Virginie Glaenzer hosts Michelle Holliday, John Hagel, and Dan Rockwell to discuss brand trust. Only 49% of U.S. adults trust business, according to the 2019 Edelman Trust Barometer. Hagel spent four decades in Silicon Valley and now runs Beyond Our Edge; Holliday frames trust through living systems; Rockwell, a leadership coach, draws on his dairy-farm background.
Chapters
Before we start this conversation, let's begin as we always do with a tour de table and have each of you tell us your name, what you do, and why you're interested in this topic in about a minute overall. So why don't we begin with you, Michel?
All right, thank you so much, Virginie Glaenzer, for the invitation to be part of this conversation. It's, it's really a pleasure, and I'm also eager to see where we go with this conversation. My name is Michelle Holliday. I am an author, presenter, researcher, facilitator. My work for the past 20 years has been focused both on helping people recognize that pretty much every major problem we face can be traced to the guiding story we have, the dominant guiding story that tells us everything operates like a machine. It's a mechanistic and extractive worldview. So helping people recognize that and also helping them recognize that there's another story, another worldview that's not only possible but present. And in that worldview, We recognize our organizations and communities as living systems. And we see ourselves not so much as mechanics and engineers, but as stewards and gardeners. And our most important work is to create the fertile conditions for life to be able to thrive. So I speak and write about thrivability. Yeah, I'll stop there for now.
Wonderful. And I'm glad that you're part of that conversation to bring a different side to brand trust. So thank you for being here. John?
Hi, I'm John Hagel. I've been in Silicon Valley now for 40 years. Done a lot of things out here. I've been the founder of two tech startups. I was a senior executive, for those who can remember that far back, with a company called Atari in the video game business. As a partner with McKinsey and Company, and most recently I founded and led for 13 years a research center for Deloitte called the Center for the Edge. And I've actually just retired 2 months ago and moving on to my next chapter, which retirement is not going out and playing golf or fishing. For me, it's an opportunity to pursue my passion and I founded a company called Beyond Our Edge, which is going to work with people and institutions to take them out of their comfort zone, anticipate the future, and increase impact that matters for them. So it's a continuing journey for me. Throughout this, throughout my, my work, I've been very focused on the forces that are reshaping the global economy. And I believe that one of the ways of representing the change is we're moving from a world, a business world of transactions, to a business world of relationships. And that in that context, trust is critical to building and sustaining those relationships. And so I think it's a topic that should be front and center for all business people. Absolutely.
And that's why we're having this discussion. Thank you, John, for leading this conversation and congratulations on your retirement and new venture. That's exciting. And finally, Dan. Thank you, Virginie.
John, congratulations. I didn't realize you had recently retired. And I'm with you, right? I mean, do what you love and what is retirement? I'm just like— So anyway, I write the Leadership Freak blog. That's mostly what I do. I work with leaders. I work with organizations. I do coaching and public speaking. I live in central Pennsylvania. But everything you need to know about me is really— it comes from— I was brought up on a dairy farm in central Maine. And so that's, you know, you are who you were when you were 13, and I was on a dairy farm doing chores and playing sports, and that's who I am.
Fascinating, interesting. We're already getting into the subject of trust in a way. So thank you, Dan, for joining this conversation. A growing number of surveys around the world highlight the continuing erosion of trust in major institutions, and actually the 2019 Edelman Trust Barometer revealed that only 49% of the US population trusts business as an institution. And we know how trust is one of the biggest factors in consumers' purchasing decisions, right? Brand trust drives loyalty. So why don't we begin this conversation with John by providing some context with this first question. What is really behind consumers' ability to trust? What are your thoughts?
