My answer:  The ability for an organization to build and maintain trust.

It leads to effectiveness, it creates freedom for innovation, it enables relationships to flourish – it is the basis for building solid businesses.

Kotter and Cohen, authors of The Heart of Change, point to trust as a foundation for a team to see, feel and execute change.  Also, one of the Five Dysfunctions of a Team is the absence of trust. Even though many people see it as foundational, it seems as though trust slips away from us through the inevitabilities of business life:  layoffs, restructuring, lack of funding, poor investments, poor hires, there are too many to name.

At the Catalyst Conference, Andy Stanley presented about trust as a foundation of organizational culture.  He provided a functional way for how you and I can begin to establish trust in our organizations.  I reproduce them here so you won’t miss out on these great ways to lead others to establish trust:

“To develop a culture of trust, leaders must be trustworthy. Worthy of trust does not mean perfect. It means when I create a gap where your expectations don’t line up with the experience I give you, I talk to you about it.

5 Essential Commitments of Trust

1. I will believe the best.
2. When other people assume the worst about you, I will come to your defense.
3. If what I experience begins to erode my trust, I will come directly to you to talk about it.
4. When I am convinced I will not be able to deliver on a promise, I will come to you ahead of time.
5. When you confront me about the gaps I’ve created, I will tell you the truth.

The gaps are the opportunities… the gaps are the litmus test… for you to choose what culture you will have.

Questions to Ask

1. Are there people in your organization you have a hard time trusting.
2. Is it your issue or is it theirs? (if you have never chosen to trust it is still your issue)
3. What can you do about your part?
4. What do you need to address with them about their part?
5. Who do you sense having a difficult time trusting you?
6. Why?
7. What can you do about it?

If you choose to trust, you will create an organization that is more nimble and effective.”

Its not easy to create this trust, but it sure does challenge me and push me to the next level.  I’ll be asking  myself these questions to become more intentional about building trust.  What do you do to develop trust in your relationships?  Buy people coffee?  Take them to the doctor when they need their wisdom teeth pulled?

I’d love to hear how you intentionally build trust into your relationships, leave a comment and lets get the ideas flowing.

Post from: Joe Budde Jr. More about business operations and Joe can be found at his blog.

The Most Effective Competitive Advantage

To a blogger, comments are like Hansel and Gretel’s bread crumbs, they give us bloggers confidence to keep going.   I love comments and I’m not one for censorship.   So I left these nasty comments up for a few days, but I realized that leaving the offensive, defamatory and outright mean comments on my blog did not promote conversation and reflected poorly on me and this blog.

Classyness is something that I am not in an identity crisis about, so from here on out I will have a comment policy, published below.

Joe Budde Jr.com Comment Policy

I hate to do it, but after several nasty comments on my blog, I had to outline a few things that will not be tolerated in the comments.

1.  General Classlessness – I consider my blog a classy place: classy like wine, tuxedos and table cloths.  Please leave the personal attacks (on me or others) at the door.

2. ADD Comments – I enjoy talking about subjects that people are passionate about, but if I take the time to write a post, the comments should match the content and subjects outlined in the post.  Oh, but you wanted to chat about something else?  GREAT!  Send me an email or a tweet, we can chat about it that way.

3. Disrespect – Differences are welcomed here.  Hatred is not.  We are all humans, we all have hearts, and because of that we must respect one another.  Thoughts and opinions change through respectful discourse.  Leave the trash talk on the field/court/ice/floor/pitch.

These are the rules, and I reserve the right to change them at any moment.  If you don’t like it:  Don’t comment.  It’ll save you from having your feelings hurt when I delete your classless, off topic, and disrespectful comment.

Update: Because of a recent comment, a number 4 has been added:

4. Non-Full Disclosure – Any comment made without disclosing your relationship to the content of the post will be subject to removal or a public disclosure of the association by yours truly. Let’s leave the anonymous commenting to the creepers and uncivilized.

Post from: Joe Budde Jr. More about business operations and Joe can be found at his blog.

Comment Policy

So until Paymo gets in bed with the mobile carriers we cannot call this one a win. Mobile carriers charge 20-50% fees to do a payment like through Paymo. So if you buy 10 dollars worth of groceries, you actually pay 15 dollars for them if you pay using Paymo.

So I don’t think unless some deal is had there, that Paymo is viable in the short term.

Long term I’d like to see a Verizon Wireless merge with Visa or some combo like this.   I think it is a very closely related revenue stream that could be championed by the new ID device – your cell phone. 

This new mobile/credit card company would be a mobile payments company to be reckoned with, your Verizon account becomes a credit card?  Something to think about here…

How do you think we will pay for things five years from now?

Post from: Joe Budde Jr. More about business operations and Joe can be found at his blog.

U.S. Mobile Payments Short Term Viability is Low

Post from: Joe Budde Jr. More about business operations and Joe can be found at his blog.

It Isn’t The Holidays Until You’ve Elf’d Yourself

I love connecting with great people outside of the USA, so please shoot me a note and let me know what you are up to! Enjoy reading JoeBuddeJr.com in your first language! Or second, if you are trying to learn another language! My blog should prove to be a good source of language practice for you.

Now if only comments could get translated too… So many gaps in technology out there for great products to fill gaps.  Sounds like a job for a weekend team at a Startup Weekend event!

Post from: Joe Budde Jr. More about business operations and Joe can be found at his blog.

Going International: JoeBuddeJr.com Translated!

So I will let this video say it (make sure you find the token white guy, -top right- he dances pretty well):

Hat tip to my sis Hannah.

Post from: Joe Budde Jr. More about business operations and Joe can be found at his blog.

You Can Vote However You’d Like

Forty or so folks added me as a friend on facebook because of Darren’s list of bloggers who use facebook over at Problogger. Well since submitting my name to that list, I decided that I wanted to keep my facebook connections to just my close friends and family.  So I was sending each of these forty folks a note to tell them that, and to tell them to find me on twitter or here at my blog.  16 facebook messages into what is a long process of writing individual notes, I got a warning.

Yikes.  I guess a warning is better than an automatic boot.

So, that said, I guess I have to wait a while before I get back to the remaining 23 folks.  Anyone at facebook able to help me send my notes without getting banned from the best online tool since sliced bread?

Post from: Joe Budde Jr. More about business operations and Joe can be found at his blog.

Warning: You Almost got Banned from Facebook

I liken that issue to health care in the United States, employer sponsored health care plans a pay monthly for an all inclusive health care plan (paying a copay doesnt quite make the system not all inclusive).  Thus, if you look at the health care industry’s skyrocketing costs, the all-inclusive plans that are offered, the costs stay high because every suzie and steve with a runny nose goes to urgent care.  Obviously, not all of us run to the doctor every time we stubb a toe, but some of us do, and those that do, drive costs up for insurance agencies, and costs go up for all members of the plan because suzie and steve seem to live at the doctor.  Time Warner should pass its strategy to the health insurance industry. That strategy, consumer driven health care, might just save the american people from astronomical health care costs.

Its the same with Time Warner.  The variable costs assocaited with the network get spread to all of the consumers while the bandwidth hogs can project their cost onto others.  Sure it stiffles the growth of broadband internet and internet media, but its capitalism and Time Warner is sick of paying for the growth of broadband.  And as a little guy, I hope my bill goes down since I can steer clear of torrents and hulu.

Lets get real, this plan is capitalism at its best.  What if electricity had a unlimited subscription model?

Post from: Joe Budde Jr. More about business operations and Joe can be found at his blog.

Pay by the GB Internet Usage Plan: A Solution to US Health Care Crisis?