Leadership in an Age of Uncertainty: The Trust Factor

My remarks today, as you've probably read in the program, are billed as "Leadership in an Age of Uncertainty."

Dr. Ralph Shrader

Reading this morning's paper, I was thinking about today's uncertainties and two nice things came to mind for a change — will the [University of Maryland basketball team] Terps win? And will the Cherry Blossoms peak on time?

Given the events of 6 months ago, it's a luxury to be able to think about such uncertainties. But, beyond the NCAA tournament and the Tidal Basin, the world is indeed a difficult place today. And such Uncertain Times pose real challenges for us as leaders. There are many dimensions to leadership, but this morning I'd like to focus on the element of trust, which I believe is a key to Leadership in an Age of Uncertainty.

Just how uncertain are things on March 21, 2002?

Let's turn back the calendar, and imagine for a minute that you and I are gathered here last March — attending FOSE 2001. Suppose I stood up here and predicted that during this coming year:

• The World Trade Center would be reduced to rubble by a band of suicidal hijackers...
• That the 7th largest company in Fortune's rankings and the darling of Wall Street would file for bankruptcy…along with K-Mart, and perhaps even Arthur Andersen...
• That several of our local "hot companies" here in Washington — like MicroStrategy, PSI-Net, and Winstar would see their share price fall through the floor.

If I had predicted these things here last March, you would have thought I was a crazed prophet of doom. So, there's no question that the level of uncertainty and turmoil today is extraordinary even by historical proportions.

Technologies, markets, and organizations are disappearing overnight... National security and personal freedom are no longer certain ... Dot-bombs and airplanes being used as bombs are front-page news.

You, as IT professionals, understand change better than most people because you deal with constantly changing technology as a matter of course. But, combined with the instability in politics, economics, and society...

It begs the question — Is there anything we can really count on today?

I'm convinced that despite this unprecedented uncertainty and disruption, there is much we can count on — and, yes — that each of us can make a difference — each of us needs to make a difference — in building stability and success in the world today.

Specifically, I believe that trust must be the foundation for security and success in an age of uncertainty.

I think a lot about trust — in my personal life, within my company and with our clients, and when I read the newspaper. It's a hard thing to pin down. Certainly, facts and experience have a lot to do with trust, but intuition plays a big part in deciding who and what we trust.

I find it useful to think about trust in three dimensions — and want to share that framework with you — as well as some advice people have given me about trust.

The three aspects of trust are:

• Trust between people, which comes from mutual respect and acceptance
• Trust in the future, which comes from optimism and forgiveness... and
• Trust in institutions, which comes from openness, transparency, and partnership.

First and foremost, to succeed in uncertain times, we need trust in people.In Webster's dictionary, the definition of trust takes up six full inches, and it starts with trust in people — "assured reliance on the character, ability, strength or truth of someone."

My company, Booz Allen Hamilton has a set of "core values" that every employee is evaluated on as part of the annual appraisal. Trust is one of our core values, which we define as "reliability and sincerity in interactions; keeping the best interests of clients, the firm, and colleagues paramount; and not letting each other down." While definitions are useful, deep down, I believe trust is personal — it's something we feel rather than know.

Trust is based on mutual respect and honesty. To trust people, we don't have to agree with them. We do have to accept them and be able to believe their words and deeds.

People who we know and trust are a precious gift. They give us true and un-varnished advice. They help share the load in hard times, and unselfishly share our joy in good times. Think about the people in your life that you really trust, and what a difference they make in your security, success, and happiness.

The idea of trust in people always makes me think of my friend John Newman. John headed Booz Allen's civilian government business and we worked closely together for more than 20 years until he lost his battle with cancer in April of 2000. John and I were not of "one mind." In fact, we disagreed on a lot of things — from where to spend internal investment dollars in the business to what sports team to root for. But I could always trust John's honesty, intellect, and intentions. He was the first person I turned to for advice because his advice didn't have strings or hidden agendas.

I hope all of you have people like John Newman in your life. Trust between people is such a powerful force for good in the world today. And, its polar opposite, mistrust is such a force for evil. If you think of the Star Wars trilogy, mistrust is the dark side. It's that simple — and that powerful.

Unfortunately, mistrust is rampant today — and it can be seen in everything from failed companies to angry suicide bombers. Mistrust is contagious and makes us want to put up walls for fear we can't trust anyone. Last month when I was at the World Economic Forum, Jessica Stern, an expert on terrorism from Harvard's Kennedy School, said that a sense of anger and frustration at perceived humiliation was an underlying motive of many of the terrorists she had interviewed in her research.

Respect is the opposite of humiliation. Respect is the foundation for trust in people, and the most important thing we can give each other in these uncertain times.

Those of us in leadership roles in industry and government have a professional — as well as personal — responsibility to be trustworthy. An article in the Wall Street Journal last month began: "A deep cynicism has settled over corporate America as many employees wonder how much, if at all, they can trust their bosses." Earlier this month, the headline on page one of the Washington Post, read: "Bush Plan Puts CEOs on Notice."

As a personal note, I find it troubling that there's a stigma associated with being a CEO right now. Vance Coffman and Dan Burnham who spoke here may well feel the same way. The bad words and deeds of some high-profile CEOs have called into question the trustworthiness of all leaders. This mistrust is something I fear will take consistent, visible actions and a long time for us to overcome.

Which brings me to the next dimension of trust — Trust in the Future. Trust has a time dimension — and it's definitely not 'Internet time.' It takes weeks, months, years to build. Unfortunately, you can tear down trust in real-time. It takes just an instant to destroy that which took a very long time to build. Trust is one of those precious commodities that is hard-earned. Trust takes time and real effort — true words and true behavior repeated over and over.

Another characteristic of trust as related to time, is that trust requires a forward, hopeful view of future possibilities…not a backward view of past differences. Ethnic conflicts, family feuds, and organizational rivalries are all typically based on time in reverse — a backward obsession and blame for transgressions of the past — sometimes a very distant past.

Last summer, I was visiting Ireland with my family and our guide Patrick O'Riordan taught us so much about the beauty of the country. It was a wonderful trip — and if you haven't been there, I highly recommend it. But, Patrick also explained the history of mistrust and misdeeds between the Catholics and Protestants there — a troubled past blocking hope for a better future.

Trust in the future requires us to be able to forgive the past. That idea was reinforced to me recently when I was browsing in a book store and came across one of those "thought for the day" calendars. One page really stood out for me. It said "Even God can't change the past."

Clearly, we must not forget the past. We need to learn from it and change because of it. But as individuals and as a human race, we need to do a much better job of accepting and forgiving the past — and looking toward and trusting in the future.

There's one thing we can predict about the future, and that is the certainty of change. Therefore, to trust in the future, we need to have confidence in our ability to adapt to change, and confidence in our agility to deal with what life brings us.

So, we have looked at trust in people... And trust in the future... The third dimension of trust I want to talk about today is Trust in Institutions.

Institutions are made up of people — but with time and size, they take on a life and complexity of their own — a culture if you will. The impact of institutions can be far reaching — affecting hundreds or thousands or even millions of people.

Each of us is responsible for upholding the trustworthiness of the institutions we belong to. Trust in institutions requires openness and transparency. It requires building bridges and tearing down walls.

The complexity and interconnectedness of institutions in the 21st century demands that we come together and work together. Isolationism is not an option. Partnering for the greater good and finding common ground are essential.

Not so long ago, secrecy and exclusion were often prized. Today, openness, partnering, and inclusion are the key to security and success.

The well-known futurist Don Tapscott said, "Transparency is no longer just an obligation to report financial information to shareholders and regulators. Transparency is the new currency of business in a networked economy where trust holds together complex linkages of participants involved in the creation and distribution of social and economic goods."

Tapscott says that leaders must pay attention to four kinds of transparency:

1. Public transparency — that is, improving public trust of companies by providing visibility into the operation of their organizations;
2. Market transparency — that is, increasing disclosure and openness of financial data and market transactions;
3. Business web transparency — which involves distributing information to partners and suppliers; and
4. Firm transparency — which involves sharing information openly with employees to foster loyalty, empowerment, knowledge creation and responsible decision-making."

The role of sunshine laws and freedom of information acts in government, and the role of a free press in society are all important means by which we enhance transparency and improve trust in our institutions.

The Quicksilver e-government initiatives focused on high payoff cross-agency issues that many of you are involved with are excellent examples of partnering to improve trust in government. From EZ tax filing and "e-Grants" to wireless networks and FirstGov shared services, these Quicksilver efforts are already making a visible, positive impact.

A recent survey you may have seen by the Council on Excellence in Government said that 76 percent of Americans have visited a government web site and that "citizens trust information that comes from government websites to a much greater degree than private sites."

Recent assignments Booz Allen has been involved with in the private sector for companies like Lucent and Exxon Mobil have centered around sharing information and blurring boundaries between functions.

In our own firm, we took a hard look at our business model in the mid-1990s. Although, it had been pretty successful, we believed our historical "one partner, one client" model was not well-suited to the future. We needed to break down silos and share information and opportunities that we previously we would have kept within a single practice. We needed to change the way "my group" had always done things in favor of an institutional approach of shared opportunities, joint work, and group rewards based on the performance of the whole.

This new way of doing business, which we called "Vision 2000," was not without pain and uncertainty. It required us to trust in each other, trust in our ability to create a successful future, and trust in the value and resiliency of our institution.

So, to recap, I believe trust is the key to security and success in this uncertain world, and specifically that we need to engender trust in people, trust in the future, and trust in our institutions.

That may at first blush sound like an abstract concept. I assure you it's not. There are things each of us here can do to start building trust today. I'd like to suggest three things you and I can do. These recommendations are based on discussions with some of my colleagues at Booz Allen — people like you, who have leadership responsibility in the IT arena: Al Picarelli, who heads Booz Allen's government-focused IT business; George Tillman, our CIO; and, Bill Piatt, who used to be the CIO at GSA and now leads Booz Allen's firmwide e-government campaign.

Here are their ideas about what each of us can do to build trust in an uncertain world:

1. Believe you can make a difference. None of us has a simple life or simple job. And, when we look beyond our immediate situation to the troubles in the world or even our own organization, it's easy to throw up our hands and conclude we can't make a difference.

So, first and foremost, believe — and know — you can make a difference. Or, just suspend disbelief for a while. You'll be amazed at what you can accomplish.

I hear there's a saying in government that "No-one can say yes, but anyone can say no." (By-the-way, it's like that in the private sector too — especially in firms like ours that function on more of a consensus, partnership model.)

If we sit on the sidelines — in world events or business decisions — and fail to make good things happen, then we're part of the problem.

To that end, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. cautioned that the biggest threat to positive change was "not only the words and actions of the bad people but the appalling silence of the good people."

Think about that — "the appalling silence of the good people."

The second piece of advice — about how each of us can build trust — is to be true in your words and deeds. Always. One of the current self-help books on the best seller list is "The Four Agreements" by Don Miguel Ruiz. The first agreement is "Be impeccable with your word." I would expand on this to say — be impeccable in your word and deeds. Most all of us have good intentions. But intentions don't make a positive difference. It takes words and actions to build trust and make a difference.

The third piece of advice is give something up. Change is inevitable, and change inevitably involves loss — the loss of things we like... the loss of things we feel comfortable with... and the loss of things we're successful at. But in today's world, things are changing so fast that we can't even predict earth-shattering events from one year to the next.

A natural reaction to uncertainty is to hold back. But, there's no security in standing still when the world is moving so fast. We can build trust by making the first move. Instead of waiting for change to happen and take something away from us, we should give something up that we currently have personal control over. Whether at work or on the world stage, this generally means giving up turf. So, give away something you value to someone else. It's an incredibly fast way to build trust.

With that advice in mind, let me close with a short story about trust. It features the famous tight-rope walker, Zumbrati.

He reportedly walked a high-wire across Niagara Falls in a gusty wind that almost caused him to lose his footing. He was incredibly relieved to have made it across safely.

Waiting for him on the other side was a fan with a wheelbarrow, who said, "You're the best ever. I believe you could walk back across pushing this wheelbarrow." Zumbrati shook his head and said, "no thanks" — he was lucky to have made it across once without a wheelbarrow.

But the fan persisted, "I know you can do it. Just give it a try." Finally, Zumbrati said, "You really trust me, don't you?"

"Absolutely, I do," said the fan.

"OK, then," said Zumbrati, "Get into the wheelbarrow and we'll start."

In today's uncertain times, I'd venture to say we're already IN the wheelbarrow — on the tight-rope. But, we do have a choice. We can choose to react with fear and denial and recriminations about who pushed us out here. Or, we can choose to trust ourselves and each other so that together we can get across safely — and, in the words of Star Trek's Captain Pickard, we can put our talents and commitment to the task to "make it so."

Thank you.