February 10, 2009 at 7:32 am
So, what's the solution?
February 10, 2009 at 7:33 am
Yes there is a decline in civilizations trust. I can remember back in the mid to late 1960s when I would visit a steel mill superintendent to discuss equipment utilized in the steel making process. I would describe to him what we could offer and how long it would operate properly, and if the equipment did not perform as I described then the company would take it back. If he liked the presentation he gave me a go-ahead and we shook hands on the deal. And that was it ... no written contract, no written purchase order and this was for equipment costing $300,000. Fortunately for me I never had a reason to take anything back, and in fact received additional orders. At this time many (most) firms where headed by Engineers. Then in early 1970s the bean counters (accountants) began ascending to high corporate management levels and the trust was beginning to be eroded. In the late 70s early 80s the accountants were replaced by lawyers (wash my mouth out with soap for even saying that word) and trust completely disappeared and was replaced by contracts extending over too many pages with every if and or but included. At the same time liberal thinkers were gaining ascendancy, and postulating that people were only bad due to a poor up bringing or mental illness and it was not the individuals fault. A child could not be admonished at school for failure to do homework, for lord forbid that would emotionally scar him/her for life. Forget that he/she was being taught not to be responsible for their actions. And like a virulent cancer this philosophy spread to all aspects of life and relationships. The hight of distrust is in my mind is a pre-nupitual agreement... Lord forbid if you do not trust the individual why get married? With that said I still believe a good leader can show trust in his employees, gain their respect and in so doing encourage them to be one who can be trusted to do their best.
February 10, 2009 at 7:43 am
Monitoring is looking for something wrong to happen, auditing is determining what happened, and then where you can fix it.
I hope that the person I wrote about is the minority of people. That a minimum number of people think Western Civilization is declining. We have issues, but I think we are also achieving many things.
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February 10, 2009 at 7:49 am
I trust people to be self-interested until i know them well enough to trust. i've been lied to by people i trusted and robbed by people i welcomed in my home, so my tendency to trust has been seriously curtailed.
i think respect is a slightly different issue, though i personally take the same deliberate view of respect as i do of trust. I can certainly respect someone as a person right off the bat (not insulting them, stealing from them or talking about them behind their back) but what i would call REAL respect definately takes time. By real respect, i mean respect for a particular quality of a person that you cannot possibly be aware of without being familiar with that person (their compassion, charisma, skills, etc.).
I'm 22 and living in Boston; i see stuff daily that makes me think civilization is declining, though it's less obvious than some people think. Saying "No problem" instead of "You're welcome" as a response to being thanked is not a bad thing (just a different phrase for the same sentiment); saying nothing because you've got your iPod on whenever you leave your home is a problem. People are not as considerate (generally speaking, of course) than they were a generation or two ago.
it's hard to be open to trust when everyone else is closing up, or trying to sell you something.
February 10, 2009 at 8:04 am
I know someone who described an auditing system as a blame culture with proof.
I am fortunate to work within a very strong team who I trust implicitly. I know how they will react in a given set of circumstances and that makes them predictable and therefore trustworthy.
I think the anti-trust thing is massively overhyped. By all means take sensible precautions but when you end up sacrificing more freedoms than you are hoping to guard then it is time to take stock.
February 10, 2009 at 8:19 am
On the point of "no problem" vs "you're welcome" vs "sure". Any response that expresses acceptance of the "thank you" and validates the gratitude works. In Spanish, a common response to "gracias" is "de nada", which means "it was nothing". That doesn't belittle the "thank you", it acknowledges it graciously. All of those work. Good manners basically boils down to acknowledging that other people are important too. A great way of expressing this is, "it's okay to think you're the most important person in the world, just so long as you think everyone else is also the most important".
Respect is closely tied to this concept as well.
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February 10, 2009 at 8:36 am
I wrote a blog about this on Neil Davidson's "Business of Software" site. Trust underlies all western commerce. There can never be any compromise in this. I see our current economic difficulties as being more due to the breakdown in absolute uncompromising trust and integrity than anything else. We have been brought low by the dishonesty of people who seem oblivious of nature of their guilt. No amount of surveillance, auditing, or policing can compensate.
Best wishes,
Phil Factor
February 10, 2009 at 8:38 am
You must not be an auditor. You don't perform an audit to "catch people", although that will happen. You perform an audit to ensure that the way you are doing things is achieving what you want, and to develop new processes that improve your quality. Everyone typos, misses a scheduled task, etc. If you never audit, you never know what your issues are, or your opportunities for improvement.
Actually I was taking a different view of auditing - I was continuing the line of thought from the standpoint of if one were to say "I trust Joe to always do task A always using method Z" then auditing (from the standpoint of consistency) of that would be unnecessary. If the auditing being done is security auditing or efficiency auditing, then yes auditing is necessary. In other words, there's different types of auditing and the one I thought was being reference, based on the editorial as I thought it was headed in paragraph 3, was consistency auditing with the lamen being increase proscription of the process and increasing use of consistency auditing to ensure the proscribed process is followed (regardless of how efficient or inefficient).
February 10, 2009 at 8:39 am
Phil Factor (2/10/2009)
I wrote a blog about this on Neil Davidson's "Business of Software" site. Trust underlies all western commerce. There can never be any compromise in this. I see our current economic difficulties as being more due to the breakdown in absolute uncompromising trust and integrity than anything else. We have been brought low by the dishonesty of people who seem oblivious of nature of their guilt. No amount of surveillance, auditing, or policing can compensate.
The age old question then becomes, "what is the answer"?
😉
David
@SQLTentmaker“He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose” - Jim Elliot
February 10, 2009 at 9:06 am
Phil has a great point. We do need trust, and I'm not sure what the answer is. I know years ago I worked with a company that imported from China, S America, Africa, and Russia. It was different everywhere and the levels of trust, as well as the definitions constantly changed. Russia was the worst, meaning the most different from western commerce and we had many issues trying to work out agreements and then follow through on them with Russian businesses.
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February 10, 2009 at 9:14 am
Sounds like a "universal" solution is in order...but what?
February 10, 2009 at 9:27 am
Sadly, I don't think we can "fix" the problem as long as there are people who choose to act dishonestly. Maybe the best we can do is to do business with people who hold the same high values as we ourselves hold, assuming that the vast majority of us really do the right things in our daily lives. What we all find frustrating is that the honest people have to pay the price, whether it's a bail-out or higher prices in our stores, because of the actions of the dishonest people. We have to do the right thing the first time, every time, because trying to fix it after something has gone wrong is not the answer.
February 10, 2009 at 10:15 am
I'm in the middle of a great book on trust:
http://www.amazon.com/SPEED-Trust-Thing-Changes-Everything/dp/074329730X
The Speed of Trust by Steven Covey. He actually quantifies trust and gives examples of how it can both speed up and slow down your interactions with others. Great book and deals exactly with what we are discussing here....
:hehe:
February 10, 2009 at 11:09 am
thanks for the book ref. Grabbed a sample for the Kindle 😛
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February 10, 2009 at 11:44 am
Awesome...let me know how you like it...
Sadly there are cases where trust can never be established. Sometimes the consequences of our actions sever trust forever take murder for example. The encouraging news is that most cases of mistrust are caused by not understanding the other person's point of view. To paraphrase The Speed of Trust, we judge ourselves by our intentions and we judge others by their behaviors.
The more time we take to understand other's intentions by listening to them, the greater the level of trust that we can build with that person.
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