100 GREAT BUSINESS IDEAS • 185Trust is an essential aspect of business, notably when leading
people, selling to customers, or building the long-term reputation
and value of an enterprise. Trust is easily taken for granted, hard to
defi ne, and easy to undermine or destroy—but how can it be built?
The idea
Trust matters in business, underpinning issues as diverse as sales,
fi nancial management, and leadership, as well as affecting job
satisfaction and career prospects. However, increased profi tability
is not the most compelling reason to build trust. People value trust,
but what is overlooked is that its absence results not in a neutral
situation but in something worse. As businesses have discovered,
when trust is undermined, there is a high cost to pay.
The Innocent Drinks Company epitomizes many of the
characteristics of a high-trust organization. It produces high-quality
fruit drinks and smoothies with a passion, professionalism, and
good humor that invite trust. This tone is set from the top. Like
many trusted leaders, the executives at Innocent Drinks do not
spend much time focusing on tr ust. Instead, t hey simply display t he
energy and skills that people (employees and customers) value—
and trust follows. This avoids the paradox of trust, where the more
it is discussed, the weaker it becomes.
In practice
In recent research, people were asked to rate the signifi cance of
a range of attributes when deciding whether to trust someone.