Let’s start with trust…

Let’s start with trust… 

It was Bruce Schneier’s book Liars and Outliers: Enabling the Trust that Society Needs Thrive that had me thinking how important trust is in making our lives just that little bit easier. For instance, when we get up in the morning we expect or “trust” that the water we drink is safe for consumption or that apple we eat for breakfast is safe from hazardous chemicals.

When we take a taxi in the morning to work, we trust that the taxi is roadworthy, that the driver will take us where we need to go and without fear of being assaulted. When we arrive at work a whole new interconnected game of trust begins – that we will be paid at the end of the month; our company is acting in a morally and ethical way; our colleagues are working in the best interests of the corporate group; and our customers will pay for goods and services delivered.

This same level of trust also applies on a personal level, whether it be with our families, friends or that special loved one. Trust plays an enormous part in our lives. Just imagine how difficult and complex life becomes without trust. We would need to continuously test, check, and double-check almost all our interactions, and implement increasing levels of security and legal contractual mumbo-jumbo just to combat the lack of trust. Nothing in society works without trust.

So how should we think about creating trust when generating social impact?

There is 1 comment for this article
  1. Amandeep Singh at 1:46 pm

    Build accountability at every level in the system. Use it as a power to be transferred and nurtured in the doer and it will reinforce the behavior to be trusted.

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