In his book, The Speed of Trust, Stephen Covey Jr. tells the story of Jim, a street vendor, who sold coffee and donuts in New York.
“During the breakfast and lunch hours, Jim always had long lines of customers waiting. He noticed that the wait time discouraged many customers who left and went elsewhere. He also noticed that, as a one-man show, the biggest bottleneck preventing him from selling more donuts and coffee was the disproportionate amount of time it took to make change for his customers. Finally, Jim simply put a small basket on the side of his stand filled with dollar bills and coins, trusting his customers to make their own change. Now you might think that customers would accidentally count wrong or intentionally take extra quarters from the basket, but what Jim found was the opposite: Most customers responded by being completely honest, often leaving him larger-than-normal tips. Also, he was able to move customers through at twice the pace because he didn’t have to make change. In addition, he found that his customers liked being trusted and kept coming back. By extending trust in this way, Jim was able to double his revenues without adding any new cost” (pg. 16).
Some things can be difficult to measure in ‘hard terms’, but never the less, have a great deal of impact or importance. This is especially true in building a great team, and one of those things is the level of trust that exists between individuals. The point that Covey makes with this story is that high trust means the speed of transactions between people increases. High trust means stronger relationships and stronger teams. In fact, without a significant degree of trust among its members, a team cannot reach the level of success it most likely desires.
A second story from The Speed of Trust emphasizes the same point but on a much larger scale. Covey highlights the acquisition of McLane Distribution, at that time a $23 billion company owned by Wal-Mart, by Warren Buffet, CEO of Berhshire Hathaway. Because of the regulatory scrutiny companies such as these go through, deals of this nature tend to take a great deal of time and cost a significant amount of money to close. In this case however, because of the high level of trust between the two companies, the deal was completed with a handshake in two hours, and took less than a month to close (pg. 15).
It would be hard to over estimate the value of trust in building a great team, let alone in many other aspects of life. And, trust can be built; sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly. We can make a conscious effort to do things that build trust within our teams and the benefits of doing so are considerable. When we trust those whom we work with the speed and quality of our interactions goes up. We spend less time politicking. We spend less time wondering, ‘what’s their angle?’ or, ‘what are they getting out of this that I am not?’ When we trust those whom we work with we feel more comfortable in our jobs and can focus on the truly important issues that are key to the success of the team.
Covey summarizes it this way, “When trust is high, the dividend you receive is like a performance multiplier, elevating and improving every dimension of your organization and your life…In a company, high trust materially improves communication, collaboration, execution, innovation, strategy, engagement, partnering, and relationships with all stakeholders. In your personal life, high trust significantly improves your excitement, energy, passion, creativity and joy in your relationships with family, friends, and community. Obviously, the dividends are not just in increased speed and improved economics; they are also in greater enjoyment and better quality of life” (pg. 19).
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Selling Donuts In New York City
“During the breakfast and lunch hours, Jim always had long lines of customers waiting. He noticed that the wait time discouraged many customers who left and went elsewhere. He also noticed that, as a one-man show, the biggest bottleneck preventing him from selling more donuts and coffee was the disproportionate amount of time it took to make change for his customers. Finally, Jim simply put a small basket on the side of his stand filled with dollar bills and coins, trusting his customers to make their own change. Now you might think that customers would accidentally count wrong or intentionally take extra quarters from the basket, but what Jim found was the opposite: Most customers responded by being completely honest, often leaving him larger-than-normal tips. Also, he was able to move customers through at twice the pace because he didn’t have to make change. In addition, he found that his customers liked being trusted and kept coming back. By extending trust in this way, Jim was able to double his revenues without adding any new cost” (pg. 16).
Some things can be difficult to measure in ‘hard terms’, but never the less, have a great deal of impact or importance. This is especially true in building a great team, and one of those things is the level of trust that exists between individuals. The point that Covey makes with this story is that high trust means the speed of transactions between people increases. High trust means stronger relationships and stronger teams. In fact, without a significant degree of trust among its members, a team cannot reach the level of success it most likely desires.
A second story from The Speed of Trust emphasizes the same point but on a much larger scale. Covey highlights the acquisition of McLane Distribution, at that time a $23 billion company owned by Wal-Mart, by Warren Buffet, CEO of Berhshire Hathaway. Because of the regulatory scrutiny companies such as these go through, deals of this nature tend to take a great deal of time and cost a significant amount of money to close. In this case however, because of the high level of trust between the two companies, the deal was completed with a handshake in two hours, and took less than a month to close (pg. 15).
It would be hard to over estimate the value of trust in building a great team, let alone in many other aspects of life. And, trust can be built; sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly. We can make a conscious effort to do things that build trust within our teams and the benefits of doing so are considerable. When we trust those whom we work with the speed and quality of our interactions goes up. We spend less time politicking. We spend less time wondering, ‘what’s their angle?’ or, ‘what are they getting out of this that I am not?’ When we trust those whom we work with we feel more comfortable in our jobs and can focus on the truly important issues that are key to the success of the team.
Covey summarizes it this way, “When trust is high, the dividend you receive is like a performance multiplier, elevating and improving every dimension of your organization and your life…In a company, high trust materially improves communication, collaboration, execution, innovation, strategy, engagement, partnering, and relationships with all stakeholders. In your personal life, high trust significantly improves your excitement, energy, passion, creativity and joy in your relationships with family, friends, and community. Obviously, the dividends are not just in increased speed and improved economics; they are also in greater enjoyment and better quality of life” (pg. 19).
This entry was posted on Monday, July 11th, 2011 at 2:58 pm and is filed under Comments. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.