No topic strikes at the heart of so many problems challenging our country, the private sector, and business success than the issue of trust.
Today’s marketplace is almost defined by a lack, or loss, of trust. This is borne out by research by the world’s largest PR firm, Edelman, whose 2011 Trust Barometer found that trust in US business to do the right thing had fallen eight points in the last year to be only five points above Russia. So nothing could be more important right now than a book that speaks to the architecture of trust with a view to core business benefits that include teamwork, culture change and leadership, all of which drive profits.
Smart Trust, by renowned bestselling New York Times bestselling author, Stephen Covey and Greg Link, is a book that all business leaders need to read. This is apparent from the outset, where the foreword by Indra Nooyi, the CEO of PepsiCo (Fortune’s most influential female business leader for the last five years running), characterizes this book as a renaissance of trust.
Like all hard-won victories, trust needs to be earned, built, and maintained. Steven and Greg to a masterful job of telling us exactly how to do that step-by-step so that we can integrate it within our organizations and take it to market. Not surprisingly, rather than looking at the issue of trust from the outside in, they challenge each of us to build trust within an organization from the inside out. Specifically, it starts by requiring that each of us choose to believe in trust again and builds through 5 key steps:
1. Choosing to believe in trust
2. Starting with yourself
3. Declaring your intent and assuming the same positive intent in others
4. Doing what you say you’re going to do
5. Leading by extending trust to others
As self-evident as these may sound, anyone who’s worked in a large organization knows that the integration of such human qualities throughout a company’s culture requires a delicate and specific set of skills. Using insights from their work with thousands of employees in companies like AT&T, Frito Lay, La Nova, Zappos and Whole Foods, Steven and Greg walk us through the insights learned from hands-on experience in transforming large scale corporate cultures into bastions of trust.
Ironically, it’s these very human qualities that define the interactions between employees, between employees and leadership, and ultimately the profits of a company. Smart Trust is an indispensable guidebook in how you not only create, disseminate, and inspire trust within an organization, but in so doing, unlock all the brand reputation, customer service, and bottom-line benefits for a company that only trust can create. It’s a must read so order your copy now by clicking here, or visit SmartTrustBook.com.