I’ve been thinking a lot about trust.

I’ve been thinking a lot about truth.

I’m trying to wrap my head around what I thought for fiftysomething years were the basics: If we’re going to climb a mountain together, we have to agree on what mountain we’re climbing, where it is, are there airports nearby to get in and get out, has it been climbed before and under what circumstances—you know, the facts.

We won’t necessarily know the exact temperature at the top, the weather patterns tomorrow or the next day, the precise condition of the trail at every turn, those sorts of variables. There are always unknowns ahead of us that we’ll discover together, but if we can’t start on the same page, how can we possibly agree on plans to address the unknowns?

I find these days truly unsettling, not just because there is a debilitating health crisis before us, but because I don’t have enough trusted information to know what the crisis is and the ability to share in that belief set collegially with a vast majority of the population.

We are confused. We are bombarded with conflicting information. We are scared, anxious, and divided when we need to be informed, building consensus, and united.

How do we address monumental problems when we have little idea what we can believe?

In the age of the Internet, with the ability to share more factual information globally than in all of history, we are mired in noise.

How do we navigate a crisis and ask people to make personal sacrifices—not the least is the temporary surrendering of certain personal liberties—without a unified voice in leadership speaking with sound judgment and reverence for the impact of expert advice?

To me, the deepest impact of the Covid-19 pandemic beyond the tragic loss of human life remains the nagging head fakes that cause me to have no idea what to believe.

Contradictory information is not just a health concern. The unrestricted blending of fact and speculative opinion can undermine our entire economy. If truth blows in the wind, if we have no idea what basic financial information constitutes truth, how can we wisely invest? How can we guide careers? How can we effectively build plans for our future?

Trust and truth are not just about bidirectional knowledge transfer or multi-directional pollutants of critical exchange. Once we accept the notion that lies will be lies and are simply part of the fabric of sharing a planet, we effectively invite opportunism and exploitation as normal behavior. Today there would seem almost nothing that surprises us in lowering our expectations of those whose paths we may cross.

As quickly as the novel coronavirus was becoming a national emergency, some of our fellow citizens took it upon themselves to empty stores shelves of toilet paper, hoarding for themselves rather than caring about the needs of others.

As soon as hand sanitizer became scarce, many sellers of it started price gouging. Even though we have laws about profiteering in crisis, even though it is a purely inhuman act, they did it to extract obscene profits, to hell with the ongoing trust of their customers.

Earlier this month it was revealed that an international criminal operation was filing fraudulent unemployment claims in the United States. Congressionally directed funds meant to help people became the target of a scam. My own company saw one of the first fraudulent claims.

With so many people working from home, phishing and identity theft are on the rise. Credit card fraud is escalating. Fellow human beings see upside in the confusion brought on by the rapid adoption of technologies meant to connect us. Instead they would steal from us.

We are parroting unseemly behavior. We hear lies coming from our foremost leaders. Somehow that becomes permission to follow suit. Self-interest becomes justified and paramount. What we allow we let spread.

Why is all of this bothering me so much, beyond the underlying sickness it unmasks in our global community?

I am a brand builder. The basis of a brand is trust. A brand is a promise. Without trust in a brand, most products become random commodities. The balance of price, quality, and service is reduced to the lowest common denominator. Without brands, we don’t have customers, we have transactions. That is a pure downward spiral in economic viability.

I am also a business leader. When I say leader, I only can apply that descriptor in as much as people choose to follow me. Certainly I can impose hierarchy and insist on the power of authority. If you have ever managed creative people, you know how far that will get you.

If all trust is gone, then I have to assume trust in me is gone. If all truth is gone, I can’t expect anyone to believe anything I say is the truth. A complete lack of credibility in the chain of command is the fastest path to chaos in business I can imagine.

So yeah, it’s personal. If the societal fabric is unwound by manipulation and cynical agendas, my efficacy is also tainted. If you don’t trust my brand, you won’t be my customer. If no one trusts my direction, I can’t do my job and I will have no product to sell.

Is every detail in a company always able to be posted on the side of a cube wall? No, certainly not, there are all kinds of trade secrets and human sensitivities that merit protection. I am not particularly a fan of radical transparency. It sounds much better than it is and I have seldom met colleagues with the pure objectivity to pull it off.

Does it mean there is no way for us to walk down a path of honesty and clarity without a categorical imperative? If you don’t understand that there are shades of grey in decision-making that don’t cross the boundaries of trust, I’m not sure anything I’ve written here will be of value to you.

Integrity is a calling. It is a beckoning aspiration that molds and shapes behavior. Intention matters. Respect matters. Acknowledgment of consequence matters.

If you have shouldered the responsibility of executive leadership or brand stewardship, you know that once integrity is compromised, it is almost impossible to restore faith in a promise of any kind. We teach this to young children, why the smallest lie matters because it makes the next lie possible. Once you’ve lied or cheated and you’ve been caught, no one can ever be certain of your words again.

Am I giving up the fight against the absurd? Hardly. Am I done compromising around the notion of false equivalency? I’ve yet to compromise on values that are sacrosanct and I see no value dancing around an undisciplined contradiction that is empirically wrong.

We can’t let down our guard against emboldened con artists. The disease they spread will never have a cure.

Trust is not negotiable because truth is not negotiable. Talk yourself out of that and you have opted into the source of aimless unwinding.

Trust has to matter to you. Telling and hearing the truth has to matter to you. Commit yourself to demanding more of your own integrity, and one by one we might be able to rebuild our way out of unearned gains and stolen promises.

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Image: Pixabay