The cover of this month’s issue of the Harvard Business Review (HBR) calls for sweeping changes in how to handle trust in business, government, and organizations. And to contribute to the discussion, HBR provides more than 20 pages of material covering important aspects of trust. I was so excited to see this, I actually paid the $16.95 cover price to get a copy. Well worth it!

The “From the Editor” section has this to say about trust:

The public’s trust in business leaders has never been weaker. According to the Edelman Trust Barometer, released in January, trust in U.S. business dropped from 58% to 38% in one year…. If companies can’t address this problem, an economic turnaround may be delayed indefinitely: Banks won’t lend money; innovation will slow to a crawl; trade across borders will fall even more rapidly; governments will overregulate the private sector; unemployment numbers will continue to rise; and consumers won’t open their wallets for anything they consider nonessential. A complex modern economy simply can’t function unless people believe that its institutions are fundamentally sound.

I highly recommend reading the article “Rethinking Trust” by Roderick M. Kramer. While other articles in this issue offer platitudinous suggestions (i.e., “organizations should be more transparent” and support a “culture of candor”), Mr. Kramer roots his analysis in the biological realities of brain chemistry and human instinct. This perspective makes the author’s subsequent rules for “tempering trust” more valuable and actionable. In fact, Mr. Kramer’s 7 rules bear a lot of (uncorroborated) similarity to my “Laws of Relation.” My only caution with Mr. Kramer’s rules of trust in this article is that they are meant for interpersonal forms of trust, and not always applicable to institutional trust.

I’m hoping the Harvard Business Review’s “Spotlight on Trust” can generate a lot more discussion on this important issue.