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Increase trust, reduce fear

“The most critical challenge for any organization is to enlarge the circle of trust.”

Command-and-control systems reflect a deep mistrust of employees’ commitment and competence. They also tend to overemphasize sanctions as a way of forcing compliance. That’s why so many organizations are filled with anxious employees who are hesitant to take the initiative or trust their own judgment. Organizational adaptability, innovation, and employee engagement can only thrive in a high-trust, low-fear culture. In such an environment, information is widely shared, contentious opinions are freely expressed, and risk taking is encouraged. Fear paralyzes, mistrust demoralizes—they must be wrung out of our management systems.

124 Stories
236 Hacks
22 Barriers

Increase trust, reduce fear

“The most critical challenge for any organization is to enlarge the circle of trust.”

Command-and-control systems reflect a deep mistrust of employees’ commitment and competence. They also tend to overemphasize sanctions as a way of forcing compliance. That’s why so many organizations are filled with anxious employees who are hesitant to take the initiative or trust their own judgment. Organizational adaptability, innovation, and employee engagement can only thrive in a high-trust, low-fear culture. In such an environment, information is widely shared, contentious opinions are freely expressed, and risk taking is encouraged. Fear paralyzes, mistrust demoralizes—they must be wrung out of our management systems.

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A method of solving dilemmas and problems that involves communications and iteration to reach better solutions and commitment to those solutions.
Story by Brian Hurley on June 2, 2010
For the past 3 years, Deloitte has been hosting an enterprise social network, D Street, to build connections, enable collaboration and foster innovation across the organization.  This y
Story by Patricia Romeo on December 4, 2010
You may think this company is nuts! They have people who make it work but they aren't employees and they don't make salaries. They have presence in five cities but they don't have a single office.
Story by Matt Shlosberg on July 29, 2010
I in a recent meeting with about 15 local small business CEOs I was struck by a discussion about one firm’s growth struggles.
Story by Jack McGuinness on February 2, 2011
The meetings we endured and designed, added to frustrations and stress in an already caustic work place.
Story by Ellen Weber on July 31, 2010
While the trend with most companies today is to block employee use of social network sites like Facebook and Twitter, Edmunds.com, Inc.
Story by Katti Fields on July 15, 2011
42projects is an initiative across several teams at Microsoft to innovate in the way we manage by focusing on building trust, using games to increase productivity, and encouraging grassroots innovatio
Story by Ross Smith on April 11, 2010
In its new business groups, Applied Materials has changed the way decisions are made.  Each week in the Solar Business Group, a technology roadmap/strategy meeting is held with all levels of empl
Story by Brendan McComb on September 16, 2010
Our conventional wisdom regards high stress executive leadership as indigenous to a high performance organization.  This belief is understandable when witnessing the ever accelerating rate of cha
Story by Bill Shirley on July 2, 2011

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