SMART TRUST by Stephen Covey and Greg Link

"Smart Trust", Stephen M.R. Covey and Greg Link, Free Press, NY, 2012

Value based business seems more important since the Crash of 2008. It has taken 4 years. The Virtue of "trust" is the focus of Coveys work. He doesn't call it a virtue. He and his co-writer Greg Link make no mention of the pre-requisites of Trust to occur nor of the possibilities of other virtues occurring because of "trust". Covey looks only at the fragment of "trust". I am pleased that something is happening in this direction and that Stephen Covey is prepared to put his name on it.

 The 4 position graph is the strength of Coveys message. The graph shows that trusting is always in some protocol or training or behaviour indicating an alignment to previous training and education about "trust worthiness"in oneself and other people. Hence situations can be passed through no matter how unfamiliar. Faith gets the process going into the unknown and with it a perceived crisis tends to stop movement. To stop movement is extra dangerous and even fatal in the worst case. Movement must continue for success to visit the moment. Movement is essential for success. Covey's Smart Trust is referencing everything that is happening against your original training. His term judgment is "comparison" to a trained memory from your teacher. Covey does not talk anything like this about Trust. He would not say the world is confused. He puts himself forward as the greatest American Teacher, Trust is an idea that makes sense for him. As a teacher of Corporations he wishes to teach all levels of business to now present trust judgments. Instead he is asking everyone on Wall Street to pretend and do their best theater for business to continue with better speed and predictability.

 With this page I am very embarrassed for him and all Americans who cannot help seeing the world as if anybody else is out there doing it right. The West is most corrupt historically and has consistently cannibalised its own people most efficiently. Success consistently without fail with the east. Asia and the Far East have steadily moved forward and present a world that is actually getting it sorted out. The owners of the west cannot help behaving like Romans and attacking any place that has built a surplus. The consistent wealth aggregation in all the uninterfered with independent countries across Asia is prove of this matter.

 His most clearest truth statement about "trust" is photographed below.

Inc Trust = Inc Speed + Dec Cost

Indra Nooyi CEO of PepsiCo writes the forward. Joining Pepsi in 2007, just before the Great Crash of 2008, she led a company initiative "Performance with Purpose", while performance was always with PepsiCo human purpose was needed for sustainability into the future.

The critical factor became human sustainability. After the crash "trust" became an issue. The sustainable relationship was based on the knowledge that a transaction can be trusted, hence brand and company. Post 2008 the business environment quantum leaped in volatility and failure to trust. The corrosive crisis of global finance destroyed trust. The crisis of trust. Core to capitalism, the commercial idea of value for the shareholder moved to include the ethical ideal of value, in a word, "trust", because without it there is no trade, no future business and no democracy. The daily exchange of trust with customers, consumers, investors and important stakeholders means there is no crisis and affluence unfolds, until trust is lost. The crisis of trust now makes core virtues paramount to power, money and community.

Covey says the crisis of trust is an opportunity he calls it a "renaissance of trust" needed to minimise risk and maximise opportunity.

Trust was always a critical element of success, even before the Crash of 2008. Nothing will ever change on that account.

Edward Car
29.2.2012