The 10 Laws of Trust

The 10 Laws of Trust, Building the Bonds that Make a Business Great, by Joel Peterson with David A. Kaplan, AMACOM 2016

As a consultant walking into a new site, within fifteen minutes I can tell if the people are happy, miserable, sneaky, oppressed or neutral/careful because the character of the CEO pervades every inch of the place. And that goes for trust too. When the CEO does not value trust and is working toward other goals - power at the expense of partners, cash no matter what, or theft of innovation and market share (happens all the time, think Digital Equipment Corporation Ken Olsen's severed relationship with accused Nova thief Edson DeCastro, who later founded Data General). The contrasts are so strong you can smell it.

But Jet Blue CEO Joel Peterson in his short book on trust - and believably, some subjects, like trust, are better treated in few pages - says that an organization can build trust and use it to grow. He says, "Trust doesn't just happen. It takes initiation, nurture, evaluation, and repair... Trust can be fragile." So why bother? Because "trust works to everyone's benefit."

Peterson pins it all down in his "10 Laws of Trust," but rather than taking you all through the good side of this relationship foundation, let's take a look at the scary war stories, examples of betrayal and misused trust all too familiar to humans. Figure 1, Levels of Trust, delineates what to expect as one moves up the spectrum from Force/Prisons, to Love/Families. And Figure 2, How Leaders View Power, is a reflective piece that delineates the nature, source, purpose mindset and "why?" of Low Trust and High Trust operations - does your current operation run on Politics that break rules, make credible threats, or are you happily located in a High Trust operation that values knowledge, competence, judgment, hard work, and fiduciary behavior. You will love what Peterson says about Fiduciary Behavior, a very special term for thinking beyond self-interest.

Peterson uses the example of General Petreus to illustrate failed integrity - not all readers will agree with the author's choice. However, his 2007 example of HP spying on its own board of directors is a shocker. In an attempt to discover which directors were leaking information to the press, private detectives impersonated directors and journalists in calls to phone companies to gain access to phone records. "Once an icon of Silicon Valley rectitude - the HP Way had been thought of as a manual on running a business - the company was ridiculed for a clumsy, disrespectful break of trust.

The 10 Laws of Trust will be a great book for discussion if your organization has occasional reading groups. You will love Chapter 5, a dose of "positivityness" beginning with the title "Create A Common Dream," "Imagine winning. See vividly in your mind's eye what success looks like - and then let that vision animate your entire team." As a cancer person, I love this section because it underlines the power of a positive vision in the midst of challenges and trials. You have no choice.

Petersen cites Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, Global Crossing and Adelphia as strong examples of hubris and destructive operations. In his final chapter "Restoring Trust" Petersen offers a road map for rebuilding lost or damaged trust - not all of us would have the right stuff to make this work, but it is encouraging to see that Petersen believes in the possibility.