Welcome to the August 2009 Carnival of Trust. The Carnival of Trust is a monthly, traveling review of the last month’s best posts related to various aspects of trust in the business world. It is much like the weekly Blawg Reviews that I post links to and have hosted (click here and here), but those generally contain far more than ten links. My job this month was to pick those ten posts for you and provide an introduction to each post that makes you want to click through and read more. For my regular Chicago IP Litigation blog readers, this will be a slight departure from the case analysis format you have come to expect, but very similar to my earlier stints hosting the Carnival of Trust and Blawg Review.
It is the trust that matters, not the title.
At IP Think Tank, Duncan Bucknell added to the recent debate in the patent community about whether the IP function should move into the corporate C-level suite, adding a Chief Intellectual Property Office to the ranks of CEO, COO, CTO, CIO, CLO and CMO – click here and here to read Bucknell’s posts. Following up on comments by Microsoft’s Marshall Phelps and Rockwell Collins’ Bill Elkington, Bucknell explained that the issue is not the name, but in a company having an IP champion that earns the organization’s trust and respect, whatever title that person is given:
You have to build your own credibility within your organisation as someone who reliably gets the job done. As you build trust with those senior to you, then your (ongoing?) commitment to communicating the value that can be added using intellectual property will become more prominent.
Make some (achievable) promises and then deliver. The more that you do this, the more credibility will be given to the IP function, and the greater awareness those senior to you will have. Some would call such a person an ‘IP Evangelist’ – I would say that they are just doing their job. People executing on difficult tasks bit by bit has always been what success is about.
As usual, Bucknell’s analysis is excellent. A person’s respect within an organization is at least as important as their title.
Running an organization is all about building trust.
The patent community focused much of its attention this week on the confirmation hearings for David J. Kappos, nominee for Director of the US Patent & Trademark Office. Click here for Patentability’s summary of the hearing highlights and here for a copy of Kappos’s statement at Patently-O. The hearings were relatively short, likely because there appears to be widespread trust in Kappos’s background and abilities. And although much of the hearing focused on procedural patent office issues, Kappos showed he deserved that trust by focusing his statement on his plans to earn trust with all of the stakeholders in the patent world. He specifically addressed concerns that his corporate background could disadvantage individual inventors or academics:
I am mindful that the USPTO serves the interests of ALL innovators in this country, small and large, corporate and independent, academic and applied, and – most importantly — the public interest. While I have spent my career to date at a large corporate enterprise, I am familiar with the concerns and issues of all USPTO constituents – including small and independent inventors, the venture and start-up community, public interest groups, the patent bar and many others – and will reach out to all of them.
Kappos addressed his plans to build trust with his employees at the USPTO:
I am mindful of the incredible dedication of the thousands of USPTO employees, and the essential role they play to the success of the US innovation system. I will work every day with the USPTO employees and the unions that represent them to establish strong, positive relationships grounded in professional treatment for these workers producing work product based on professional judgment.
He addressed the need to build global trust and relationships:
I am acutely mindful that innovation today is global and that IP policy is of paramount importance, not only in our country, but also in the EU and Japan, in China, India, Brazil and many other developing countries. I will use my international experience and my understanding of global IP trends to help this Administration represent, advance, and protect the interests of American innovators in the global arena and to lead the world in developing strong, balanced, inclusive intellectual property systems that advance the well-being of all participants.
And he addressed the need to build trust with the Administration he seeks to join and the American people the Administration serves:
Finally, I am mindful that the office for which I am being considered, working as part of Secretary Locke’s team and within the Administration’s agenda, must be intensely focused on how to serve the American people at this time of economic uncertainty.
Gene Quinn provides proof that Kappos’s trust-building efforts worked in his IPWatchdog post about the hearings (click here to read the post):
In all, what Kappos said was certainly reassuring, and he should have absolutely no problem getting confirmed. If he does stay mindful of the needs of all those who use the USPTO, small, large and in between, and the interests of the diverse industries who sometimes need contradictory things in order to thrive, he will not only be a good leader, but he will be an exceptional leader and might really reform the Patent Office into the entity it can and should be in order to foster economic development and job creation in the US.
Walter Cronkite personified trust.
The passing of Walter Cronkite last month does not have much to do with intellectual property, but I could not do this month’s Carnival of Trust without mentioning Cronkite. To me and so many others, Walter Cronkite embodied trust. Cronkite was the person so many turned to in times of national tragedy, like war, and in times of national triumph, like the Apollo XI moon landing. Naturally, Cronkite’s passing caused numerous reviews of present-day news personalities and almost as many questions about whether times have changed so much that we cannot have another Cronkite. In the Chicago Reader blog, Whet Moser decries a poll that found the Daily Show’s Jon Stewart to be the most trusted newsperson on the air today – click here to read the post. Frankly, the poll does not appear to be scientific and, therefore, not very trustworthy. But I have trouble arguing with the results. I love news. Three newspapers are delivered to my door every morning, and I read each one. Okay, I at least skim each one. I grew up watching the nightly news, but I now finding myself turning to Stewart for news programming more frequently than I turn to Couric, Gibson or Williams. I like and even trust all three. But Stewart has built a more powerful trust with me by calling out the problems with the 24-hour news cycle and by making me laugh. Stewart has some obvious biases, but he makes sure they are obvious and he creates even more trust by poking fun at both sides of most issues. Truth and laughter are powerful trust builders.
Cronkite deserves more than one entry in this Carnival, and the second comes from the Carnival of Trust’s own Charles Green at his Trust Matters blog – click here to read the post. Green breaks down the components of The Most Trusted Man in America: 1) honesty; 2) selflessness; and 3) integrity. Green also explains that Cronkite’s calm, baritone voice reinforced each of the three characteristics. I could not agree more. Hearing Cronkite’s voice is an instant dose of trust.
For those not fortunate enough to develop their own “personal,” trust relationship with Cronkite through his news programming, check out this NPR obituary to get some measure of the man and his history.
Credentials can generate and regulate trust.
At the Mediation Channel, Diane Levin makes a strong argument that legal mediators need to develop an accreditation system – click here to read the post. And IP mediator Victoria Pynchon responds at her Settle It Now blog with her own arguments for credentialing mediators for the good of mediators, the mediating parties and society’s trust in the mediation system as a whole – click here to read the post.
How can companies build trust?
Building trust can be a slow and sometimes uncertain process. At his Touch Points blog, Steve Finikiotis cites a study suggesting that trust in corporation in the United States and other developed countries is at its lowest point ever – click here to read the post. In order to remedy the decreased trust, Finikiotis provides four trust building steps: 1)Focus on understanding and meeting customers’ preferences; 2) Under-promise and over-deliver; 3) Transparency; and 4) Encourage and foster feedback.
And although Finikiotis did not focus on this example, last month Amazon showed just how those steps do build trust. Amazon was accused of copyright infringement when a digital book seller used a self-service program to sell unauthorized copies of several books, including George Orwell’s 1984, to Amazon Kindle users. When Amazon learned of the alleged infringement, it erased the books from its customers Kindle accounts. As you might expect, there was a public outcry. Kindle users were upset to learn that books they purchased and felt they owned could be removed from their devices and accounts. And Amazon sprang into action following Finikiotis’s four steps:
Amazon listened to its customers’ frustration at having the books removed and the possibility of future removals;
Amazon replaced the books;
Amazon’s founder and CEO, Jeff Bezos, issued the following very direct and honest apology:
This is an apology for the way we previously handled illegally sold copies of 1984 and other novels on Kindle. Our “solution” to the problem was stupid, thoughtless, and painfully out of line with our principles. It is wholly self-inflicted, and we deserve the criticism we’ve received. We will use the scar tissue from this painful mistake to help make better decisions going forward, ones that match our mission.
With deep apology to our customers,
Jeff Bezos
Founder & CEO
Amazon.com
4. Through its response and apology, Amazon fostered feedback.
Amazon turned a negative situation into a very positive one. As a Kindle owner (and lover), I was very happy with the response and it has made me an even more loyal Kindle customer. And others agree. For example, Amazon’s response helped convince PublicOrgTheory blog to go ahead with a Kindle purchase – click here to read the post. And In Propria Persona has qualms with copyright law, but saw the apology as good customer service and said it improves the likelihood of him purchasing a Kindle – click here to read the post. Finally, the Below the Line marketing blog says that “Amazon shows how to apologize,” and notes that customer comments on the Amazon site have been largely positive since the apology; proof that Finikiotis’s steps work. Nice job to both Finikiotis and Amazon.
And with that story of trust done well, thank you for reading, whether you are a regular reader of this blog or a Carnival of Trust groupie.
Continue Reading August Carnival of Trust
Trusted Advisor
Blawg Review & the Carnival of Trust
Blawg Review #169 — click here to read the review — is available at Whisper, a brand strategy consulting blog. The review is loosely themed around, no surprise, branding and marketing, with a large variety of blogs and subject matter it is wroth a read.
The Review also links to the July Carnival of Trust at Bossa Blog (click here to read the Carnival), which discussed a Law21 post lamenting the reputation of of lawyers as shifty or untrustworthy, and answering the question, can you trust your lawyer? As I would, Law21 answers “Yes!”:
Lawyers have a choice to make, too. We can reinforce this reputation as skilled and dangerous weapons to be deployed and applied as needed, at a time when trust is becoming intrinsically important to business and consumer relationships; or we can make a real effort to reinvigorate the role of trust in our professional culture, giving it to and expecting it from each other and our clients.
What’s most disheartening about our poor reputation for trust is that lawyers are amazingly trustworthy as individuals, possessing (in my perhaps biased view) more courage and moral fiber than can be found in many other walks of life. And this doesn’t evaporate upon human contact: many lawyers have thriving direct relationships of trust with both colleagues and clients.
The problem is that our professional culture has come to view trust as just too risky — the fear of exploitation and disappointment has had a disproportionate impact on our willingness to trust, and that has damaged the standards to which we hold ourselves and each other. Every lawyer thinks he or she is trustworthy, but for some reason is reluctant to extend that belief to others.
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Continue Reading Blawg Review & the Carnival of Trust
May Carnival of Trust
Welcome to the May 2008 Carnival of Trust. For regular Blog readers, this will be a slight departure from the case analysis format you have come to expect. But I promise you the trust-related links will still be valuable reading for IP litigators and IP litigants. And in the spirit of the Carnival, I will now proceed to build your trust in me by following through on that promise.
The Carnival of Trust is a monthly, traveling review of ten of the last month’s best posts related to various aspects of trust in the business world. It is much like the weekly Blawg Reviews that I post links to and have hosted, but those generally contain far more than ten links. My job this month was to pick those ten posts for you and provide an introduction to each post that makes you want to click through and read more.
Do you trust me? Jeremiah Owyang at Web Strategy by Jeremiah says you do not , unless you are related to me. But the real point of Owyang’s post and the studies he cites is that people do not trust an unspecified blogger as much as their family or other unspecified news sources. That is not surprising and even shows good judgment. As Anne Reed at the Deliberations blog points out, choosing blogs is about developing trust. You find a few that you like and trust, trust developed by entering that blogger’s conversation and developing confidence in that person’s posts, and based on your trust in those blogs, you begin to find other quality blogs:
I learned the territory one or two blogs at a time, first coming to like and trust a few blogs (and bloggers) and then following their links and blogrolls to others.
Both the upside and downside of blogs is that you cannot develop an audience, or a community, by simply building an attractive, user-friendly site with good search engine optimization (although if you are going to run a law blog, you should do all of those things. People may come once for flash, but return visitors and respect within the blogging community is generated with strong, consistent content.
Kevin O’Keefe of LexBlog pairs up with his able VP of Client Development Kevin McKeown to advise bloggers and their employers, specifically law bloggers but the post applies more broadly, on how they can build trust with each other by devising a thoughtful corporate blogging policy and by meeting legal ethics standards — click here for the post.
In professional services circles, American Airlines’ serial MD-80 groundings was big news. Mark Bonkiewicz at World Class Trust argues that American Airlines, and airlines generally, have destroyed much of the public trust they built over decades of excellent service. And he contends that they have a long road ahead to regain the trust. But as a frequent flier who spent a lot of time during and around the MD-80 groundings on American Airlines flights, I disagree. In my experience, American largely handled cancelled flights and frustrated passengers well. This suggests that trust is subjective, a premise that squares with my personal experience.
Alex Meierhoefer at Leadership and Talent Development for Smart People asks: Is Trust a matter of Perspective? He looks at the “trust equation” and contends that trust should not be subjective, or at least is not subjective if parties in business deals, and presumably in politics as well, communicate openly. The problem with that is assuming open communication assumes trust. Additionally, sometimes unseen factors enter in to the other party’s decision making causing them to take actions that harm trust because of a lack of information. Perfect information and decent actors would guarantee trust, but absent perfect information trust will always be at least partially subjective.
My engineering background does not let me walk away from an equation without some discussion. And the Carnival of Truth’s own Charlie Green provides an excellent post at his Trust Matters blog discussing a version of the trust equation and providing a self-diagnosis tool which outputs a trust quotient (like an IQ score) on a fifteen point scale. Here is the equation the diagnostic is based upon:
Where C is credibility, R is reliability, I is intimacy and S is Self-Orientation. The diagnostic is interesting and the results may surprise you, they did me. Any tool that helps you take an honest look at yourself is a powerful resource for leaders and managers. The more honestly we can look at ourselves, the better we can care for and lead our teams.
Instead of using an equation, George Ambler at The Practice of Leadership asks What is Your Trust Rating? by looking at Robert Hurley’s ten primary trust factors. I like the equation, but the factors get to the same result. And as leaders, it is critical to evaluate how others perceive our trustworthiness. So, use the equation or the factors, but take the time to do it either way.
On the subject of trust-based leadership, Victoria Pynchon at the Settle It Now, Negotiation Blog has an excellent guide for maintaining your client’s trust during a difficult negotiation: How Can I Convince My Client to Lose More than Predicted and Still Maintain My Own Credibility? The answer is complex and multi-faceted, but it boils down to the fact that you have to get the stakeholders and decision makers face-to-face, get their buy in on resolution as a goal (in addition to winning), explore all avenues of resolution, and you have to let them explore all aspects of the dispute, even those that do not matter. The last point is a difficult one for lawyers. As a lawyer you generally want to remain focused on the settlement inputs — money, confidentiality provisions, sale of existing product if something about the product is being changed, etc. — but from a trust perspective it is important that the stakeholders resolve not just those issues that go into a final agreement, but any problems or concerns they have related to the dispute or the parties to the dispute.
And on a related topic, the Patent Baristas have a great post explaining how biotech companies can get past typical stereotypes, and sometimes realities, of doing deals with university tech transfer offices by, among other things, recognizing the other side’s by treating the other side with respect, and appreciating both their needs and their constraints — in other words, developing their trust.
Ed Moed at Measuring Up looks at the importance and power of building a trusted brand for sales: Build a trusted brand and the possibilities are endless… He was drawn in to a new diner in his local Whole Foods simply by the power the Whole Foods brand holds for him. As someone who grocery shops and then eats breakfast with his son at Whole Foods most Saturday mornings, I can appreciate Moed’s point. If my local Whole Foods opened a restaurant or a diner (we currently make breakfast out of items purchased from the store and eat in a small seating area at the front of the store), I would eat there at my first opportunity. Is your brand strong enough to draw people in that way?
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Continue Reading May Carnival of Trust
The Carnival (of Trust) is Coming & Blawg Review #157 is Here
On Monday, the Blog will host the May Carnival of Trust. The Carnival of Trust is a monthly compendium of blog postings related to trust in business, trust in selling, trust in society at large. It is kept interesting by the vibrant and varied commentary of each month’s host, and by the ten post limit for each month. Click here to submit your trust-related posts for the Carnival.
Click here to check out the April Carnival at the True Colors Consulting Blog, and click here for the March edition at Duncan Bucknell’s IP Thinktank Blog.
Read more about the Carnival of Trust here at Charles Green’s Trust Matters Blog.
And while I am discussing blog carnivals, do not miss this week’s Blawg Review #157 hosted by Thoughts from a Management Lawyer.
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Continue Reading The Carnival (of Trust) is Coming & Blawg Review #157 is Here
Blawg Review #150: Trust Me, it’s Good
Blawg Review #150 is up at Trust Matters by Charlie Green, co-author of The Trusted Advisor and creator of the Carnival of Trust, which I will be hosting on the first Monday of May. This week’s review links to the Blog’s follow-up post about whether photographs of copyrighted Thomas & Friends toy trains are derivative works — click here for the post.
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Continue Reading Blawg Review #150: Trust Me, it’s Good