An organisation in which people trust each other, and which generates trust from customers, has a competitive advantage. Trust will attract the best people, inspire customer loyalty, and provide better, more innovative products and services. A trusting partner relationship results in partner confidence in the reliability of the company, its employees and its leadership. Let’s face it, if a customer doesn’t trust your company or its employees - they aren’t going to buy your goods or services. If they don’t trust you and are buying it, it’s probably because of supply, or because your price is the lowest for now (and there will always be a competitor around the corner with the same product willing to lower their price to get the business).

In his book Trust: The Social Virtues and The Creation of Prosperity, Francis Fukuyama examined the differences in economic prosperity among different cultures and concluded, "A nation's well-being, as well as its ability to compete, is conditioned by a single, pervasive cultural characteristic: the level of trust inherent in the society." As you seek to find your place on the work stage, he believes that "social capital represented by trust, will be as important as physical capital."

Social capital is defined in Wikipedia as a 'social concept used in business, economics, organisational behaviour, political science, public health and sociology that refers to connections within and between social networks'. Nan Lin a professor of sociology at Duke views social capital as such: "Investment in social relations with expected returns in the marketplace".

If one applies the same principles to individual businesses; trust represents enormous social capital with employees and customers. Additional social capital of trust works within organisations to create connections and cohesion among team members leading to greater efficiency and productivity. It also allows for stronger, effective collaboration with customers.

A culture of trust makes any organisation more productive, more competitive, and a better place to work. The promise of trust is extended to the customer, which makes for an incomparable level of customer loyalty. Relate it to a personal relationship you’ve had in which there wasn’t trust – I’m sure everything seemed chaotic and awry. Trusting relationships bring harmony, an understanding, and make us want to work harder to develop and grow the relationship.

Relationships built on trust provide the most powerful competitive advantage any organisation can develop with customers. Today’s global market offers many like products and services, therefore relationships with customers are the differentiator. This is also becoming more important in today's competitive environment as prices hit rock bottom. In service-based industries, the relationship coupled with the quality of work, are keys to sustaining a competitive advantage.

Following are some examples of what trust will bring:

Self-governing. Trust allows for self-governance which inspires people at every level to identify and resolve open issues. Wikis are proving to be a good example. Have you ever seen a wiki abused or full of misinformation? People attach their name to it and want to at least appear intellectual(which is why I still haven’t added to one). When you trust your employees, empower them with the right tools and training, and then give them the autonomy to deliver - they automatically become more reliable.

Agility. Organisations with a foundation of trust allow for various points of view simultaneously. This allows the organisation and its employees to react quickly to changing market needs or internal situations such as mergers and acquisitions. A connected, trusting team is so solid that it is agile enough to adapt quickly in a responsive, efficient, aligned manner (no one has their own agenda).

Efficiency. When people don’t trust, it creates a lot of negativity and wasted energy. In a trusting environment, all energy is put toward productivity. A productive team operates efficiently and communicates freely when something is not running smoothly. Running like a well oiled machine will reinforce reliability to customers.

Constant Improvement. Collaborating with trust creates an environment where ideas and processes are continually tweaked for improvement. This allows for the creation of superior products and services.

Creativity. Trust provides a safe environment which allows teams to flourish creatively which breeds innovation.

Importance. Making trust a capability grounds the organisation with a set of values important to everyone. People become part of something bigger than themselves — and that results in attracting the best people, and keeping them content.

Developing and sustaining organisational trust as a capability is a necessary step toward becoming a Connected Business.