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Nº 205

Trust as a Foundation of 21st Century Organizations

One of the most frequent questions I get regarding our mission and statements we are making about the future of work and workplace is why the 21st century organizations need be built on trust (and integrity, which we will discuss another time).

When we think of ‘business’ today, we imagine huge, complex, multi-layer, multi-geographical and cross-functional organizations.

True. Today’s businesses – in some – have become massive in scale and form. True. The focus has shifted towards ‘mass production’ vs. ‘quality’. Also true that business leadership became an elite profession, dominated by those nominated at ranks, working hard to manage (or rule) their enterprises from the top down; but it hasn’t always been this way…

We started very small with our house economies. Business was originally focused on serving humanity. If you think about it, the concept of ‘money’ (as it relates to our economical development) is still a fairly new concept. Similarly, leadership used to live in every one of us. We were all creators and consumers at once for a very very long time. And contrary to today’s common belief, human beings have spent majority of their evolutionary time in smaller communities. While in the past those communities were defined by geographies and other limiting factors; today, technology has made interconnection an unforeseen possibility for majority of us.

We have to remind ourselves that internet was not developed by one company under one leaders’ direction. It was rather built by hundreds and thousands of freelance developers sitting in their home, never needing to meet one another.

With the forces of digitalization, globalization, and democratization in the workplace, the landscape has changed vastly and now hierarchical models no longer work for businesses.

In the 21st century, business is expected to drive performance by aligning people around purpose and through empowerment of leaders at all levels throughout the organization.

In the foundation of that empowerment journey lays our ability to build trust with one another.

The “new world order” is asking of us not only a complete mindset shift but also a few new resource management models over what we seem to have adopted in recent years.

It is a disheartening fact that the art of honorary human relationships has long been swept away by the industrialist of our capitalist system. That doesn’t mean, however, we can’t change our reality. We CAN!

Each one of us has power inside to ‘be’ different and to build a reality we can all enjoy to be a part of. As Maya Angelou once said, “You only are free when you realize you belong no place — you belong every place”!

We can make work, a place where we all belong and feel respected for our humanity.

Understanding affection and caring require a stronger foundation than sympathy, and recognizing only a few of us have it as a principle of action sufficiently stable to be a compassionate companion, together with our science partners, we looked at evidence to build a new video on ‘How to Build Trust within Teams’.

Remember whomever we come under the influence at work, we become bound to their way of being and vice versa.

Love in the workplace refers to our ability to see self in other; trust refers to our ability to act as self as if we are never vulnerable.