Jaap Boonstra, professor of change management at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, states that some 80 percent of all changes in organisations are plan-based. The result is that they almost all fail. Boonstra teaches us that plan-based change works just fine if you’re trying to change a system or a procedure, but they are not suitable for complex, unclear situations or for extensive organisational change.

Allow yourself to be vulnerable

Trust is not only essential for introducing the New Way of Working, it is crucial for success as an organisation or team. In essence it comes down to allowing yourself to be vulnerable, giving space to others, while trusting that they will not abuse the situation. Translate that towards an organisation or team, and it’s immediately clear why trust is so important. If there’s a good deal of trust within a team, there’s also a lot of openness, team members will provide feedback to one another and allow themselves to be vulnerable. Research shows that this sort of team operates with greater pleasure and, importantly, perform better as well. Trust is crucial in teams and organisations, as well as in society. It’s therefore disconcerting that it is declining.

Paradox

Organisations seeking success have to work on increasing the level of trust. Yet practice paints a different picture. If something goes wrong – if the trust is abused – you’ll see that new rules or procedures are introduced post haste. In doing so, organisations are in fact saying that they don’t trust their staff. In those areas where trust is increasingly important, certainly for the New Way of Working, action seems to lead to an increase in mistrust. A true paradox.

Control is good, trust is better

A few years ago Kees Cools wrote the easily-digestible book Controle is goed, vertrouwen is beter (Control is good, trust is better). In doing so, he clearly pointed out that, despite a myriad of rules and procedures and as many controllers as you want, the behaviour of individuals can still have a dramatic impact on an organisation. He compared 25 large companies that had suffered a major scandal (including Ahold) with 25 competitors that had to meet the same regulations and control. All the companies operated according to the rules. Yet for the one group matters got seriously out of hand while the competition did just fine. The message is that all those extra rules and controls were ineffective in the end and that there had to be more steering based no trust.

Antithesis

In many discussions, an antithesis is created between control and trust, but that misses the point. There are various sorts of trust. In popular parlance, trust generally relates to people: I trust him or her. This mutual trust is an important condition for fruitful cooperation between people. But as a group grows in size, a different sort of trust is also required: trust in the system. The banks are a good example here. If you look at the service they provide, banks are easily trusted. Barely anything goes wrong. Yet the trust in the banking sector has almost disappeared entirely due to the actions of – around the world – a few thousand greedy individuals, especially at the top of the organisations. The consequence is that the regular bank staff who perform their jobs perfectly every day now also have a poor image. And are not trusted as much, although there’s no rational reason for that at all.

Too much information

Trust doesn’t grow on trees or arise spontaneously.  The larger the organisation (or the more complex), the more important it is that we can trust the system. And yet in recent decades it’s actually mistrust that’s increased. Trust has declined significantly – just look at the banks – in many large organisations and in the government. One of the reasons for this, by the way, is the huge stream of information in which we are inundated every day. Information for the most diverse of sources, making it increasingly difficult to determine whether the information is correct or not. Much of the information has also been tainted by opinion.

Control and trust are not mutually exclusive

There are, of course, other reasons for the declining levels of trust, but I’m mainly concerned here about what we can do to restore the trust in systems such as organisations. And that’s where control, rules and procedures pop up again. If a system is complex, people will want certain activities to be predictable and for the processes to be reliable. The greater the predictability and reliability, the easier the trust increases. And control fits in here too. Or as one of the articles in Management & Organisatie states: ‘It is a misconception to think that trust excludes control. In fact trust increases if controls show that the decisions and graphs of those to whom one has entrusted his or her money are positive’.

Trust the professionals

Yet the resistance by staff in organisations against increasing controls, rules and procedures is increasing. In my opinion that’s because many of the controls, rules and procedures control and regulate the wrong things. More and more organisations employ professionals, knowledge workers. They know perfectly well how to do their jobs. A condition, though, is that they know what they are supposed to be doing. And preferably, that they know the significance or added value of their work. So that they too can be of significance. Once the what is clear, you can generally leave the how to the professionals. You can then trust them.