Cultivating Organizational Trust: Key Challenges and Top Strategies for Success

As your organization pursues digital transformation and other strategic initiatives, trust represents a key success factor. According to a PwC survey, a vast majority—91%—of CEOs acknowledge the pivotal role trust plays in achieving success. The problem is this: Trust can be hard to establish, and even tougher to sustain.

If trust is lacking in your organization, your data may be the best place to start.

What’s the connection between data and trust?

In the digitally transforming enterprise, data is at the source of key decisions and workflows. When data is manually consolidated and collected, it is more likely to be out of date or erroneous. This erodes decision making accuracy and efficiency—and it undermines trust. This can also present a vicious cycle; if teams don't trust leaders or stakeholders, it gets more difficult to collect valid data.

On the other hand, when teams are relying on real-time, automatically sourced, and unified data, trust continues to be strengthened.

Within today’s enterprises, there are three key strategies for cultivating trust. The following sections offer an overview of each.

Enhance transparency

In the absence of clear visibility into plans and progress, inefficiency and mistrust proliferate. By connecting value definition to work efforts and then measuring value delivery, teams can make big strides in boosting transparency and trust.

Here are some key requirements for improving transparency in the organization:

• Boost clarity and focus on value. When value is consistently created, it builds trust between stakeholders, teams, and customers. By defining value and linking it to work efforts, teams gain an understanding of outcomes and so can make trade-off decisions with the customer in mind. This clarity fosters transparency, ensuring everyone involved understands their contributions to customer value creation.
• Maximize accountability. When value definition, creation, and measurement are visible to all in the organization, every team is accountable for success. When there is a direct connection between the value being generated and the organization’s performance, it promotes a sense of responsibility and ownership. People are more likely to trust colleagues who are accountable for their work and who define and deliver measurable value.
• Establish a foundation for feedback and improvement. Linking value definition to value creation enables a feedback loop that supports continuous improvement. When actual value is measured and compared against expected value, it provides insights into strengths, weaknesses, and areas for improvement. This feedback allows teams to adjust their approach, learn from their experiences, and make necessary changes to enhance value realization.

Track progress

When data is scattered across multiple systems, databases, spreadsheets, and departments, it becomes fragmented. This makes it challenging to compile a comprehensive and cohesive view of progress. When teams are unable to chart progress across intricate digital transformation initiatives, and can’t objectively measure the value delivered to customers, trust suffers.

Here are some key requirements for tracking progress in your organization:

• Establish common data. When stakeholders can see the same data, it fosters transparency. All parties involved share information and understand the status and trajectory of products.
• Align expectations. Visualization of progress allows stakeholders to align their expectations based on real-time data. By seeing actual progress, they can evaluate whether it matches their initial expectations. This alignment helps prevent misunderstandings and miscommunication, enhancing trust among stakeholders who are working towards a shared goal.
• Make decisions based on evidence. Common data visualization provides stakeholders with evidence-based insights for effective decision-making. They can analyze trends, identify bottlenecks, or make informed trade-off decisions based on the visualized progress. When decisions are backed by data, stakeholders gain increased confidence.

Maximize alignment

When data is spread across multiple sources and systems, it’s common for discrepancies and inconsistencies to arise. Different departments or teams maintain their own datasets, definitions, and methodologies for data collection and reporting. This data inconsistency leads to confusion and disagreements about the true status of work, making it difficult to align on the nature and scope of issues.

Here are some key requirements for enhancing alignment:

• Tailor information to various stakeholders. There are many people involved in the creation of a new feature, with different teams and individuals responsible for such efforts as strategic planning, capacity planning, team planning, design, creation, and release. Individuals, teams, and leaders should have the data they need to oversee their part of the process. It is important to take a tailored approach that builds trust by giving stakeholders the data they need to see what’s really happening in their business.  Over time, this increases trust in the managers’ decision-making abilities.
• Gain enhanced understanding. When stakeholders access insights pertinent to their areas of expertise or interest, they gain a deeper understanding of the subject matter. This empowers them to make informed decisions and contribute effectively to the product or initiative.
• Anticipate challenges. Relevant insights provide stakeholders with foresight and the ability to anticipate challenges or opportunities. When stakeholders receive information that helps them identify potential obstacles or emerging trends, they can operate more proactively. This proactive approach builds trust by demonstrating stakeholders are actively looking out for the organization’s best interests and are committed to mitigating risks and seizing opportunities.

How Unum cultivated trust

Before implementing ValueOps, teams at Unum, a Fortune 500 life-insurance firm, had a breakdown in trust. There was neither transparency nor visibility, so questions could not be answered quickly. This delayed people’s ability to make quick decisions and led to mistrust in the organization.

With ValueOps by Broadcom, teams at Unum managed to remove organizational silos and create a flow of data through their value streams. A single, consistent source of data helped the company build trust between departments where little had existed before. Staff used the data to put new processes in place. For example, now leaders can see a range of data, including the status of value streams, which teams are affected, and what work is slowing down. Unum leveraged ValueOps to track data, manage trends, and connect teams, work, and funding across the enterprise.

Conclusion

ValueOps offers differentiated solutions that help foster trust across organizations. ValueOps provides a single, holistic view of the flow of value throughout the organization. Synchronization of data between systems ensures key insights are aggregated and rolled up in near real time. To learn more, be sure to review our in-depth white paper, Improve Organizational Trust. This paper takes a detailed look at the challenges confronting leaders as they seek to build trust, and it offers practical strategies and solutions for addressing these challenges.