Certain to Win: The Strategy of John Boyd, Applied to Business

by Chet Richards

Other Ways to Destroy Mutual Trust Trust is now recognized as a topic worthy of academic effort. In a recent article in the Harvard Business Review, researchers Robert Galford and Anne Siebold Drapeau identified five simple ways to destroy trust in any organization:122 1. Inconsistent messages—management proclaims one thing, actually does another 2. Inconsistent standards—people feel that they are being treated differently because of where they work, which legacy organization they came from, etc. 3. Misplaced benevolence—ignoring a poor performing or untrustworthy manager, or employee 4. “Elephants in the parlor”—ignoring the role that office politics actually plays in their organization 5. “Rumors in a vacuum”—senior managers embargo all information, or greatly restrict its flow—i.e., to only certain levels of management—during complex initiatives, merger discussions, restructuring, etc.