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Practice 1: Know What the Propensity to Trust is Within Your Organization

18 September, 2015 - 14:22

It is important for executives to systematically collect data on the state of the overall organization, particularly with respect to organizational trust. After all, what gets measured gets managed. The easiest way to do this is through anonymous surveys of employees. However, it can also be done by watching for mistrust signals, such as employee sentiment that a new policy was unfair, or the firing of a manager was a mistake, or the launching of a new project was ill-considered. While there is no substitute for executive intuition, trust data can add precision and clarity to the situation. In a later chapter, we provide guidance as to how that data might be reliably collected and analyzed. Trend information is particularly important since comparisons over time tend to be the best indicator of how the current top management team is affecting organizational trust. Of course, knowledge and understanding of previous organizational events that damaged or encouraged trust is valuable information.