Day #112

Trusted Systems

This week we are exploring ‘Trust’ in our leadership. So far we have talked about what trust is, and how it flows. Today, i want to consider our trust in systems.

We all exist within many systems, some formal, some social, many overlapping. But do we trust them?

Typically that depends upon both context, and familiarity.

If i visit the office and put some milk in my tea, i trust that the food production system, transport, and refrigeration systems, have pasteurised it, chilled it, and kept it fresh. I remember once hiking through a farm and being offered fresh milk straight from the cow by the farmer, and doubting whether it was safe to drink. Because it had not been ‘through the system’? Because i was trusting an individual who told me it was safe? Or simply because it was unfamiliar?

Most of us ‘trust’ that the organisation we work for will pay us (eventually), that nobody will try to kill us at work. Most of us ‘trust’ that the Organisation we work for will exhibit at least some duty of care to keep us safe and well.

Use your sixty seconds today to visualise the web of trust that you live and work within, and which systems it operates within: your friends, colleagues, IT systems, the train and bus systems? Do rules form part of your web of trust? Laws and policies? Is money itself a system of trust, or coins and notes? Or both?

Typically we find that the webs we inhabit are a convergence of convention, infrastructure, normalised expectation, and belief! Which means our ‘trust’ and comfort may not be universal.

Perhaps one role of Social Leadership is to listen and learn how others experience trust within a system, because our individual experience may not be generalisable.