Let’s take it for granted that more trust in an organization leads to faster and better results; e.g., more initiatives completed on time and within budget, more innovation, lower turnover, etc. But trust is fundamentally amorphous; it’s more a feeling than something we can quantify and measure. So how do we improve something we can’t measure?
Boosting trust requires instantiating a set of practices and behaviors that directly contribute to developing, restoring, or extending trust. In a previous post entitled “Reflections on the Speed of Trust by Covey and Merrill“, I discussed several of these trust-building practices including keeping commitments, confronting reality, practicing accountability, and delivering results.
But in addition to these practices, trust can also be built and sustained through the use of a simple system of record. Operating with commitments takes more than good intentions and management support. Adopting trust-building behaviors can be greatly aided if commitments are entered and tracked in a system of record that:
- Serves as a reliable remembrance tool;
- Provides transparency of the whole team;
- Shows dependencies;
- Tracks the status of commitments; and
- Records deliveries and results.
CommitKeeper was specifically designed for this purpose.