What Is The Role Of Trust In Digital Transformation?

In most discussions about digital transformation, technology is the star. New tools are essential. As innovative technology unlocks so many new capabilities and captures so much executive attention, it usually dominates discussion.

But that focus by itself is both mistaken and dangerous. After a decade of transformation engagements and many mistakes and lessons, we have developed a strong conviction about technology, transformation and trust: no trust, no transformation.

Trust is crucial in the business world—even more than training as well as tools. However, all three matter and are surprisingly interconnected. With trust at the front, cost savings (i.e., increased employee productivity as well as initiative) will trickle down, and staff will be happier at work. However, it all starts at the top with leadership.

What Are The Elements Of Trust?

How we assess trustworthiness is not through a single lens but it includes both ability-based and character-based elements as follows:

• Competence

This is the ability of organisations, their people as well as their technology to do what they say they can and to live up to their promise. Customers do their research, but ultimately they have to take a leap of faith to buy a service or product based on their intuition and claims of competence. Customers do not remain loyal if a company fails to deliver against its promise at any stage of the journey. Products and people must deliver, at every stage, throughout the life cycle.

• Reliability

This is the ability of organisations, their people and their technology to do what they say they will, at the time they say they will, every time. In a complicated world we want predictable performance without the necessity of fire drills or heroics. We entrust our company to those we know we can count on. The goal is to become indispensable.

• Integrity

The character of organisations and their people which drives them to tell the truth, to be transparent, and do the correct thing without regard for the costs to them. Integrity is the most defining aspect of trust, which means that the erosion of trust from an absence of integrity is a lot more difficult to repair as opposed to the missteps in competence and reliability.

• Empathy

The character of organisations, as well as their people, that leads them to put the concerns and accomplishments of their customers first in their decisions as well as actions. We are used to working with organisations who put their own success first but our relationships with them rarely move beyond the transactional.

Digital transformation is no longer a nice-to-have. It’s an imperative that every organisation needs to undergo if it wants to survive in this day-and-age.

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