Apolitical blog post & the 7 Signals in Procurement…

Trust thought for today - is about the sheer usefulness of the 7 Signals of Trustworthiness! Just up, here is my article introducing them on the Apolitical blog ahead of Thursday's talk.

But had really inspiring brainstorm with Mark Miller about how they can work in business, and particularly procurement, in 3 key ways:

1. As a dispassionate framework to help understand why when trust has broken down and what might therefore be done to repair it. Trust is an emotional thing. This helps calm things down and can take the heat out of considering what might have gone wrong.

2. As a structure for helping look at things from another's perspective. Trust goes two ways and the starting point - trust or distrust - will colour the relationship from then on. Procurement of course starts from a position of fundamental distrust, the signals help name ways in which trust could be earned and lost from both sides.

3. To trust is personal and about making one's self vulnerable. Contracts and endless legal and bureaucratic hurdles are designed specifically to avoid vulnerability. But business is really about relationships, and personal interactions. Trust is still really important despite all this paperwork. Perhaps this vulnerability is why when one seals a deal on a handshake, which is then subsequently reneged on, distrust is most sharply felt?

Working on these, but fun!

Come join us at the Apolitical event, lots of discussion there too. (Which they seem to have missed off the article! Here - on trustworthiness and trust in the public service -