Navigating with Trust: Transform your Organization with Energy, Direction, and Joint Effort

This book began out of a desire to share the lessons learned from 35 years as an organization development third party helping leaders manage change to solve difficult problems, and improve the performance of their organizations. Early in my career I focused with some success almost exclusively on change models, theories, and methods. Yet, trust always emerged as the central issue. Unless we addressed issues of trust with the people in the room and the organization as a whole, long-term improvement eluded us. Trust was equally important to finding solutions to complex inter-organizational issues. Whether devising the framework for a state-wide health system, or a multi-jurisdictional economic development plan, trust was required for the candor and deep exploration needed to produce consensus. Over the years, a predictable pattern emerged. Either we addressed trust and working relationships early on, or they would surface and impact progress on substantive work later on. Then we would stop, put aside what we were working on and deal with trust, conflict and working relationships until they were sorted out and we could continue. This pattern held true regardless of the focus of the work; mergers, union-management negotiations, community development, strategic planning, restructuring, roles and responsibilities, or culture change. Nor did it matter if the client was a board of directors, executive committee, commission, engineering team, or faculty. Once the proverbial "soft side" was successfully addressed, people would join together; plans were made and executed, problems solved, magic happened. It became clear to me that regardless of the setting or the people involved, healthy working relationships are essential for sustainable, long term performance. These are relationships grounded in understanding, shared effort and trust. What became equally obvious is that all business is personal, and we should stop acting as if it isn't. Experiencing this phenomenon time and again in diverse settings has caused me to wonder--if trust is essential to collaboration and bottom line performance, why is it not the bedrock on which we structure organizations? Some leaders have decided it should be, and they have developed in their organizations the culture and systems to make it so.