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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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Organizations create efficiency by choosing one project over another. But is that really the way to innovate?
Hack by Laura Cerruti on September 18, 2010
Implement a pattern derivation system based on the conversations people in your organization have about their work life, stress level, relationship with management and co-workers and workplace environ
Hack by Aditya Ghuwalewala on October 30, 2013
Many scholars discuss visibility from the perspective of an employee making themselves more visible to executives within an organisation with the ambition of climbing the corporate ladder.
Hack by Amanda White on July 2, 2011
Leaders must act as facilitators and have the ability to give up control and bestow empowerment and autonomy to its workforce.
Hack by Allan Pollard on December 17, 2010
Volatility is the permanent trigger of anxiety.Often reduced to the field of bets like decisions.As far as business intelligence itself, present and future scenarii appear as&nbs
Hack by Frederic J.Leconte on November 16, 2017
There a 2 slides from the Equality Trust's "Spirit Level" web site.  They show the statistical co-relation between levels of trust and income inequality.  The core message is that in countri
Hack by John H Pearce on October 10, 2010
As legacy business thinking attempts to stagger away from the ingrained practices of the Industrial era towards modernity nothing is in need of a more radical re-assessment than the view of the employ
Hack by Mike Parker on April 10, 2016
There’s plenty of material on the Internet about what fear is, but for the purposes of this Hack, let’s call it the ‘barrier to change.’ After reading a lot of great articles and books the message is
Hack by Pumuka Reid on December 5, 2011

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