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Is Your Strategy About Winning, Or About Maximizing Success?

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Is your company’s strategic objective to win? Or is your company’s strategic objective to maximize success?

‘Wait,’ you say. ‘Which is supposed to be better? And don’t you get one if you get the other? And why are you annoying me with these semantic quibbles anyway?’

Well, I think they may be semantic, but they’re real differences too. And no, if you get one, you don’t necessarily get the other. And yes, one is better than the other.

Let me explain.

Maximizing Success is Better than Winning

In the 2008 Summer Olympics, Jamaican Usain Bolt broke his own world record to win the gold medal in the 100-meter run. He did it while slowing down at the end, to celebrate.

Bolt won, but didn’t maximize his success (intentionally? He later broke the record again). Which suggests winning isn’t everything.  The corporate version of holding back might be sandbagging, managing earnings, putting some cushion in the bank. Not necessarily a bad thing, though it could be.

But earnings smoothing is not nearly as big an issue as refusing to collaborate. The US auto industry, steeped as it was in the au courant teachings of competitive strategy, saw itself as competing with the UAW, with its suppliers, and probably with its dealers.

By contrast, Japanese automakers collaborated with their supply chain. And we all know who won that particular showdown.
It’s hard to prove causality here, though BCG partner Phillip Evans, who has written on collaboration, may be able to make the case. I believe it on principle. It’s simple. The entire lesson of the industrial revolution was that scale matters. He who gets scale wins.

Managing Scale is the New Scale

The thing is, “scale” used to be implicitly defined in regional and national terms. It no longer is. We’re facing a new industrial revolution where ‘scale’ happens globally.  And when you need to outsource things radically and globally, it soon comes down not to who can cut the most deals, but who can manage them.

When you’re dealing with 500 suppliers in a few countries, and your competitors are doing the same, that’s one scenario.  But add a few zeros to the number of supplier/partners you’re working with; make it dozens of countries, not to mention digital and in-transit locations, and the complexity gets quick fast.

The old way of doing things—winning—was based on solitary, siloed, vertically managed, so-called ‘industries’ of a small number of similar organizations. They ‘competed.’ He who won had the biggest market share, lowest costs, and highest profits. And the most success.

The new way of doing things—maximizing success—is based on amorphous (and morphing) agglomerations of supply chains, each similar in some ways and different in others, often competing in one area and collaborating in another. They don’t form neat ‘industries’ anymore. If they waste their time ‘competing’ with everyone, they will lose ground to other agglomerations who are far better at collaborating.

Playing together nicely in the sandbox is the new KSF. Hardball is out; team volleyball and pickup basketball are in. Jack Welch’s old term ‘boundarylessness’ is achieving new meaning—maybe GE thinks it still ends at the corporate boundary of GE, but other firms are applying it beyond the legal ‘firewall.’

Caution: competing is hazardous to your economic health. Even winning probably messed up your chance to achieve still-greater success by collaboration.

Teams always were capable of more than Lone Rangers; now the stakes are even higher.

 

Trust is Down: But, Like, So What?

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Trust in One Another is Down: Civic health IndexThe news is full of quotes like this, from the Edelman Trust Barometer:

“In January 2009, every one of the major industries had trust declines…but you see a trust renaissance now [midyear 2009] in a few key industries…we saw increase and stability particularly in auto and in tech….though in France, tech is the number 3…”

This kind of language feeds the perception that ‘trust’ is a unitary phenomenon, capable of being measured precisely, with meaningful small gradations.

Contrast that commercially provided data with a longer-term academic view of trust. Click here for a graph (thanks to the National Council on Citizenship) that shows a nearly uninterrupted steady decline in interpersonal trust for over 25 years. What does a half-year–or a month–mean against that backdrop?

Then throw in, “I trust my dog with my life; but not with my ham sandwich.” 

When it comes to trust, one size definitely does not fit all. It’s remarkable that one word covers so many meanings.

‘Trust’ Has Way More Than One Meaning

The truth is, ‘trust’ covers at least four distinguishable meanings—trust in the general human race (social trust), trust in institutions, trust in particular other human beings, and trust in certain processes (e.g. recommendations from previous buyers on eBay).

It is meaningless to say that I ‘trust’ Apple Computer more, or less, than my dog; or my dog more than my girlfriend; or my girlfriend more than Microsoft. It doesn’t even make sense to say I trust Apple more than Microsoft.  It depends.

It depends what I’m trusting them to do, or how to do it. I trust my dog to love me unconditionally more than Microsoft. I trust Microsoft more than my girlfriend to help me with databases, and I trust my girlfriend more than Apple to–well, you get the idea.

Worse yet, ‘trust’ is an end result, an outcome. It isn’t something that people do, it’s the state of affairs when they’re done doing. It isn’t a behavior. You can measure the outcome—but it won’t tell you what to do. 

Trust is An Outcome: There are Two Action Strategies to Get There

Trust is the result of an interaction between a Trustor and a Trustee.  One does the trusting; one is the one who is trusted.

You can increase, or decrease, trust–but not directly.  You must choose one of two strategies.

1. You can choose to be more trusting of others, which increases the odds they’ll reciprocate, but at high risk.

2. You can choose to be more trustworthy, which increases your attractiveness in their eyes, though it may take longer.

You can’t act on trust itself: but you can act on the actors. 

If ‘trust’ is down, is that because people are less trusting? Or because the one they trust is less trustworthy?

At root, was the problem with Bernie Madoff that we trusted him too much? Or was the problem with Bernie Madoff—Bernie Madoff?

These are non-trivial questions: they have to with corporate and public policy implications of that oh-so-simple-looking data that ‘trust is down.’

Roderick Kramer, publishing in Harvard Business Review,  suggests “Despite deceit, greed, and incompetence on a previously unimaginable scale, people are still trusting too much.”  Too much trust.  Trust is down?  Good; we needed a trust recession.

Kramer’s full viewpoint is much more nuanced than that, but that’s how he and HBR wrote the headline to his article.  And many people do believe that a trust decline is probably a good thing, that we all probably ought to be even less trusting of a lot of things. That’s a strategy of trusting–on the negative side.

Others, like Harry Markopolis,  the Madoff whistleblower, are inclined to blame a combination of Madoff and the regulatory institutions set up to protect us from him. Trust down? Then we need to make the SEC much more effective.  That’s a strategy of trustworthiness, via 3rd party enforcement.

Steven Covey Jr. preaches that in an increasingly interconnected world, we need more trusting, not less.  I agree, but in any case, that’s a trusting strategy.

So–what to do? If I run a technology business, and I learn that my trust level is way up, except not so much in France, over the last few months—like, what am I supposed to do with that?

What Are We to Do About All This Trust Data?

I have a few answers.

Let’s pass on social trust; it moves glacially. Pick your parents well, teach your children, vote, and give generously to charities.  That’s about it.

I’m going to focus on business and interpersonal trust.

In that realm, it is probably true that ‘the fastest way to make a man trustworthy is to trust him.’   That’s a classic trusting strategy.

But don’t hold your breath waiting for that to happen in the litigious, emotionally constipated and largely fear-driven corporate mentality of these these hunker-down recessionary times. Way too many people are way too risk averse.  Trusting, as a trust-creation strategy, appears to them to be just too risky.

The other trust-creation strategy—being trustworthy—has a somewhat longer payback, but with less business risk, and less risk of being executed badly.  For the most part, the trustworthy strategy is the one I recommend to companies.

So here’s what you can do.

1. At the individual level:

2. At the business level:

That’s my answer to ‘so what,’ at least for now.
 

Buying Insurance from the Trust Bank

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The payoffEver have something you said or did misunderstood? Maybe the level of misunderstanding is directly related to the amount of trust you have built up. Here’s what happened to one of my clients:

Cheryl wanted to congratulate her long-time client Tom on his recent promotion. So she bought him his favorite whiskey and a gift bag. She put the whiskey in the gift bag herself, and personally delivered it to Tom’s office. Several days later Cheryl received an envelope containing a $20 bill along with a note from Tom’s assistant attached to the cash saying, “We found this in the bag. It must have been a mistake. P.S. Tom says thanks.”

Cheryl was mortified. Being in the construction industry Tom was extremely sensitive to anything that might appear to be inappropriate. Cash in a bag with a bottle of whiskey could qualify. Cheryl had no idea how the $20 bill got into the gift bag, although she suspected that she may have been holding on to the $20 bill as she was packing the gift bag and it dropped in the bag along with the bottle. She called Tom immediately after receiving the note, but he was traveling. She knew she couldn’t address this issue in an email.

When Tom returned to the office the next week, Cheryl and Tom met on the project they were working on. Cheryl thought Tom might have forgotten about the $20, but at the meeting, she mentioned the bottle, the money, and her suspicion of how the $20 got in the bag. She expressed her fear of what it might have looked like. Tom had forgotten about it, but he appreciated her raising it.

Because of their relationship, Cheryl had accumulated a lot of trust in the Trust Bank. Tom did not even think anything was wrong or inappropriate, because he trusted Cheryl. If we looked at his reaction, we would say that he didn’t question her motives or veracity, because he trusted her – trust that was built up long before the incident occurred. In fact, when Tom mentioned the $20 to his wife, she said: “It’s Cheryl – it must have been a mistake.”

So we have a happy ending. This may seem like a dull story. No great conflicts. No cleaning up a horrible mess. Cheryl and Tom had a good laugh – and joked that even if Tom could be bought, a $20 payoff wouldn’t cut it. And with that discussion, both deposited more currency in the Trust Bank.

Fixing What Ails Wall Street: Ethics, or Incentives?

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ShrugThe financial and insurance sector of the US economy has more than doubled  since the 1960s. Compensation levels in that sector have way more than doubled, and in way less time. Finally, the finance sector is highly responsible for the recent massive losses in asset value, with the attendant down economy, unemployment, etc.

If you’re with me on those three statements, then you probably agree that something is wrong on Wall Street. But just what?

Are warped incentives to blame? A Gordon Gekko-ish culture of greed? A mugging of economic thinking by anti-Keynesian theorists? An over-emphasis on competition? A failure of regulation?

(And let’s not go to the ‘we need to be less trusting, because there are bad people out there.’  We do not need more suspicion in the world today; we need more trusting, and more trustworthiness of those who would be trusted.)

If we force it, most answers boil down to two: it’s either the greedy financiers’ fault, or the fault of the system to restrain natural greed. Let’s look at some recent examples of both views.

In This Corner: The System’s to Blame

Eric Dash, in the blog Economix,  does a fine job running down several reasons why pay packages got so out of whack with performance. He focuses particularly on moral hazard and timing issues. If you can gain big by risk, but can’t lose, then the game is rigged against the public. And if you take the money and run, then no one can hold you accountable.

But in the end, Dash suggests culture is key—the culture of correctly linking risk to pay–or not–encouraged by those at the top.

It seems curious to cap a structural critique of the industry with a conclusion that is based on a human-nature sort of thing like culture.

Curious, but rather right.

And in This Corner: It’s Ethics That Are At Fault

Over at Investment Business Daily, Gary Stern reports that companies are cutting back significantly on ethics training. “The decision by some firms to cut back on ethics training may haunt them,” reports Stern. “Analysts say creating an ethical culture can help sustain long-term growth, not hamper it.”

Interestingly, Stern also cites a strong culture as the ultimate source of ethical behavior.

But the quotes above illustrate a weakness at the heart of much of the arguments for ethical behavior. They often try very hard to prove that ethical behavior is profitable behavior, hence we can have our cake and eat it too.

Problem is: if the ultimate test of ethical behavior is profitability, then it makes a complete hash of ethics.

I happen to believe that for the most part, behaving ethically is indeed profitable; the longer the timeframe and scope, the easier it is to prove this (sustainability initiatives are a good case in point). But to use bottom-lines to justify ethical behavior is hugely back-asswards.

The Worst of Both Worlds.

What happens when we combine a reliance on structural issues with a casual view of ethics that defines moral behavior in terms of profitability?

A striking example, it seems to me, occurred this summer in healthcare legislation hearings. Representative Stupak of Michigan asked  three health insurance industry leaders whether they would commit to ending the practice of rescission unless there were fraud or misrepresentation.

They fact that the companies refused to so commit is not surprising, or even troubling, to me. There could have been valid business reasons not to knuckle under to such a public hijacking.

But then the leaders opened their mouths to explain why they would not so commit.

“No sir we follow the state laws and regulations,” said one leader.

“No, I would not commit. The intentional standard is not the law of the land,” said another.

Allow me to translate. ‘The reason we won’t stop nailing innocent people to the wall and rescinding life-saving policies for trivial reasons is—because it’s not illegal for us to keep doing it.  And we’ll keep doing it until you stop us by making it illegal.’

What?

I suggest that’s the result of decades of decay in ethics. We have come not only to over-rely on structural solutions, but have produced business ‘leaders’ who blithely abdicate any ethical responsibility in favor of laws passed by state legislatures.

How can business be trusted if it has no ethics beyond a lawyer’s opinion?  What kind of ethics is that?

The law should be based on ethics, more than ethics should be based on the law. Law schools, business schools, corporate boards, industry and professional associations should all be ashamed that they have lost track of the difference, and have got it thoroughly backwards.  They need to be held accountable for encouraging this kind of bland monstrosity.

What’s really wrong with Wall Street? Not misaligned incentives, but misaligned views about who owes whom: it’s business that has an obligation to society, not the reverse.  Apparently not everyone got the memo.

 

 

How to Be a Self-Deprecating Horn-Tooter

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shucks meowcheese.comI recently ran for a seat on the condo board of the brand new community I live in. I lost. In front of about 60 people.

My reaction was a mixture of gratitude (“I think I just got spared a LOT of work”), huffiness (“How could they pass ME over?”), and a dash of embarrassment (“Oh no, I think I just looked like an IDIOT in front of a large group of people”).

In reflecting on what worked and didn’t about my little platform speech (I had three minutes to pitch myself to the group), I realized there are some important lessons about trust-based selling to tease out of my defeat.

What Worked

My dominant strategy was to lead with high Intimacy and low Self-Orientation, and to differentiate myself a bit. How? By telling them first why they might NOT want to elect me. I shared openly that I’m a first-time home buyer and had never before been on a condo board – in fact, I had just made my first condo payment ever. My self-deprecation was effective, I think, in that it got a good laugh and set their expectations about what they could and couldn’t count on me for (couldn’t: Board/home ownership expertise; could: honesty and lightheartedness).

What Didn’t Work

There was one thing I didn’t do that left my constituents understandably less than confident in my abilities. I was too humble. I fell into the trap that (sweeping generalization coming) many women do of being tentative about tooting my own horn.

Sure, I told them a little bit about my professional background (close to 20 years in consulting, the latter half with an emphasis on teaming and relationship skills, which lends itself well to community-building endeavors). But I didn’t let them know that when it comes to starting something up (new community, new board), I’m your woman.

I didn’t tell them that eight years ago I launched a business that now boasts a client roster of global companies that generate millions and billions in revenue each year. I didn’t tell them about the community service program I created that, within six months of its inception, was given a prominent mention in SELF magazine and then acquired by a national non-profit.

(Even as I write this, my brain is screaming: Enough with the tooting horns already!)

Bottom line: I didn’t think about what would be of value to them, link that to what I brought to the table, and say it out loud.

What I’d Do Next Time

Of course, this is all speculation; I might have lost because they didn’t like what I was wearing – who knows. I think it’s safe to say, though, that next time I’d be more effective (and certainly less huffy and embarrassed) by doing the following:

– Take five minutes to prepare. Think about what my fellow condo association members might really want in their first set of officers, and know what the link is to my experience and skills.

– Lead with the same opening – why you don’t want to elect me. It’s honest. Plus it’s a little contrarian, and I like that.

– Toot toot toot away. Confidently, succinctly, matter-of-factly, with an emphasis on the aspects of me that directly address their interests and concerns.

I’d leave them with a more complete picture of me–not one that’s either over- or underexposed.

Seems to me these guidelines apply no matter who we are, what we’re selling, and to whom we’re pitching the sale: prepare and be honest about both your strengths and your weaknesses.

That and choose your clothes carefully.
 

Hard Solutions to Soft Trust Problems

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I write a lot about how trust is a soft solution to hard problems—like profits, revenue, loyalty, and retention.

Trust itself has some ‘soft’ and some ‘hard’ components. In the Trust Equation,  we usually think of Credibility and Reliability as the “hard” aspects of trustworthiness. And we think of Intimacy and Self-Orientation as being the “soft” aspects.

But it’s messier than that. For example, a firm handshake and look in the eye go to enhanced credibility, yet they have nothing to do with credentials or expertise.

And then there’s a really big one.   Sometimes, very ‘hard’ actions can dramatically affect the ‘soft’ emotions of our clients, customers, employees.

Take my friend R.

How Weak Business Processes Hurt Trust

He shared with me an email exchange with the customer service folks at American Express. He has an Amex-CostCo card that offers rebates for various categories of expenses.
As he puts it, “I trust Amex to get the rebate classifications right.”

Until, that is, he checked and noted a number of vendors who had not been picked up in the rebate program.  They included such obscure names as Southwest Air, Exxon, Red Lobster, and Marriott.

R. wrote Amex a nasty-gram, and heard back (quickly) with a number of reclassifications. However, Amex also said they didn’t know of Red Lobster or Java City, and would R. please give them more information.

This had the unfortunate effect of upsetting R. more, not just because they didn’t know Red Lobster, but because they didn’t try to look it up. As R. put it, “this made me doubt your past statements.”

Sure enough, he went back and found numerous previous missed classifications. He asked Amex to make these changes and further investigate prior months and years on their own. 

In response to this email, he received an apology and a $50 rebate.

Which, again, didn’t mollify him, but had the effect of getting him even more upset.

And it’s not hard to see why. When you’re talking about money, and when you have as good a reputation for customer service as Amex does, customers come to expect, if not perfection, then something not far off. A series of ‘close enough’ efforts, capped by a weak attempt to buy peace, is ineffective—even brand destroying.

The customer just wants things to work the way they should. You buy a BMW, you expect it to work—and well. You go into McDonald’s, you expect the experience to be predictable, on-time and flawless. You enter into a program with Amex, you expect them to get it right. Not close; right.

The effort to get things right is not rocket science. It is just very solid blocking and tackling; making sure your systems and procedures and processes are as airtight and foolproof as you can get them. It’s the “hard” stuff—there is nothing squishy about nailing down business processes.

But look at the result. R. may or may not have been as ticked off as you would be. But your response, like his, would surely be an emotional one.

What Starts as Bad Execution Gets Interpreted as Bad Intentions

The truth is, we impute emotional intentions to hard actions. We see ‘hard’ behaviors, and we impute ‘soft’ motives—resulting in very intense ‘soft’ feelings.  You don’t just engender ‘hard’ trust by doing ‘hard’ things. You can create ‘soft’ feelings by ‘hard’ actions, just as you can create ‘hard’ results through ‘soft’ actions.

Perhaps ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ aren’t really all that useful. It’s all part of a package. If we are trusted, and if we trust—legitimately—everything gets a lot better. It’s all part of a package.
 

Hire for Trustingness, Train for Trustworthiness

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You may know the HR saying, ‘Hire for attitude, train for skills.’ Our own Sandy Styer reminded me of that the other day.

The reminder came at an opportune time, as I was reading Eric Uslaner’s  excellent 2002 book The Moral Foundations of Trust, a book I’m embarrassed to say I haven’t read until now.

I’ve written before that trust is an asymmetrical relationship between one who trusts, and one who is trusted. (Most recently, in Why Trust is Assymmetrical, and What that Means for Trust Strategies).

Since 2000, when The Trusted Advisor came out, I have autographed my books with the simple phrase, “May you trust—and be trusted.” They are not the same thing.

Trust, Trustworthiness, and Trusting

Uslaner writes mainly about trust. Steven Covey Jr writes mainly about trusting. I have tended to write mainly about trustworthiness, and something about the interplay between the two (see The Dance of Trust.)

But I have to confess, the insight expressed in the title of this blog didn’t really come to me until I connected the HR insight and Uslaner’s work.

Uslaner eloquently makes the point that there are two kinds of trust. There is the kind you read about every day in surveys and headlines about ‘trust in Wall Street down last month,’ or ‘most trusted brands decline compared to internet,’ or ‘Obama’s trust rating down 10 points in 3 weeks.’   That kind of trust is pretty short-term, situational, and closely resembles things like reputation, brand image and customer loyalty.

There is another kind of trust: what the academics call social trust. That kind of trust is literally learned at home in our childhood. It doesn’t change rapidly or easily, is maintained in the face of specific events; it is, as Uslaner so correctly claims, in my humble opinion, a moral value. And it is that kind of trust–or its absence–that undergirds civil society. 

Hire for Trustingness, and Train for Trustworthiness

How does one become trusted as an advisor, a salesperson, and internal advisor, a consultant? The short answer is: be trustworthy. How do you do that? Read my blogs and articles for the last 2-3 years, or buy my books.

But how do you create an organization that lives on trust? How do you create a trustworthy people-creating organization? How do you lead and manage a business that runs itself on trust principles? 

There are a number of answers, but it may be that number one in that list is: hire people who learned that deeper attitudinal moral value of trust at the age of 3 or 4. Hire trusting people. Hire people who know how to trust, and are not afraid to do so.

Hire people who treat trustingness as a moral value. Because that is hard to teach.

Get an organization full of high-trusting people, and you have amazing potential. Such people can quickly ‘get’ the skills of trustworthiness. By being surrounded by others they trust and who trust them, they get a lot done.

By contrast, high-trusting people may not be changed by low-trust organizations—but they’ll leave.  And low-trust people likewise may not be changed by high-trust organizations; but they’ll be a drag on things.

I’ll be writing much more on this. For now, the catch-phrase is:

Hire for trustingness, train for trustworthiness.
 

What Clients Really Want

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In a sales workshop for lawyers that I recently facilitated, a participant “role-played” a potential client. Together, we developed a scenario based on a business owner he knew well.

During this role-play, his fellow workshop participants sat one by one with the potential client to have a business conversation. Their goal was to be retained as his lawyer.

His goal as the client…well, he didn’t really know what his goal was. In character, he had a lot of potential legal issues that he saw as business concerns, without recognizing the legal implications.

After the role plays were over, I asked him what it felt like being in the client’s chair.  His response – “I wanted to feel like they cared about ME.”   Turns out, while he did care about his own clients, he did not fully recognize the importance to the client of feeling cared about until he sat in the client’s chair, himself.

That discussion reminded me of a program I co-led at a law school with the former General Counsel of a major US company. What did this executive want from his outside counsel?  To “feel the love."  His words.  And NO – there’s no oxymoron here.  Lawyers have feelings too!   He meant – show me that you value the relationship in addition to providing superior service.

Competence and creativity and even superior service are just the ticket in the door. Without that, the professional likely wouldn’t be or stay at the table. But caring can be the great differentiator, and a key to being a trusted advisor.

Changing chairs, even just to practice or see what it feels like, makes empathy come alive and shows what clients really want. 

The Perils of Measuring Trust

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The desire to measure trust is busting out all over. Some of it is due to management myths (“you can’t manage it if you can’t measure it”), and some of it is due to natural curiosity.

Do People Trust the Government More Under Republicans?

A great example is last Friday’s op-Ed in the New York Times, Imbalance of Trust, by Charles M. Blow. 

Says Mr. Blow:

…Americans seem to trust the government substantially more after a Republican president is elected than they do after a Democratic one is elected — at least at the outset.

Since 1976, the polls have occasionally included the following question: “How much of the time do you think you can trust the government in Washington to do what is right — just about always, most of the time, or only some of the time?”

The first poll taken in which this question was asked after Ronald Reagan assumed office found that 51 percent trusted the government in Washington to do the right thing just about always or most of the time. For George H.W. Bush, it was 44 percent, and for George W. Bush it was 55 percent.

Now compare that with the Democrats. In Jimmy Carter’s first poll, it was 35 percent. In Bill Clinton’s, it was 24 percent, and for Barack Obama’s, it was only 20 percent. (It should be noted that the first poll conducted during George W. Bush’s presidency came on the heels of 9/11).

The implicit assumption Mr. Blow makes is that trust changes quickly, and that polls reflect it; that the selection of a Democrat quickly results in low trust scores, while the selection of a Republican quickly results in high trust.

Or Do Democrat Administrations Build Trust in Government?

Let’s challenge Blow’s assumption.  Let’s assume that social trust–as many academics suggest–changes much more slowly than Mr. Blow assumes.  That in fact, questions like “do you trust the government” shift over a matter of many years–not a few months.  (See, for example, Professor Eric Uslaner, whose studies suggest that many forms of social trust evolve not only over years, but over generations).

Now let’s rewrite Blow’s paragraph—same facts, different implicit assumption:

…Americans seem to trust the government substantially more after a prolonged period of Democratic leadership than they do after Republicans have held the office—and the effect even carries over into the next administration for a few months.

Since 1976, the polls have occasionally included the following question: “How much of the time do you think you can trust the government in Washington to do what is right — just about always, most of the time, or only some of the time?”

The first poll taken in which this question was asked was when Carter had taken office, after eight years of Nixon and Ford.  In that poll, only 35 percent trusted the government in Washington to do the right thing just about always or most of the time.  Carter restored trust in government; when Reagan took over, that number tested at 51%.

However, after 12 years of Reagan/Bush, when Clinton had moved into the White House, it had been driven down all the way to 24% (Reagan did, after all, preach that government itself was the problem, not the solution).  By the end of Clinton’s two terms, that number had gone back up to 44%, of which George W. Bush was the beneficiary 8 months into his first term.

But with Republican Dubya at the helm for 8 years, trust in government dropped precipitously (Iraq, Katrina, et al); so far that the score early in Obama’s term was only 20%. 

Same facts: different assumptions. Who’s right? It depends. It depends on partly on how people interpreted that question, and even moreso on how long it takes people to shift their viewpoint on that particular question.

Trust is tricky. It’s not like measuring the temperature, or even political polls. The interpretation contains a lot more art and a lot less science than most simple surveys would suggest.

Interpreter beware.

The Paradox of Selling, Simple and In Your Face

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rantRantmaster (among other titles) Jack Hubbard , over at St. Meyer & Hubbard, has a lovely little blog piece whose simple charm belies the depth of its message.

Seems Jack’s wife got laid up due to a fall. So Jack had to curtail his travel schedule.

This meant two things. First, an exploratory trip to a piano store to satisfy a long-lasting desire by Jack which would keep him (and his wife) entertained for the weeks of enforced home time.

Second, a call from American Airlines Platinum asking Jack if his many cancellations meant they’d done anything wrong.

The details are worth reading, but basically, the piano guy kept calling with harassing product-based demands for Jack to buy a piano. And the American Airlines guy called back just to see how Jack’s wife was doing.

Small difference? Big difference, as Jack explains well.

Buyers Are Happy to Buy, They Just Don’t Want to be Sold

The paradox of selling, put as simply as I can, is that if you are willing to give up your attachment to the sale, you are more likely to get the sale. And that is counter to almost every sales program you’ll read, which all teach you—in the latest and greatest neuro-behavioral-process language–precisely how to get the sale. Now, that’s attachment.

The real answer of how to get the sale is: stop trying to get the sale.

You do not increase sales by concentrating all your energy and attention on getting the sale: paradoxically that just broadcasts how selfish you are.

Instead, you do what the American Airlines guy did: you focus on the customer’s needs—even if those needs don’t immediately have to do with your product.

Does that mean the American Air guy didn’t want to sell? That he had no quota, or interest, or that he was giving away free product? Heck no. He just saw the bigger picture.

Stop Trying the Close the Sale

It’s accepted wisdom in most parts that you should pretty much always be trying to get, and to close, the sale. Well, not so fast.

The bigger picture is, people buy from those who actually seem to give a damn, to actually care about their customers. Customers know the deal, they know how you get paid and that you’re in business to make sales. They just don’t want you shoving it up their nose at every turn.

The paradox is: if you’re willing to help people and not turn every interaction into a “closing moment,” ironically people become more willing to buy from you. It’s not a trick, it’s not a gimmick: people genuinely prefer to deal with people who behave generously toward them.

Does it work? Of course it does. The amazing thing is, it’s so simple. Be decent to people–people prefer to buy from decent people. Why haven’t sales authors and sales trainers picked up on this non-secret?

Here’s Jack’s take-away:

Mrs. Hubbard? She is fine now, thanks. And she is much more likely to step onto an American Airlines plane in the future than to ever step foot back in that piano store.

‘Nuff said. Thanks, Jack.