of inbound marketing, and how you practice it? I’m thinking of things like 12-other referential tweets for each one of your own, or the way you once responded to a taunt/challenge from Robert Scoble.

CB: The folks at Hubspot coined the term “inbound marketing,” partly because Seth Godin has a copyright on “permission marketing.” In all cases, we all believe that beating people over the head with your needs and desires to sell products or services isn’t a successful strategy any longer. We look to build relationship-based selling models, such that we turn audience into community, and we guard our relationship with our community as an asset, every bit as much as we guard our trade secrets.

My personal definition? Be helpful. The way I built my own personal brand was delivering information that others could use to improve their own lot in life. And I promote others at least 12 times as much as I promote my own stuff on various social networks.

CHG: We hear an awful lot of talk these days about the decline of trust in institutions today. I’m sure you understand that, but do you also notice that and experience it yourself? In fact, do you find significant areas where trust is in fact increasing?

CB: The big revolution that’s brewing is that we, the people, are sick of being numbers. We want to be seen and heard, and treated as individuals. The oft-cited example in the US for trust improvements are places like Comcast, who found their customer service approval scores a bit higher since the efforts of Frank Eliason and his @comcastcares Twitter efforts.

There are lots of anecdotal examples along these lines. Dell Computers has been in the camp of more trustworthy and more human, ever since 2005, when Lionel Menchaca came on the scene to humanize them. Significant areas, though? Not yet. I’m hoping this is the year we start demanding more trustworthy relationships.

CHG: Are you optimistic about prospects for trust in the emerging economy of our time? Can you explain a bit about why? 

CB: Interesting question. I think one way we’ll see more trust bubble up is through the creation of all these Internet businesses and Internet-born brands. No one had heard of Gary Vaynerchuk a few years ago, and now, if Gary says this is a wine you need to try, thousands and thousands of people will buy that bottle.

Trust developed to make up for a younger brand relationship might be the big lever that gets older organizations to have to rush in and follow suit. It’s how I see it potentially shifting. Look at car companies. In this new landscape, they KNOW that trust is one of the only ways to settle up and move forward.

CHG:  Is trust in the new social media world the same as, or different from, trust in the old analogue world? How can they cross over?  

CB: There are some weird differences in trust in the social media world, but in a way they parallel the way (western) society seems to be evolving.

We have no long-term memory any more in this country. Sins of the past wash away a lot faster, it seems, in many situations. We also seem to demand a more gritty, three-dimensional reality from our brands. Further, we want an entertainment factor to our education and information delivery.

All these traits in the analog world translate quite nicely into how social media delivers interactions around relationship-building, media making, and community environments. This new web is a lot more social, a lot more touchy-feely, and a lot more insistent on a more human interaction.

For me? Good times, and I hope that’s how others see this opportunity. We buy from people we know, and these tools allow us to build strong relationships before the sale.

CHG: Chris, many thanks for taking time out of what has to be one of the busiest lives on the planet; it’s always a pleasure, and I really appreciate it.

CB: You’re very welcome.

This is number 9 in the Trust Quotes series.

The entire series can be found at: http://trustedadvisor.com/trustmatters.trustQuotes

Recent posts in this series include:
Trust Quotes #8: LJ Rittenhouse
Trust Quotes #7: David Maister
Trust Quotes #6: Anna Bernasek

Old Faithful and Reliability

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Old Faithful is a geyser located in Yellowstone National Park, USA. It gets its name because it regularly shoots steam and water to great heights. In fact, with a margin of error of 10 minutes, Old Faithful will erupt either every 65 or every 91 minutes, depending on the length of the previous eruption. It’s been doing this since 1870.

While most of us who endeavor to be Trusted Advisors would probably prefer not to be associated with a “geyser” (myself included), there’s something we can all learn from this phenomenon of nature.

Reliability: The Good News/Bad News

Of the 12,000+ people who have completed our online Trust Quotient™ survey to date, Reliability comes out 16 percentage points higher than any of the other three elements of the Trust Equation. This isn’t really surprising, given that Reliability is the easiest to grasp and execute. Reliability is logical, concrete, and action-oriented.

The bad news is we’re not as good as we think.

Case in point: I’m always interested to see how participants in our programs handle the pre-work assignment we send via email a couple of weeks before the program begins. Responses are due to be emailed back within a week. It takes 10 – 20 minutes to complete the work. People generally fall into one of three categories:

  • Turn it in late with no acknowledgement (slightly more than half)
  • Never turn it in (some)
  • Turn it in on time (very few)

So while Reliability seems like a “slam dunk” in the world of trustworthiness, there’s room for us all to improve. (And by the way, I am no exception, witness how I’ve been doing lately on my goal of writing one blog post per week.)

The Road to Being More Reliably Reliable

Generally, people experience you as reliable when:

  •  You feel familiar to them. They’re at ease with you. They have a good sense of who you are and feel they know you. You use their terminology and templates. You establish routines in your relationships (regular meetings, emails, etc.). You dress appropriately.
  • You are consistent and predictable. People know what to expect from you, and they get it. You set expectations up front and report on them regularly. You are rigorous about using good business practices, such as meeting agenda and notes. You make lots of small promises and consistently follow through. They can count on you to be the same person at all times, and the same to all people.
  • You work to make sure there are no surprises when you’re around. You use others’ vocabulary and respect and reflect their norms and environment. You make sure that their expectations of you are consistent. You produce documentation of consistent quality and create deliverables with a consistent look and feel.
  • You do what you say you will do. You keep and deliver on your promises, and see keeping your word as a matter of personal integrity. When you are unable to fulfill on a promise, you immediately get in communication to acknowledge the impact and reset expectations.

Reliability is Reliability is Reliability

Here’s the rub: Consistency matters. If you apply these best practices more with your clients and less with, say, your Trusted Advisor instructor … then your reliability score suffers.

Perfection is not the goal here; impeccability is (See Impeccability vs. Perfection: Who’s Got Your Back?). There’s always room for error and for our humanity. When it comes to trust, what matters is being rigorously self-aware, transparent about our strengths and weaknesses, and willing to hold ourselves to higher and higher standards of execution.

Writing this post was one action I chose to boost my own Reliability today. What’s yours?