High-Trust Environments


I've mentioned high-trust environment in the context of an organization's culture. Perhaps I should be explicit about what it is, and why it is so desirable.

In a high-trust environment, we take the following as the norm:

  • We can trust each other to tell the truth.

  • We can depend on each other to do whatever it takes.

  • We can depend on each other to put the organization's objectives ahead of our own personal or group objectives.

  • We can assume intellectual honesty in all discussions.

  • We don't take commitments lightly; we view missed commitments as a violation of trust. This implies both volition and competency.

The thing that is so wonderful about high-trust environments is that they are extremely efficient. When you have trust, you have less need for verification. This means you can get more done with smaller teams. It is the equivalent of reducing friction in a machine: More of the energy goes to producing work (good stuff) and less to producing heat (bad stuff). In general, it is easier to have high trust in small, relatively homogeneous groups. As teams get larger, more dispersed, and more diverse, it becomes harder to maintain a high-trust environment. Ironically, the need doesn't diminish as the difficulty increases.

A high-trust environment is desirable in all organizations. And, while it is as importantor more importantin technical organizations than in non-technical ones, it is harder to achieve. If we go back to the engineers' view of the world in the previous table, we can see how even "neutral" politics poisons the high-trust environment. If having a high-trust environment is important to your organization, then you will need to move the bar up, and tolerate less "gray zone" behavior than you might otherwise accept.

Once you have worked in a high-trust environment, you will find it difficult to work in lower-trust environments. All your instincts can turn out to be wrong, and a trusting person in a low-trust environment is an easy target for political manipulators and can be made to suffer. On the other hand, it is crucial for people who have come from low-trust environments to learn how to trust others once they are in a high-trust environment; a lifetime of paranoia is difficult to overcome. Recent emigrants from the old Soviet Union have told me that assimilating into the less "on guard" American culture constitutes a difficult adjustment for them.




The Software Development Edge(c) Essays on Managing Successful Projects
The Software Development Edge(c) Essays on Managing Successful Projects
ISBN: N/A
EAN: N/A
Year: 2006
Pages: 269

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