THE LOSS (AND RECOVERY) OF TRUST

by Sam Bayer, Senior Consultant, Cutter Consortium

trust n. 1. Assured resting of the mind on the integrity, veracity, justice, friendship, or other sound principle, of another person; confidence; reliance.
(Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary. MICRA, Inc., 1996.)

Nowadays, it's easy to understand why trust is in such short supply. Companies such as Enron and WorldCom have become household synonyms for deception and greed.

The "dot-bomb" era resulted in venerable brokerages such as Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, and Credit Suisse First Boston collectively paying fines of nearly US $1.5 billion for misleading investors.

In our own small corner of the technology world, it doesn't appear that -- outside the agile world -- we've made much progress over the past five years.

That's the bad news. But according to Kurt Dirks, Olin School of Business professor, the good news is that if we can restore trust in our leaders (and our leaders in us), we can produce a dramatic, positive effect on our overall performance. As evidence, Dirks cites the results of surveys that he conducted with 30 NCAA basketball teams (including 355 players and their coaches) during the 1997-1998 season:

The two teams reporting the highest levels of trust in their coach early in the season excelled: one team was ranked as the number- one team in the nation for the latter part of the season before being upset in the NCAA tournament, and the other team ended up playing in the championship game for the national title. In contrast, the team with the lowest level of trust in its coach won approximately 10% of its conference games, and the coach was fired at the end of the season. [1]

One of Dirks's more empowering findings was that trust is not only a direct determinant of organizational outcomes but also an outcome in and of itself. In other words, if we have trust in our leader, our performance will improve. Similarly, if we see performance improvement, our level of trust increases. The rich get richer, and the poor get poorer.

But if we can arrest the downward spiral of mistrust and failure, Dirks teaches us, we can reset ourselves on a positively reinforcing cycle of trust and enhanced performance.

Unfortunately for the agile movement, there aren't many CIOs sufficiently experienced with the agile approach to approve the introduction of the methodology into their organizations, no less lead the charge. So, many traditionally governed projects continue to be unnecessarily exposed to risks. The ramifications are that those projects' human, organizational, and financial costs remain high.

So how can we cut through the Gordian knot? We finally have a new breed of agile software developers with a seemingly effective approach. However, the scars caused by the still-smoldering stockpile of false IT prophets, methodologies, and tools are hampering widespread adoption of the approach.

The solution? Focus on rebuilding the trust. Make promises and deliver on those promises. Regardless of whether your project role is technical or managerial, or whether you're the sponsor or customer, do it often and do it reliably, and the trust will be restored.

-- Sam Bayer, Senior Consultant, Cutter Consortium

[1] Dirks, Kurt T. "Trust in Leadership and Team Performance: Evidence from NCAA Basketball." Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol. 85, No. 6, 1 December 2000.