I'm speaking about trust tomorrow, so I plan on a few more blog posts on the topic, but this is just a quick reflection on a post from my new favorite blog, Ben's Blog, from Ben Horowitz, a venture capitalist. The title of his post is "CEOs Should Tell it Like it Is" (amen!). And he's got one important point on trust:
In any human interaction, the required amount of communication is inversely proportional to the level of trust
In a high trust environment, you need less communication (less explaining, less justifying, less convincing), and as he points out later, one of the biggest problems organizations face (particularly as they grow) is communication, and how the communication process slows us down. Trust enables much more efficient communication, and in today's environment that is golden.