The other evening I found myself watching the discussion with the last five candidates for the Tory leadership, and hence Prime Minister. It was entertaining and informative, but all the questions from the public where related to “what are you going to do about…” and “how will you change this…”
All of them had their own ideas and promises, but I found myself thinking “who do you trust to deliver any of these promises?”
And then on Radio 4 the next morning they were discussing the last night’s discussion by asking the same question … “who do you trust to follow through and deliver?”
The conversation then bounced to Theresa May where one of the reporters stated that her downfall was that she tried to do everything herself and did not “trust” her ministers individually to handle their departments. If true, she created a commendable but foolish position … not to pass responsibility to others. How can one person manage and understand all departments?
Hopefully I have not started a political discussion here, because by the time you read this one of these will be Tory leader, how long they will be Prime Minister is anybody’s guess!
But the same happens in business. At certain points in discussions with customers and clients we come up against the word “trust”.
“Trust” can occur in many situations and between differing parties … whether it is two people, two organisations, two “objects”, but at some point, one side of the equation has to “trust” the other.
Definition:
So “trust” is really built on past performance or some form of validated reliability.
You “trust” certain friends because their track record is one you now can guarantee based on years of them behaving the same every time.
And that may indeed be failure! For example: I trust my friend Bill to never have cash in his pocket when we are out for the evening. That’s not a real problem, because we all know Bill does his utmost not to pay … but that is still a “trust” built on past performance.
In business it’s the same.
Why “trust” working with DSCallards when you have never worked with us before? Well we can insist we are “trustworthy” but you will never know that until there is some past performance to judge against.
Our marketing department are keen on getting case studies from customers who have found that the “trust” in our products and our delivery has been good and worked for them.
That gives a new customer a head-start in knowing there are good relationships that can be formed with DSCallards if others have had that experience. But eventually a performance based “trust” can only be based on continual delivery of what is expected … hopefully for the better.
Then another form of “trust” is what I call mechanical.
Will these tyres be ok if I put my foot down in the car, will this lift safely take me to the top floor and are these step ladders safe if I purchase one. In this country we have some pretty strict Health and Safety rules and regulations, and most of the time this works for us.
But we also trust them because these tyres are made by a reputable company, who have been around for years, and you see their name at every Formula 1 meeting. So if these tyres are good enough for racing drivers … I am expecting them to be good enough for me at lesser speeds!
And to extend that thought of mechanical devices, in our line of business DSCallards constantly talk about “trust” in your systems and even more … your data, your information.
My good friend Dean Farrow from SAP has recently worked with us on a Crystal Server webinar to our customers where he talked about “trust” and a “single point of truth”.
With SAP Crystal Server/Business Objects, you can create a “single point of truth” connection to your business data. With intensive testing, this data can be “trusted” by the business.
And by “trusted” I mean that every time you query this information the results are the same, the calculations are correct; they have been tested and signed off when this “single point of truth” was originally created.
If you get a questionable set of data … “trust” it and enact upon it. Believe it. And the more you believe what you see the more “trust” you will have in the information you see the next time, and the next time. In turn you get to “trust” the people who designed and put this together for your business and you get to “trust” the output.
Your “trust” in continuing performance could start here … with a call to DSCallards.
The rest will be just history…