Despite a company's best efforts, it is impossible to prevent trust incidents completely. However, companies can prepare—by having a strategy that balances growth, profitability, sustainability and trust. Doing so can mean fewer trust incidents. And, when an incident does strike, the balanced strategy helps minimize its impact.
Know where you stand. The only way to know where your company stands is to measure trust—to bring science to the table.
Make trust part of your cultural bedrock. Your leadership team must embrace trust as a core element of business strategy. All teams—at every level—must walk the talk.
Elevate trust's role in your overall strategy. Some companies make choices to deliver near-term cost savings and profit improvement without considering how they might jeopardize trust. In the mid- and long-term, companies need trust across the stakeholder map to access avenues to growth.
Trust is the furthest thing from a soft corporate issue. It's part of an interdependent strategy that significantly influences your bottom line and competitiveness. Knowing how much is at stake for your company—taking trust and your competitiveness to a forensic level—is becoming the new normal.
The bottom line on trust? It's intrinsically tied to your bottom line. If your company wants to claim true competitiveness, trust must be a critical input and output to your business strategy.
Reach out to our authors to see how trust impacts your company’s bottom line.