Roger Martin is the Dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto in Canada and the author of The Design of Business: Why Design Thinking is the Next Competitive Advantage (Harvard Business Press, 2009).In 2009, he was named one of the top 50 management thinkers in the world by The Times of London and in 2007 he was named a Business Week ‘B-School All-Star’ for being one of the 10 most influential business professors in the world. So when he writes, people listen and I certainly hope they are paying attention to his latest article.

Roger has embarked upon declaring the dysfunctionality of corporate life and all its ramifications.  The article entitled ‘Why modern business is bad for your mental health’ speaks specifically to the financial world but could equally find its measure when applied to any major corporation culture.

‘After all, within the course of a single decade, we had the Enron/Worldcom/Tyco/Global Crossing/Adelphia accounting scandal, the options backdating scandal, and the sub-prime mortgage scandal. This is not an accident. This is the direct result of the rules of the unhealthy community we have created.’

Many of us who have left corporate life,  jumped rather than be pushed for the very reasons he highlights. The discrepancies of personal values tallied against the inappropriate demands of a business that put profits before people.  He even embarks of outlining the possibilities of a ‘healthy culture’:

Think about it. A healthy community:

• Believes in reciprocity rather than exploitation.
• Believes in long-term relationships rather than one-off encounters.
• Protects its weakest members rather than targeting them for gouging.
• Worries about the externalities it creates rather than turning a blind eye to them.
• Discourages its members from playing games that endanger the community rather than encouraging them.

What serendipity.  RMI sets it’s very raison d’etre towards fulfilling these considerations and so I shall be paying close attention to further follow ups promised from Mr Martin pursuing this objective. Authentic cultural change includes changing people’s attitudes, values and beliefs about their work and the workplace is a gradual, evolutionary process requiring careful planning and follow-through.

Gareth Morgan describes organizational culture as: “The set of the set of beliefs, values, and norms, together with symbols like dramatized events and personalities, that represents the unique character of an organization, and provides the context for action in it and by it.” Beliefs and values are translated into behaviours and accepted working practices, in turn, manifesting the cultural climate. Culture has a powerful reach infusing the business with an intangible sense that impacts the customer. It bodes well to invest in creating healthy values that all personnel can adopt with purpose, passion and pride.

Interpersonal soft skills are significant in their ability to build relationships forged on trust. Honest communication, mutual respect, even where there are differences of world view or personal opinion, integrity and ethical behaviour, contribute to underpinning the trust factor. Trust is required in constructing healthy communities and organisations, and when it upheld, has been seen to unleash creativity, engender empowerment, optimise teamwork. Fostering a culture of trust, therefore, rewards communities and organizations that hold true to the principles as a highly valuable intangible asset. Both Jack Welch and Warren Bennis maintain it as a key component to business succcess and yet few companies or institutions seem to manage in enfranchise trust sustainably because of a failure to transmit it as a cultural norm.

The characteristics of trustworthiness include integrity, reliability, fairness, caring, openness, reciprocality and, within appropriate caveats that does not transgress a core value set, loyalty. Organizations and institutional policies might promote a culture of trust by promoting open communication, by modeling behaving in socially responsible and ethical ways to every employee.

According to Charles Green, creator of the Trust Equation, ‘the way we use the Trust Creation Process model is really just outcomes of the principles we hold.’ What I understand Charles to impute, it that who we are and what values we hold to be true, informs how we engage and behave with others across the board.

Green maintains that the only way to become trusted is to act consistently from a set of core principles and the four specific principles governing trustworthy behavior that he cites are:

1) A focus on the Other (client, customer, internal co-worker, boss, partner, subordinate) for the Other’s sake, not just as a means to one’s own ends.

We often hear “client-focus,” or “customer-centric.” But these are terms all-too-often framed in terms of economic benefit to the person trying to be trusted.

2) A collaborative approach to relationships.

Collaboration here means a willingness to work together, creating both joint goals and joint approaches to getting there.

3) A medium to long term relationship perspective, not a short-term transactional focus.

Focus on relationships nurtures transactions; but focus on transactions chokes off relationships. The most profitable relationships for both parties are those where multiple transactions over time are assumed in the approach to each transaction.

4) A habit of being transparent in all one’s dealings.

Transparency has the great virtue of helping recall who said what to whom. It also increases credibility, and lowers self-orientation, by its willingness to keep no secrets.

According to Green, applying these principles to all of our actions will develop the fullest potential of trust that bonds and binds relationships, and thereby, builds longevity and reward born from such a strong tie.

As this erudite research on trust reveals, ‘Trust has several beneficial effects. It helps build teams, where trust acts as a bond of tying people together. It reduces energy otherwise required for controls. It helps in cases of conflict. Overall, it reduces task complexity.’

The benefits trust rewards us with professionally, socially and personally, are worthy of our time, attention and investment to explore, accomodate and demonstrate. Make no mistake. your ‘relationship capital’ is being accounted for with every interaction, so it is a wise person that conducts themselves with every meritricious endeavour of creating relationships bound and bonded in trust.

Understanding the power of a quality relationship management depends a good deal on an awareness of people’s behaviour and preferences. Soliciting from any group, community or department, what motivates, inspires and provides satisfying experiences is key to creating strong bonds and powerful alliances that drive buy in and support, no matter the context.

Currently relationship management, across all it’s various attributions, is poorly understood and even more abysmally executed. If the current understanding of relationship management is simply to monitor and respond to negative commentary on your reputation, your brand, your business or your services, or to follow up and cross sell when the customer or client has fallen off your radar, this is no better than shutting the stable door long after the horse has bolted it. It’s about listening, responding, reciprocating, acknowledging, modeling ethics and values, everywhere you are or your business is active.

The value of building and maintaining a reputation built on the seven principles of human givens (accountability, boundaries, respect, responsibility, honesty, support and trust) means creating cooperative alliances and rewarding relationships. This cannot be short cut, avoided, undeserved or manipulated. We are each being held to account on our behaviours in regard to our commitments and on this we stand or fall in peer assessment.

There is no excuse now, given the quantity and quality of tracking technologies and social media assets, not to create a formidable and very manageable strategy to build and sustain quality relationships and use all positive testimonials, word of mouth recommendations and quality referrals to build personal and professional capital as well as business advantage. To fail to implement such a strategy is to be asleep at the wheel in a fast moving and competitive world.

In the wake of the recent revelations of UK politicians financial expenses abuses, provoked the last straw for the british populace. The continuous erosion of public trust met the usual swathe of promises, assurances which only demurred into a flagrant ignoring of public opinion finally diminished the last vestige of respect. The people now demand full accountability, even for what could be, in perspective, minor conflagrations. The widespread ire is compounded in further transparently obvious favouritism of who is encouraged to fall on their sword and who is conferred leniency.

This episode has brought into sharp clarity the need for full transparency and accountantability from politicians, who are, in fact, public servants, drawing very adequate salaries, backed up with substantial pensions. It is the opinion of the Relationship Capital Institute that politicans need to bring a new level of responsible governance that forges a renewed trust, for without it, both they and the public suffer crises that stymies positive recovery in a time of considerable recession and all suffer.

I suggest that they set up a department that educates politicians on what it is to create relationship capital and how the bedrock of values that resources the building of such a necessary quality will renew and restore the peoples trust.

Tough times bring new skill sets in bartering and negotiation. People with strong relationship capital have already laid the ground for exchange as an economic transaction because they have buiilt trust. You can learn how to do this. The Relationship Management Institute offers online training in high level negotiating delivered by an industry expert. It’s all part of the real ‘Relationship Economy’.