Trust

(Another long time between drinks but we won't labour that point today)

My business is built on a fundamental lack of trust.  My clients' reflexive mistrust of their own people is the main reason they pay me handsomely to fly around the planet telling the same stories, often to the same people more than once in the same year. The bosses trust my consistency as much as they fear any impulse for initiative amongst their local leadership. 

My presentations are (almost) always well received. After every workshop one or more participants approach me to tell me so but...

(and we all know well enough to ignore everything the other guy says before 'the but')

 ... would I mind especially if there was some adaptation of the content from here on in? Whilst my ideas make sense in general they lack some of the nuance needed for the local environment. The tone of this request, inevitably polite, is either pleading or defiant but it is always emphatic: we know what we're doing and you just need to trust us.

No problem.

I'd like to think that this would be my response even if I was held accountable for the performance of the team in question.  Then again my clients, all smart people, should be smart enough to recognise talent when they see it and at this they consistently fail.  Would I be any different?

Next year I hope to find out.  I intend for 2015 to be a radically different year for my business .  New family and new opportunities mean I have to travel less but I can't afford to kill my consulting business altogether.  So someone other than me is going to have to get on a lot of those planes and I need to get better at accepting that there's more than one way to tell those stories.

I decided to start by paying everyone who works for me considerably more than they've ever requested.  This is intended to tell them that I trust them.  Equally I hope that it acts as a way to tell myself that I trust them too.